[Aavso-photometry] Advice on Mac Models

[Michael Koppelman]

In my personal opinion, a VirtualPC-type solution is a workaround and  
not something I would create a plan around. Perhaps if enough of us  
Mac-types rallied around the EquinoX stuff we could get a better  
commitment from them to support their software going forward. IRAF  
does have some image acquisition capabilities...?

One thing Apple is very, very good about is supporting developers. A  
very complete development environment comes free-of-charge when you  
buy Mac OS X. As Aaron mentioned, astronomers and scientists in  
general are turning to the Mac to give them their old tools like C,  
Fortran and Unix while still having a desktop environment that runs  
Microsoft Office and the like. Perhaps Bisque and/or SBIG could be  
encouraged to port CCDSoft to the Mac?

Although I pretty much despise Windows I do most of my astronomy on  
Windows software because there just haven't been good Macintosh  
alternatives. I sorely wish that would change. I'm not sure why it  
doesn't. Yes, I know, Windows has 95% market share but 5% of a  
billion users is still a lot of market potential. I think developers  
are still way too short sighted with their Windows-only approach.

Michael