BBEdit 14 released
Everyone's favourite text editor has been updated. BBEdit 14 requires Mac OS X 10.14.2 or later, and is compatible with macOS 10.15 "Catalina" and macOS 11 "Big Sur". Native on Macs with the M1 processor
What's New
Anaconda Virtual Environments - Anaconda is particularly popular with data scientists, as well as with others who need to rapidly switch between different tooling and library configurations. BBEdit 14 will use conda or miniconda to detect your virtual environments, and provides a mechanism for switching the active environment for use when running Unix tools and scripts from within BBEdit.
New Built-In Languages - BBEdit 14 adds built-in syntax coloring and function navigation support for Go, R, Rust, Lisp-family languages (Common Lisp, Scheme, Clojure), and Pixar Universal Scene Description (USD) text files.
Enhanced Developer Features - BBEdit 14 enables several new features and significant improvements to its built-in coding aids for developers, including:
Enhanced language-specific text completions; Improved Find Definition; Assistance for specifying function parameters; New code-navigation features; In-window highlighting of syntax and semantic issues; Language-specific document reformatting. These feature improvements are the result of new built-in support for the Language Server Protocol ("LSP") by which user-installed local "language servers" implement key language-sensitive behaviors. Specific available features may vary by language and by server.
Full details are here.
XQuartz
Docker Desktop for Mac Apple Silicon machines
Docker is now available for M1 machines
The release note can be found here https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/release-notes/
and you download it here.
MarvinSketch freezes on macOS Big Sur
Apparent MarvinSketch is freezing under Big Sur, This problem is caused by a change in tab behavior in Big Sur. Newly opened dialogs are handled as tabs by default now. The issue can be solved by changing the tab preferences of the system.
Details are here https://chemaxon.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/43000613604-marvinsketch-freezes-on-macos-big-sur.
There are more details of Scientific Applications Under Big Sur here.
CSD Software Portfolio from the CCDC upgraded for Big Sur
The full CSD software portfolio, including Mercury, ConQuest, Mogul, GOLD, CSD-CrossMiner, the CSD Python API and other components, has now been upgraded and tested for compatibility with Big Sur. We are pleased to report that the newly available 2020.3.1 CSD Release (only available on macOS) is fully supported on macOS Big Sur at point of release, both for Intel-based macs, as well as the newer M1 Apple silicon based macs. At this point we are aware of just two specific known issues for the newer silicon hardware machines:
- The POV-Ray integration in Mercury for high-resolution graphics generation does not work on M1 Apple silicon based macs
- The Aromatics Analyser component in the CSD-Materials menu of Mercury does not work on M1 Apple silicon based macs We expect that these final remaining issues will be addressed in the next CSD software release.
Full details are here https://www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/solutions/whats-new/.
More details on scientific applications under Big Sur are here https://www.macinchem.org/blog/files/1fd84c61d3f91608c1b9c413c8064cd4-2692.php
Schrödinger Software Release 2021-1
Schrödinger have just announced the release of the latest update.
This release fully supports macOS 11, Big Sur, (with previous releases of the suite remaining unsupported on Big Sur).
Computers running ARM64-based processors such as the Apple M1 chip are unsupported.
Fortran on a Mac page updated
I've just updated the Fortran on a Mac page.
In particular
gfortran for ARM Big Sur (macOS 11.0) and Apple Silicon.
NAG Fortran compiler Fortran compiler for Apple Silicon Macs now available to download. Available on Linux, Windows and macOS, including Apple Silicon Macs.
Absoft Pro Fortran 2021 For macOS and OS X. Fully compatible with macOS Big Sur (11.0).
Pro Fit supports Big Sur
pro Fit pro Fit 7 is now at version 7.0.18, supporting dark mode, Catalina, and Big Sur.
pro Fit is a macOS application for data/function analysis, plotting, and curve fitting. It is used by scientists, engineers and students to analyze their measurements and the mathematical models they use to describe them.
Highlights:
- Data windows for storing and analyzing data
- Drawing windows for plots and other graphics
- Function windows for user defined functions
- Write your own functions and scripts using Python or Pascal
- Numerous Curve Fitting Algorithms:
- Levenberg-Marquardt, Robust, Multi-dimensional
- High resolution, high quality drawings and graphs
- Full PDF support for exporting figures
- Big Sur and Retina Support
There is a comprehensive list of scientific applications under Big Sur here
Mathematica System requirements
Microsoft 365 for Mac apps that run natively on Macs with M1
Latest update from Microsoft
We are excited to announce that starting today we are releasing new versions of many of our Microsoft 365 for Mac apps that run natively on Macs with M1. This means that now our core flagship Office apps—Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote—will run faster and take full advantage of the performance improvements on new Macs, making you even more productive on the latest MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini. The new Office apps are Universal, so they will continue to run great on Macs with Intel processors. The apps are not only speedy, but they also look fantastic as they have been redesigned to match the new look of macOS Big Sur. Here is a peek at Outlook on the new 13-inch MacBook Pro.
More details here.
Fortran under Big Sur
First let me say I’m not a big Fortran user but any blog posts about Fortran always seem to be very popular, and the Fortran on a Mac page is one of the most popular pages.
I've been sent these details of fortran compilers that might be of interest.
NAG Fortran compiler Fortran compiler for Apple Silicon Macs now available to download.
Absoft Absoft Pro Fortran 2021 For macOS and OS X Fully compatible with macOS Big Sur (11.0).
Computation Tools :: C/Fortran On the HPC Mac OSX page, Compiled using source code from the GNU servers.
Scientific Applications under Big Sur: Update 7
General Issues with Big Sur
If you want an overview of Big Sur I'd recommend the excellent arstechnica review.
Apple has officially confirmed that the following Macs are compatible with Big Sur.
- MacBook (2015 or newer)
- MacBook Air (2013 or newer)
- MacBook Pro (Late 2013 or newer)
- Mac mini (2014 or newer)
- iMac (2014 or newer)
- iMac Pro (2017)
- Mac Pro (2013 and later)
In addition there is issue of the new Apple Silicon Macs with the new Apple M1 chip, if there is specific information about the new machines I've included it.
Snazzy Labs has an interesting commentary on the new Apple Silicon machines and promises a in depth technical review of all 3 models they have on order. The first reviews on Apple Silicon are now in
Scientific Applications
I've contacted all developers I know and their responses to date are shown below.
4-Peaks no known issues
Absoft Absoft Pro Fortran 2021 For macOS and OS X Fully compatible with macOS Big Sur (11.0)
alvaDesc We tested all our products and all of them work properly on MacOS Big Sur.
Amsterdam Modeling Suite As we only just finished our 2020 release our developers didn't dare switching to Big Sur yet. I can try on my own macbook shortly.
Anaconda seems to be working fine.
APE make sure you download the 64-bit version
Avogadro Been running Big Sur betas for a while - everything works. The next beta of Avogadro v2 will have some interface tweaks that are more noticeable on Big Sur (e.g., warning dialogs changed to be Mac-native). Don't yet have universal binaries, but working on it for Open Babel and Avogadro v2 betas (e.g. 1.94). Should still work fine on Apple Silicon computers.
BBEdit version 13 is compatible with macOS Big Sur. BBEdit 13.5 adds support for Apple Silicon
Brainsight macOS 11 Big Sur is coming out very soon, but do not upgrade your Mac yet, because Brainsight is not yet compatible with Big Sur
ChemAxon Most of our software in general requires Java, so as long as the appropriate Java version is installed, there should be no problem.
ChemDraw current version products (ChemDraw Professional 20.0.0.48 and ChemDraw Prime 20.0.0.48) supported with Mac OSX Catalina (v20.0 qualified with Mac OS 11.0 Beta)
ChemDoodle “The latest versions of ChemDoodle 2D (v11) and ChemDoodle 3D (v6) are fully supported on macOS Big Sur (macOS 10.16/11.0) and there are no known issues. In addition to supporting the operating system update, ARM based Macs (like those just released with the new Apple Silicon chip) are also fully supported for ChemDoodle 2D and ChemDoodle 3D with no known issues."
Conquest and Mercury from CCDC The full CSD software portfolio, including Mercury, ConQuest, Mogul, GOLD, CSD-CrossMiner, the CSD Python API and other components, has been tested and is not currently compatible with macOS Big Sur. Please note that our upcoming 2020.3 CSD Release will not be compatible with macOS Big Sur at point of release. We are working hard on a series of improvements to make our software portfolio compatible and fully supported, which we will make available to users as an update as soon as possible. In the meantime, a number of enhancements have been made to our products to simplify the configuration of and support specifically on macOS platforms. Examples are the removal of XQuartz as a dependency and removal of the need to run an X windows display for full use of the CSD Python API. These enhancements will be incorporated in future CSD software releases."
Cresset testing underway
CrystalMaker Works swimmingly! We’ve tested all our software on Big Sur - including a machine with Apple Silicon - and are happy to confirm full compatibility for CrystalMaker 10.5.5, SingleCrystal 4.1.0 and CrystalDiffract 6.8.5. Free updates to CrystalMaker 10.5.5 and SingleCrystal 4.1.0 were released yesterday morning and are recommended for anyone using “Big Sur”.
We are also very-pleased to announce the immediate availability of CrystalMaker 10.6 for Mac, SingleCrystal 4.1 and CrystalDiffract 10.9 for Apple Silicon: these are Universal Binaries and provide 100% native performance on the new Apple Silicon Macs, as well as 100% native performance on Intel.
As one of the vanishingly-few Mac science developers left, we’re proud of our reputation of developing genuine, native Mac apps. We’ve been doing this for over 25 years now and this is our fourth Mac hardware platform! (we’ve gone from Motorola 68K to PowerPC to Intel and now to Apple Silicon).
CYLView 1.0 does not work under Catalina.
DataWarrior Seems to be working fine.
Delta We are working on an update for Delta and will post it as soon as it is available.
DEVONagent fine under Big Sur on Intel, not tested on Apple Silicon.
DEVONthink fine under Big Sur on Intel, not tested on Apple Silicon.
Elemental Fine under Big Sur and on Apple Silicon
EndNote We are in the process of testing and we will be updating our Compatibility page once our testing is complete. Users report no issues on Intel.
EnzymeX no issues reported
EverNote is compatible with Big Sur
Findings no issues reported
Gaussaian As far as we can tell so far, both of our current releases, Gaussian 16 rev. C.01 and GaussView 6.1.1 for macOS 64-bit Intel CPUs, run normally on macOS Big Sur. We do not have any reports of problems so far. We do not have a native port for Apple Silicon chips for either G16 or GaussView 6. However, for now, both of the Intel binaries that I mentioned above should run on Apple Silicon using Rosetta 2. We have not done full certification on the Apple Silicon at this point but Apple claims that Rosetta 2 should be capable of handling running existing binaries for Intel chips.
Highlights The PDF Reader for Research, updated for Big Sur with version 2020.3. Big Sur also fixes an annoying issue from PDFKit on Catalina where superscript text (e.g. citations) would break text selection.
Homebrew For most seems to work fine, remember to reinstall Xcode command line tools.
All the ICM products are compatible with Big Sur:
Other products that are compatible include:
Igor Pro Igor Pro 8.04 is the first version of Igor that is notarized and includes notarized WaveMetrics XOPs. We therefore recommend that you run Igor Pro 8.04 if you are using macOS 10.15 or macOS 11.0.
JalView Jalview works on macOS 11.0 Big Sur!
KNIME We are testing the upcoming version 4.3 of KNIME Analytics Platform against Big Sur and plan to have it supported by the time we do that release in the first week of December.
Manuscripts no issues reported
Matlab MATLAB is compatible with macOS 11 (Big Sur) from release R2020b onwards, support for Apple Silicon is in development
Mathematica no issues for latest version. system requirements
Mendeley no issues reported
Microsoft Office Microsoft has announced that Office 365 is ready for Big Sur - Apple Silicon M1 Macs will use Rosetta 2 for now
Mnova The current version of Mnova LiteCDE is compatible with MacOS Big Sur
NAG Fortran compiler Fortran compiler for Apple Silicon Macs now available to download
MOE Our initial tests showed no issues with this version.
ODYSSEY Molecular Explorer version 6 looks good.
Papers no issues reported
Parallels Parallels 16 is ready for Big Sur. Older Parallels Desktop versions only partially support working on macOS Big Sur due to technical reasons may experience issues depending on the configuration.
pro Fit pro Fit 7 is now at version 7.0.18, supporting dark mode, Catalina, and Big Sur.
PYMOL On Intel Macs with macOS 11, PyMOL works fine, no known issues. We have not tested Apple Silicon (M1) yet.
Python Python 2.7 is no longer included - use Python 3 instead Python works fine on Apple Silicon and is "mad fast!".
QMForge 2.4 does not support Big Sur yet
R The front page of a CRAN site has a link ‘Download R for (Mac) OS X’. Click on that, then download the file R-4.0.3.pkg and install it. This runs on macOS 10.13 and later on Intel CPU20 (High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, …).
RDKit All seems fine (Note: -Python 2.7 is no longer supported - use Python 3 instead)
Samson SAMSON 2020 R3 (the latest release) works on Big Sur.
Schrodinger Upgrading to macOS 11 will cause existing Schrödinger Suite releases to fail to run. We are hard at work to address this incompatibility and expect to extend support to macOS 11 in an upcoming Schrödinger Suite release
SeeSAR now updated to support Big Sur.
Sketch With version 70 release, we’re excited to introduce a UI redesign that fits right in with the new macOS Big Sur design language. It’s the same Sketch you know and love, but with every detail reconsidered — from a full-height sidebar, to a refreshed Inspector, and all-new iconography throughout the app.
Spartan There are a few interface issues, tab highlighting on selection is unreliable, not a showstopper but irritating.
SPSS The current release IBM SPSS Statistics 27.0.1 and the current IBM SPSS Statistics Subscription release build 1.0.0.0.1447 will run on MAC OSX 11 Big Sur in translation mode.
Stardrop We haven't yet completed a full test cycle, but we have not seen any issues and don't anticipate any.
Swiss-PdbViewer Swiss-PdbViewer is a 32 bits application and will * NOT * run.
TensorFlow and TensorFlow Addons This pre-release delivers hardware-accelerated TensorFlow and TensorFlow Addons for macOS 11.0+. Native hardware acceleration is supported on Macs with M1 and Intel-based Macs through Apple’s ML Compute framework.
UCSF Chimera ChimeraX v1.1 does not work on MacOS 11.0 (Big Sur), but this problem has been fixed in v1.1.1 and the daily build.
UCSF ChimeraX works on 10.14, 10.15, and 11.0 (Big Sur).
VMD there interface issues under Big Sur
VMWare In preparation for the next major version of macOS 11.0 Big Sur, VMware has made full use of Apple’s hypervisor and other APIs, removing the need for kernel extensions and supporting macOS 11 as both host and guest.
Vortex Vortex works perfectly on Intel Macs under Big Sur, and on Apple Silicon
Wizard In general works fine, some issue with older work books.
Xcode need to update to latest version. Remember to reinstall command line tools
XQuartz OpenGL and OpenCL are still here, even on Apple Silicon Macs
I’ll add more updates later, feel free to contact me and thanks for the comments to date.
Last update 17 January 2021
Python: First version released to run natively on Apple Silicon
Python 3.9.1 has been released this now supports Apple Silicon (M1 chip).
Installer news 3.9.1 is the first version of Python to support macOS 11 Big Sur. With Xcode 11 and later it is now possible to build “Universal 2” binaries which work on Apple Silicon. We are providing such an installer as the macos11.0 variant. This installer can be deployed back to older versions, tested down to OS X 10.9. As we are waiting for an updated version of pip, please consider the macos11.0 installer experimental. This work would not have been possible without the effort of Ronald Oussoren, Ned Deily, and Lawrence D’Anna from Apple. Thank you!
Also note macOS ARM builds on conda-forge, and clang compilers for conda-build 3 https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/clang_osx-arm64
CrystalMaker Software on Apple Silicon
CrystalMaker Software Ltd are pleased to confirm that as of today, all our Mac software runs natively on “Apple Silicon” (as well as older, Intel-based Macs) - i.e., they are “Universal Binaries”.
• CrystalMaker 10.6 for Mac: an award-winning program for building, visualizing and understanding all kinds of crystal & molecular structures (and the only real, genuine, native Mac program for crystal structures).
• CrystalDiffract 10.9 for Mac: x-ray and neutron powder diffraction made easy.
• SingleCrystal 4.1 for Mac: the latest iteration of our Apple Design Award-winning program for simulating single-crystal diffraction, auto-indexing observed TEM diffraction patterns, and working with stereographic projections of planes and vectors.
Learn more by visiting their website at: http://crystalmaker.com.