Yesterday, we reported that there was no Mac client available for ClimatePrediction, a Web site that examines the ways Earth’s climate could change. We urged interested parties that would like to see support for the Mac platform to contact Project Coordinator Dave Stainforth.
However, Stainforth told MacCentral that he is the only person working on the project and the client hasn’t been released for any operating system. A Mac client is a possibility.
“When we approached Apple they told us to come back to them when we had a version working under Windows, so that’s what we’re trying to do,” Stainforth said. “We’re not trying to exclude the Mac community. However, the model we’re using is written in 500,000 lines of Fortran and is usually run on supercomputers. The first stage for us was to get the model working under Linux. The next stage was Windows because we don’t have any Macs.”
What he’s trying to do now is to design a user-friendly client. Windows comes first because of the machines they have, the number of Windows users out there, and Apple’s response, Stainforth said. Even Linux is being left behind at this stage because they don’t have the time to do everything they want to do, he added.
What would facilitate a Mac client is sponsorship of such a client. Or if there were any way to get a Mac expert to work full time at the University of Oxford, home of the ClimatePrediction project, “we would be more than happy,” Stainforth said. If anyone is interested in such a sponsorship, send e-mail to climate@rl.ac.uk and put “Mac” in the subject field.
“We’d love to produce a Mac client, but we’re a struggling small team trying to balance publicity, software development, experimental design, web site management and research, and we can’t do everything,” he said.