Apple Computer has outlined its strategy to win the hearts and minds of scientists, during a presentation to select attendees at the BioIT World Conference and Expo in Boston.

Apple's vice-president of software technology and director of sci-tech marketing took the stage of the conference room, flanked by a biotech researcher who is actively using Apple products to do his job.

Bud Tribble, Apple's vice-president of software technology, outlined in broad strokes why the Mac appeals to life scientists. Science is a market where Apple already has 30 per cent market share, said Tribble -- substantially higher than the single-digit numbers attributed to Apple's share of the general PC market. Tribble suggested that Apple's adoption in the science space is an increasing trend, if anecdotal evidence suggested by the proliferation of Apple PowerBooks at biotech conferences is any indication.

Tribble said that Apple's ability to appeal to scientists dovetailed with the company's efforts in the creative markets, since the same core technology that Apple uses to make media products work quickly also can help speed scientific computation. He said Mac OS X's UNIX underpinnings and Apple's emphasis on supporting best-in-class open source software also hold great appeal to scientists who, up until now, may have avoided the Mac platform.

Turnkey solution

The Apple Workgroup Cluster for Bioinformatics is a turnkey solution intended for researchers in higher learning, science and research markets looking to create small to mid-sized workgroup clusters. Apple's director of sci-tech marketing, Liz Kerr, said the new cluster solution was the first in a series of solutions that Apple would produce for the sci-tech market.

One case in point, Kerr said, was Princeton University's Centre for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behaviour. The centre recently installed a 64-node cluster of Xserve G5s, selecting Apple's solution over an AMD-based system running Linux. The UNIX architecture and Apple's support of standards-based open source software made the difference, according to Kerr.

Apple's assertion that life scientists are increasing considering and using the Mac platform is also supported by registration information for Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. Kerr explained that developers in the sci-tech field registering for the event had dramatically increased over the past few years -- from only a handful in 2001, to 75 in 2002, and 300 in 2003.

Apple will continue to reach out to the science market, according to Kerr. Shortly before BioIT World began, Apple posted a new science area on its web site outlining some of its efforts and the efforts of others using its technology.

Case in point

Genzyme drug discovery group senior fellow Dr Scott Sneddon closed Apple's presentation with a case study involving his own work with Macs. Sneddon developed his own drug discovery database -- a web-based system called Disco. Genzyme's researchers use Disco to develop new drug compounds.

The Disco database was developed nine years ago, and formerly ran on an SGI-based Irix server system. Sneddon had budgeted about US$35,000 for the system, but he said that Apple's configuration ultimately cost only about $20,000 to assemble from start to finish.

Now, he said, Disco is running on an Xserve G4 cluster that offers 15 times the performance as the SGI system it replaced. Sneddon had one small but enviable difficulty when the Xserve cluster first went online: the Xserve cluster was so fast, researchers were convinced it was broken. Their queries were being processed so rapidly the users thought their web browsers were reading data out of their own local caches rather than receiving new data over the network.

Sneddon said scientists were drawn to Macs for the same reason many artists were. Science is ultimately a creative endeavour, Sneddon said, and Macs were easy to use tools with which to get the job done.