I'm looking to upgrade my 1.0GHz G4 laptop in the not too distant future. At the moment I use both MATLAB and IDL, thus I'm also following: http://newsreader.mathwor...csbLMhj6H.0@.ef24257 Where a fellow from mathworks has been posting his thoughts on the matter. I'd like to see RSI do the same here. As it stands, I have MATLAB and IDL versions of much of my code so as long as one gets ported, I'm ok.

Agreed. The NASA project I work on has made the decision to move entirely over to Macs in the next 9 months. We rely on IDL for all our data analysis needs, and it would be a crime if RSI didn't port IDL over to the new Intel Macs.

I agree to this, and would even like to go a step further... I've been using IDL for over ten years now. My field (earthquake seismology) is also heavily populated by mac users, and always has been. Most of my colleagues switched from IDL to Matlab back when RSI abandoned the mac. The subsequent port to X11 has never been truly satisfactory. Many of the great features of IDL 5.1 never made it to *nix - things like a quality built-in editor with syntax highlighting. I understand that emacs is the programmers' preferred way to do code, and that IT types inexplicably like Windows. However, IDL claims to be a *scientific* visualization and analysis package. If RSI really wants scientists to use their product, then they should be responsive to what *scientists* want, rather than what's popular with software engineers. That means things like Mac/Intel and Direct Graphics. Honestly, the only reason I haven't switched to Matlab (which is more responsive to scientists) is that it would take me far too long to port all my legacy code. This is not a good way to keep a user-base happy!

I am also very interested in an Intel mac version of IDL - I currently develop in IDL under Windows and Linux, but I am looking seriously into getting an Intel mac, as it appears to be the ideal platform.

I second Richard French's request. The new dual core MacBook Pro seems very nice in terms of performace, but if IDL doesn't run on it, it doesn't make sense for me to upgrade my laptop. RSI should seriously consider investing a lot of effort to make sure that IDL runs on the new dual core MacBook Pro given that a large number of scientists are now converting to mac and using it for research everyday.

Please add my vote of support for implementing an IDL version native to the new Intel version of Mac OSX. Looking around at conferences in both planetary science and astronomy (I bridge the two fields) Mac laptops now *dominate*. To maintain its lead in data reduction/analysis etc. RSI needs to support the Intel version of Mac OSX as soon as possible. Many thanks, -Henry Roe