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Labview squarely solved the need for a quick UI with few buttons and a graph like nothing else. What can replace it? Labview for macOS was surprisingly well w

by twarge 3y ago

Labview squarely solved the need for a quick UI with few buttons and a graph like nothing else. What can replace it? Labview for macOS was surprisingly well written! It ran my code better and faster than on windows and Linux. I understood when various USB hardware drivers were not written for macOS. I was surprised by the quality of the ones they did write. I expected that Ethernet based devices would show up to replace them but it didn’t really happen which still baffles me. This is a piece with the disappearance of nontrivial desktop software on the Mac. The other one that hit me recently was quickbooks for mac desktop.

labcomputer 3y ago
There is no direct replacement for Labview, which saddens me. But the writing has been on the wall since the 2013 Mac Pro. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that that was when VISA and NI-DAQmx Mac support started getting flakey. Without the ability to use “big boy”[1] first-party DAQ hardware from NI, I’m sure the business justification for Labview on Mac is nonexistent. And needing to constantly keep up with Apple’s API-breaking changes certainly can’t help. The 2019 and 2023 Mac Pro feel like an attempt to win back or keep niche partners like NI on Mac, but the value prop just isn’t there for someone looking to set up a daq/control box. [1] USB DAQ is great for many use cases, but sometimes you just need the latency that PCI(e) provides. Even the ancient ISA-behind-PCI DAQ hardware had better latency (and other specs!) than USB devices.