we are informing you that this will be the final release of LabVIEW on macOS. Starting with releases in 2024, LabVIEW will continue to be available on Windows and Linux OSes.
Although it has been more than 15 years since I have been in a physics lab, I seem to remember that NI boards fit into PCI slots in a variety of computers and Apple only makes one of these (Mac Pro) right now.
Although LabView got its start on Macs (I remember the demonstration in our department on a Mac II), NI quickly started favoring windows computers in the 90s and early 2000s. Unfortunately, Apple has done little to support the sciences in recent years and I am not surprised at this move.
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Does anyone know if it will run under VMs? If so, this isn’t that big of a deal.
They are short-changing several of their former areas of strength, such as publishing/page layout. For example, the current situation with font management makes me want to pull my hair out. I realize it’s up to developers to implement a way of hiding the multitude of system fonts that clutter font menus, but it should also be possible to carefully trim the unneeded fonts installed by the system, as I always did, following Kurt Lang’s excellent font guide.
Aside from that, their UI aesthetics now seem to have taken a nosedive.
Sorry, what exactly does this have to do with NI dropping the Mac platform?
Just that they no longer care about supporting areas where they were once very important: publishing, the sciences, etc. I’m discouraged by the general trend.
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I believe most of their hardware connects through USB boxes, not PCI cards, these days. Modern USB is fast enough for most real-time data sampling.
It’s odd to me that they’re announcing this right after releasing a new ARM-native Mac version. I could see not wanting to invest in an Apple Silicon update, but they’ve already done that work. I guess the new owner (Emerson) really wants to slash costs. Seems short-sighted to me not to maintain a codebase you already have for customers that you already won.
I don’t see anything Apple did “wrong” contributing to this decision.
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Thanks for enlightening me about the change from PCI to USB. As I said, I have been out of contact with computers in the laboratory for quite some time.
I was also puzzled by their decision to make an ARM version of LabView (a large app) and then dump the Mac platform.
Another company, Wavemetrics, which makes graphing app Igor Pro, has no stated intention of porting its app to ARM and even complains about Apple’s lack of support for some of their special interfaces. I expect them to also drop the Mac. It is too bad; despite some UI clumsiness (modal dialogue boxes), it is a very versatile app.
I agree that cost-cutting in more likely their motivation than anything that Apple did.