Quote:
Originally Posted by dmlawrence
Just to clarify, the LabView components that download code to and interact with the cRIO are not available for Mac. However, the main LabView environment is available. Windows will definitely be required to download code, but the programming itself does not require Windows.
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I'm not sure this is true. I'm 90% certain that you need to have all the requisite modules installed to effective work with the code. Trying to work with the code without the RT module installed is going to be fairly crippling, as you won't be able to open the code as a project, edit shared variables, implement RT FIFOs, and a host of other things. So While it's probably possible to open the code on a Mac for viewing, I don't think editing it on a Mac will work very well.
As for the larger issue, you have to understand where NI is coming from. They don't have a huge customer base to begin with, and Mac and Linux exclusive users are going to be an even smaller portion of their user base. So the portion that will need Mac/Linux support AND RT and FPGA support is going to be pretty vanishingly small. Meanwhile, the development costs for this are going to be rather high. Xilinx doesn't even make an FPGA compiler for the Mac, after all, and NI depends on the Xilinx compiler for the FPGA module. So right off the bat, NI would either have to develop their own FPGA compiler, move to a different hardware platform, or port the module to some Mac-compatible FPGA compiler (which I can't find and suspect doesn't exist). Similarly for moving RT support to the Mac platform. Given the size of the market and the expense of the project, I don't think NI is going to support the FIRST platform on a Mac for a very long time. They might support the modules on Linux at some future date when Linux penetrates more into their market.
Long story short, Mac has a pretty small market share, especially in the science and engineering fields, and developing software to support it simply isn't worth it to NI.