I got a Mac back in 2002 to avoid just such a scenario. I had a PC for quite a while, but Shane Liesegang had turned me to the Mac-side of things. I loved the user-friendliness and the design, and iPods were just starting to come out.
While things have mostly changed, trying to do science on a Mac was never easy. Software was always built with Windows/Linus in mind. Fast forward to today, I’m often working with X-ray diffraction data, structure visualization software, and computations. Thankfully, most software is Mac-accessible, but sometimes I have to get my hands dirty. That means opening up a Terminal window and mucking around with things that I have no business mucking around with!
Or at least I used to. Shane and I are still close friends. He’s now a Jesuit but was a game designer in a previous life. His knowledge of Mac stuff is beyond parallel, so I asked him if he could help me with an installation that normally would happen in the Terminal on the command line.
He created two scripts for X-ray crystallography programs PLATON and SHELX to make them play nice with Olex2 (or to be run separately, if that’s your jam).
So if you’re a Mac person and you have need of Olex2 for solving your crystal structures, head to that link above and follow the instructions. In just a short while, you’ll be up and running with SHELX and PLATON without any confusing or intimidating Terminal work!
