November 27, 2005
Curvus Pro returns as Grapher
I had a take-home Calc exam over break. The first question involved graphing. Rather than head to the school computer labs, i thought i would try to graph them at home. I went to download Curvus Pro, an app i had previously installed on my old box. It turns out that the program is no longer available for sale or download. I was bummed because i really liked that program. It turns out that the developer sold it off. After a little more digging, i found out it was actually purchased by Apple. It's been re-branded as Grapher and is installed by default with OS 10.4 (Tiger). It's located in the Applications\Utilities folder. Exactly why it is hidden in the Utilities folder i'm not sure. But there it was, on my computer the whole time.
It's basically the old program in a new brushed metal wrapper. It didn't seem quite as customizable as i remember the old one being; for example, i couldn't find a way to change the color or each of my equations plotted on the same plane. It was also difficult to set up all the axes because the fold down menu only lets you change one before closing forcing you to keep reopening it. I hope Apple continues to make improvements to this fine product.
In case you were wondering, the screen shot shows several level curves of the function z=x4-2x2-3y3+3y.
Posted by Matthew at November 27, 2005 08:36 PMI'm very sorry to read about your dad's situation in your last entry :( I'll keep my thoughts and prayers with him as the holidays approach. Maybe if someone prays for him in Germany it'll count extra b/c it's in another country. Take care Matthew!
Posted by: Rachel at November 28, 2005 02:12 AMThanks for the information on the name change. I have been using the old Mac OS 9 version for too long. Time to update Panther to Tiger.
Posted by: Mark W. at December 28, 2005 02:12 PM