I have discovered, using XSlimmer (http://www.xslimmer.com/) for Mac OS on Igor Pro results in a noticeably faster load time. Perhaps future versions of Igor Pro for Mac OS could be made available in PPC and Intel flavors separately rather than as a Universal Binary (especially since the PPC architecture is now considered by Apple as mostly obsolete).
Jeffrey,
it's worth noting that you don't need to buy software to do this procedure, you can use the inbuilt lipo tool to do the same thing (although lipo doesn't remove languages).
To whit:
1) you may need to install the developer tools.
2) Fire up Terminal.app
3) Make sure you have a backup of Igor Pro.app, just in case.
4) cd /Applications/Igor Pro Folder/Igor Pro.app/Contents/MacOS
5) See what architectures are present: lipo -info Igor\ Pro
6) Remove the architecture you don't want: lipo -remove ppc -output Igor\ Pro Igor\ Pro
7) Fire IGOR up to see if it worked.
However, before anyone tries this at home (I haven't) you may want to think about:
1) Whether it's worth it (I don't think speed is improved when IGOR is running) - although you will save ~18Mb on your HDD?
2) Whether this will provide any support problems.
3) Is it against the licence terms (I don't know)?
4) Whether you will ever want to run IGOR in the other architecture?
Jeffrey,
it's worth noting that you don't need to buy software to do this procedure, you can use the inbuilt lipo tool to do the same thing (although lipo doesn't remove languages).
Thanks for the information about lipo! Must be a well kept secret so that one is enticed otherwise to purchase an application to do what the shell does for you anyway. Also, the free app Multilingual removes languages.
I have not clocked whether speed increases in running the slimmed version. I did not think about support issues and/or violating license terms (If so --- Ouch!!!! You all at Wavemetrics did not hear from me that I actually did this for real :-) ) Finally, should I need, I will re-install Igor for the change/new architecture (or re-install to re-validate the support/license agreement).
--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAH
You get to learn all about lipo, install_name_tool, gcc, otool , etc, when beating one's head against the wall trying to produce universal XOP binaries with out of date libaries.
In fact, shell scripts typically do most of the work for that sort of conversion anyway. Add a bit of GUI on top and charge for a program (why didn't I think of that).
I think we are contemplating dropping PPC support sometime in the future (that seems to be a suitably vague statement that can't be construed as a promise for some specific time :).
I presume that removing the PPC code from Igor makes it load faster simply because it's reading from a smaller file. Your Macintosh only loads one executable into memory, so I can't imagine that you gain anything but a start-up advantage. On an Intel Mac, the PPC code doesn't get loaded or do anything.
it's worth noting that you don't need to buy software to do this procedure, you can use the inbuilt lipo tool to do the same thing (although lipo doesn't remove languages).
To whit:
1) you may need to install the developer tools.
2) Fire up Terminal.app
3) Make sure you have a backup of Igor Pro.app, just in case.
4)
cd /Applications/Igor Pro Folder/Igor Pro.app/Contents/MacOS5) See what architectures are present:
lipo -info Igor\ Pro6) Remove the architecture you don't want:
lipo -remove ppc -output Igor\ Pro Igor\ Pro7) Fire IGOR up to see if it worked.
However, before anyone tries this at home (I haven't) you may want to think about:
1) Whether it's worth it (I don't think speed is improved when IGOR is running) - although you will save ~18Mb on your HDD?
2) Whether this will provide any support problems.
3) Is it against the licence terms (I don't know)?
4) Whether you will ever want to run IGOR in the other architecture?
November 16, 2009 at 02:47 pm - Permalink
Thanks for the information about lipo! Must be a well kept secret so that one is enticed otherwise to purchase an application to do what the shell does for you anyway. Also, the free app Multilingual removes languages.
I have not clocked whether speed increases in running the slimmed version. I did not think about support issues and/or violating license terms (If so --- Ouch!!!! You all at Wavemetrics did not hear from me that I actually did this for real :-) ) Finally, should I need, I will re-install Igor for the change/new architecture (or re-install to re-validate the support/license agreement).
--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAH
November 16, 2009 at 03:40 pm - Permalink
lipo, install_name_tool, gcc, otool, etc, when beating one's head against the wall trying to produce universal XOP binaries with out of date libaries.In fact, shell scripts typically do most of the work for that sort of conversion anyway. Add a bit of GUI on top and charge for a program (why didn't I think of that).
November 16, 2009 at 04:19 pm - Permalink
I presume that removing the PPC code from Igor makes it load faster simply because it's reading from a smaller file. Your Macintosh only loads one executable into memory, so I can't imagine that you gain anything but a start-up advantage. On an Intel Mac, the PPC code doesn't get loaded or do anything.
John Weeks
WaveMetrics, Inc.
support@wavemetrics.com
November 19, 2009 at 01:35 pm - Permalink
Thanks!
FWIW, it seems to shut down a bit faster too after stripping out the PPC code.
--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAH
November 19, 2009 at 01:53 pm - Permalink
I would believe it if you actually measured it :)
John Weeks
WaveMetrics, Inc.
support@wavemetrics.com
November 20, 2009 at 01:53 pm - Permalink