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From: evans@mhuxt.UUCP (Steve Crandall)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Mathematica on the Mac
Message-ID: <2412@mhuxt.UUCP>
Date: 7 Jul 88 12:14:23 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
Lines: 17


I have been using a "beta" version of Mathematica on my Mac for a few weeks
now. Symbolic algebra programs tend to have their own flavors and uses -
Reduce is very different from Maple is very different from SMP is very
different from Macysma, etc... If you have a background with SMP you will
find Mathematica an extension of that paradigm. The front end seems to
be done very well -- you can run a Mathematica "kernel" on a variety
of machines and connect to it with a display kernel on a Mac or whatever
- or - you can run it on a single machine.

One note -- it DOES like memory. Two meg is required just to boot it on
a Mac. I found myself running out of memory doing very simple problems
with 2 Meg and frantically searched for a memory expansion. Now that
I'm running 5 Meg things are much smoother.

If you are interested in the program, Addison-Wesley is publishing the
manual [Mathematica   S. Wolfram   0-201-19334-5   1988], which is an
excellent tour of the program and its capabilities.