Apple acquires Curvus Pro X to power new Mac OS X Tiger application
In need of a modern graphing calculator application for its Mac OS X distributions, Apple stopped coding and went shopping overseas.
Apple Computer has purchased the rights to Arizona Software's Curvus Pro X, a powerful and user-friendly equation graphing application designed for MacÂ*OSÂ*X, AppleInsider has confirmed.
According to tipsters, Apple bought the software from the Switzerland-based company late this summer and immediately began re-interfacing the application for inclusion in future releases of Mac OS X.
Screenshots: Graphing Calculator 1; Graphing Calculator 2; Graphing Calculator 3; Graphing Calculator 4
A message on Arizona's website confirms the sale of Curvus Pro X, but does not single out a buyer: "On July 22, 2004 Curvus Pro X was bought by an international company and its distribution has been discontinued."
Since acquiring the software less than two months ago, Apple has adorned Curvus Pro X in its traditional brushed aluminum theme, and renamed it "Graphing Calculator." Source close to Apple have noted that the company is already distributing the revised application in private seedings of its next-generation "Tiger" operating system.
Apple is expected to release Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in the first half of 2005.
Apple Computer has purchased the rights to Arizona Software's Curvus Pro X, a powerful and user-friendly equation graphing application designed for MacÂ*OSÂ*X, AppleInsider has confirmed.
According to tipsters, Apple bought the software from the Switzerland-based company late this summer and immediately began re-interfacing the application for inclusion in future releases of Mac OS X.
Screenshots: Graphing Calculator 1; Graphing Calculator 2; Graphing Calculator 3; Graphing Calculator 4
A message on Arizona's website confirms the sale of Curvus Pro X, but does not single out a buyer: "On July 22, 2004 Curvus Pro X was bought by an international company and its distribution has been discontinued."
Since acquiring the software less than two months ago, Apple has adorned Curvus Pro X in its traditional brushed aluminum theme, and renamed it "Graphing Calculator." Source close to Apple have noted that the company is already distributing the revised application in private seedings of its next-generation "Tiger" operating system.
Apple is expected to release Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in the first half of 2005.
Comments
Originally posted by AppleInsider
Apple Computer has purchased the rights to Arizona Software's Curvus Pro X, a powerful and user-friendly equation graphing application designed for Mac_OS_X, AppleInsider has confirmed.
This is good news. I have been a user of Curvus Pro since it first came out, and weathered the update to the X version. This is by far the best choice for general-purpose, easy-to-use graphing functionality, and goes considerably beyond calculator-style features. Looking forward to seeing the Tiger version!
Originally posted by Carson O'Genic
Does this application produce plots/curves from individual data points or only from equations?
I would just download an archived version of Curvus Pro X and check it out. It has to be the same exact application as the one in the new Tiger builds, other than the interface. They are probably still bringing it up to their code of standards and most likely have not added features yet. It was purchased just over a month ago...
K
Originally posted by Gavriel
This is one story we can truly say was created in-house!
Apple has been demonstrating recently that it would rather code their own imitations rather than buy the rights to an existing software produc (Watson, Konfabulator).
This is also quite amazing given the fact that Apple already had the rights to the OS7+ Graphing Calculator. Couldn't they have just reworked and recompiled that app from the existing codebase?
Watson/Sherlock I'll give you but concerning Dashboard/Konfabulator, there is a great article out there that explains that Dashboard is a far more integrated tecnology than the Javascript hack that is Konfabulator.
Screed
Originally posted by CatharticFlux
From who was the iTunes technology acquired?
SoundJamMP, Casady & Greene (RIP).
Originally posted by Towel
SoundJamMP, Casady & Greene (RIP).
Not 100% correct, iTunes was developed by an Apple engineer in his own time and only distributed by Casady & Greene. When Apple brought it in house that developer continued to work on it, I believe he is some big cheese in charge of the iTMS now (that last bit's just a vague memory).
Originally posted by PB
Does anyone know how Curvus compares to Graphing Calculator that Apple bundled with earlier versions of MacOS? Graphing Calculator 3.1 was already a powerful tool.
Graphing Calculator 3.2 is the latest release of the commercial version of Graphing Calculator. The latest free version that ships with MacOS 9.2 is Graphing Calculator 1.3. The Windows version is NuCalc. You may find them at Pacific Tech's web site. The latest available version of Curvus Pro does curves in 2-D and surfaces in 3-D. These are major functions in Graphing Calculator. Curvus Pro also does vector fields, which Graphing Calculator cannot do. Graphing Calculator is a much better numeric calculator. It also does simple symbolic algebra and calculus, both differential and integral. Curvus Pro appears stronger in numerical evaluation of calculus-based expressions. The take-away message is that Graphing Calculator is a better calculator. Curvus Pro is a better grapher. However, your mileage may vary. By the time MacOS X 10.4 is released, I expect that the holes in Curvus Pro's functionality will have been plugged. However, it is still an fantastic aaplication as it is.
Originally posted by Code Master
The non-free version of Graphing Calculator could do vector fields and a whole slew of things as seen in the version 2 demo that comes with the free version.
Yep, it's kind of odd that Apple went with CurvusPro given that it was somewhat behind GraphingCalculator featurewise. However, the PacificTech folks seemed a bit obstinate about not porting to native OS X (although they now say they have an OS X native version in the works and are in testing).
Originally posted by irobot2004
Yep, it's kind of odd that Apple went with CurvusPro given that it was somewhat behind GraphingCalculator featurewise. However, the PacificTech folks seemed a bit obstinate about not porting to native OS X (although they now say they have an OS X native version in the works and are in testing).
Although buying Graphing Calculator from PacificTech would have solved the OS X obstinacy problem.
Maybe they didn't want to sell.
Originally posted by CharlesS
Although buying Graphing Calculator from PacificTech would have solved the OS X obstinacy problem.
Maybe they didn't want to sell.
Exactly how does Pacific Tech expect to stay in business without Apple's business? I almost forgot that Graphing Calculator 1.3 ships with each new Mac. The company's core business is providing a Classic app that virtually no one will use anymore. Sounds like a winner to me.