MacCentral has a nice little peice about Maestro on the Mac. I’m all about the Maestro project getting some news coverage. I guess that you have to report to your audience, but a quick acknowledgement that Maestro runs on Windows, x86 Linux, and Solaris on Sparc would have been nice.
Apple appears to be pleased that Maestro looks sexy on OSX. That’s great. The amusing thing is that Windows installation is as easy as downloading a file and installing. On the Mac side, you first need to download Java3d and JavaAI. Of course, many users find this out after Maestro fails to run. I’ve been hanging out at #maestro on freenode since before the slashdotting (thankyouverymuch) and a fair number of people come in to the channel because they have not installed Java3d and cannot get it to run on OSX. It’s just not as simple as it should be.
How’s that for a multifaceted minirant? Let the world know: Maestro runs on Windows, Mac OSX, Linux-x86, and Sparc Solaris. It’s a darn fine program, and is something new for JPL. They’re not used to giving away their data to everyone like this. The Maestro project is a new and very exciting thing for everyone. Also, Apple: how about getting things like Java3d and JavaAI in the default install, mmkay?
Note: I’m not trying to start yet another PC vs. Mac argument. I currently run several windows machines, several flavours of Linux, several BSDs, Solaris on Sparc (have not upgraded to 9 yet though), and have several Mac boxes. Due to fundage and the fact that I have not been able to coax my G4 8500 into it, I am not running OSX. I would love to be, though.