Hi my58vw!
It appears Mathcad for Macintosh has been discontinued, but
Mathematica and Matlab are similar to Mathcad and available for OSX.
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Mathematica 4.2
Whatis Mathematica?
http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/introduction.html
Tour of features
http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/tour/
To order a 30-day trial version click here:
http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/trial.cgi
System requirements:
Mac OS X 200MB hard disk space, 64MB RAM
To order, click here (Price: $895 /Academic):
http://store.wolfram.com/arrive.cgi?URI=http://store.wolfram.com/view/app/mathematica/
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MATLAB
"MATLAB integrates mathematical computing, visualization, and a
powerful language to provide a flexible environment for technical
computing. The open architecture makes it easy to use MATLAB and its
companion products to explore data, create algorithms, and create
custom tools that provide early insights and competitive advantages."
http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/
Matlab function list:
http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/functions/functions.jsp
To download brochure, click here:
http://www.mathworks.com/mason/tag/proxy.html?dataid=2367&fileid=10300
Macintosh info:
http://www.mathworks.com/programs/mac/index.shtml
http://www.mathworks.com/products/system.shtml/Macintosh
You can download a 30-day trial here:
http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/tryit.jsp
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Here are some comments, comparisons and recommendations:
"My personal favorite is Matlab. If you can imagine doing something
mathematical, Matlab can probably do it. Currently we use it for
post-processing lots of measured lab data to create graphical
representations. One down-side is that mathworks requires you
to purchase extra add-on 'toolboxes' for various disciplines.
(like signal processing, symbolic math, dsp etc., etc. )
They have multitudes of add-on toolboxes available. One comment,
the symbolic math toolkit incorporates a large subset of Maple.
There is an open-source program called Octave ( http://www.octave.org)
which has very matlab-like syntax. It doesn't have all the bells and
whistles, chrome and glitz that Matlab does, however if your task
is within it's capabilities it is a great program (and it is free).
In some respects it is even better than Matlab for some applications.
It runs on Unix, Linux, and Windoze and is available either as
binaries
or source code. I've used Octave to provide number crunching ability
to some on-line web-based SI tools I've developed for in-house use.
Mathcad is probably the most intuitive to use and excels in it's
ability
to work with equations in a natural fashion. I've always felt the
graphics
left a little to be desired, but they are adequate. Only available on
Windoze platforms (and maybe Macs) as far as I know. Price is moderate
(a few hundred compared to Matlab which clocks in in the thousands).
Mathematica is a real power house, but even though I've got it on my
machine I don't think I've used it in years so I'll defer to others
for comments. I think I found it kind of non-intuitive in its use,
but that just may be me. This one is pricey too.
-Ray"
"...I've always liked Mathematica; it's the grandaddy of all of these
packages, and I think it probably is ahead of the other in terms of
power.
Lately, though, I've been learning Maple, and it's probably pretty
close to Mathematica in terms of the way it works and in terms of
power. I don't know enough about the programming language aspects
of Maple to make a direct comparison; what I like about Mathematica
is the non-procedural methods it provides for defining functions; it's
not clear to me (so far) that Maple does this (does anyone else know
for sure?).
Mathcad is also a reasonable choice. Some of our analog designers use
and like it, and at least one of them uses it for *ALL* his design
work rather than using a circuit simulator! So it presumably has
the power to do about all you would want to do in terms of design.
I believe the math engine in Mathcad is Maple (it was a few years
ago when I had a copy on my now-defunct Mac)
Given a choice, I'd choose Mathematica. But I think any of them would
be fine for design work, and I think they are all in about the same
ballpark pricewise. They all run on nearly any platform.
By the way, we also have Matlab, which is not much of a symbolic math
engine, but is excellent for handling large arrays of data. I've used
it to simulate bandwidth limiting of simulated waveforms in PCB
traces,
and it works very nicely for this sort of thing. Anyone doing DSP
would have to have Matlab in addition to any other math package, in my
opinion."
Kim Helliwell
Senior CAE Engineer
Acuson Corporation
Source: http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu/si-list/0377.html
"...In a series of our books the packages such as Maple, Reduce,
MathCAD and Mathematica have been considered. Our experience of the
detailed testing and use in different mathematical and physical
appendices of four mathematical packages Reduce, Maple, MathCAD and
Mathematica allows to consider the packages Maple and Mathematica as
undoubted leaders (on the basis of a generalized index) among all
listed modern means of computer algebra. Meanwhile, we have preferred
package Maple due to a number of important reasons.
Researchers use well-known Maple package as an essential tool when
solving problems related to their investigation. The package is ideal
for formulating, solving, and exploring different mathematical models.
Its symbolic manipulation facilities greatly extend the range of
problems which can be solved by it. Educators in high schools,
colleges, and universities have revitalized traditional curricula by
introducing problems and exercises which use Maple's interactive
mathematics and physics. Students can concentrate on important
concepts rather than on tedious algebraic manipulations. Finally,
engineers and experts in industries use Maple as an efficient tool
replacing many traditional resources such as reference books,
calculators, spreadsheets and programming languages. These users
easily solve a wide range of mathematical problems, creating
projections and consolidating their computations into professional
reports..."
http://www.geocities.com/intl_academy_noosphere/Tln_maple_algebra.htm
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Reviews:
Review of Mathematica 4.2 for Mac OS X:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/stories/2002/10/08/mathematica42ForMacOsX.html
http://it-enquirer.com/publishing/mathematica42.html
Review of Matlab 6.6 for Mac OS X:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/stories/2002/08/20/reviewOfMatlab65ForMacOsXI.html
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I hope you find one of the above programs suitable.
regards,
Jack |