oh SPSS
SPSS and I have a love-hate relationship. I hate it... and they love how I spend money on it. Why do I hate it you might ask. Well even if you didn't - you can keep reading for an explanation. SPSS is rarely updated when it needs to be, particularly for the mac, my platform of choice.
SPSS 9 came out just before Mac OS X was released. SPSS 9 didn't work AT ALL in Mac OS X. Then came the advertisements for SPSS 10, that made it look (by the shape of the windows, and dialogue boxes) that it ran on Mac OS X. SPSS 10 was released about a year after Mac OS X was out, and it did not actually run in Mac OS X. The marketing was a hype. Another YEAR after SPSS 10, SPSS 11 comes out. This one is finally running on Mac OS X, specifically it's running on Mac OS 10.2.8 or higher. Then (a year and a half later) Mac OS X 10.4 comes out and SPSS 11 doesn't work anymore. It takes them nearly 6 months to update SPSS to work on the new Mac OS X. Normally I'd be more sympathetic, but all other stats packages worked within a month of the release of the new OS. Now the best transition tragedy ever: Macs have switched to Intel processors, and SPSS actually works. But then 6 months after the introduction of Intel Macs, SPSS announces that it sometimes gets the calculations WRONG. They tell users that SPSS 13 will fix the issue when it's released. It gets released and does not fix the issue. Now they're selling SPSS 13 only for Macs with PowerPC processors when Apple doesn't even sell macs with PowerPC processors anymore. Amazing! They estimate that SPSS 15 (scheduled for July 2007) will fix the issue with Intel macs. That is a full 18 months after Apple began the transition and TWO years after Apple told the world they were switching to Intel and provided $500 developer kits to major developers to transition their software before the intel macs were sold.
So I've complained a lot, and I'm finally doing something about it. I am switching statistical software packages to Stata and JMP. Why two? JMP makes much better pictures than anything on the market and Stata is really darn fast.
SPSS 9 came out just before Mac OS X was released. SPSS 9 didn't work AT ALL in Mac OS X. Then came the advertisements for SPSS 10, that made it look (by the shape of the windows, and dialogue boxes) that it ran on Mac OS X. SPSS 10 was released about a year after Mac OS X was out, and it did not actually run in Mac OS X. The marketing was a hype. Another YEAR after SPSS 10, SPSS 11 comes out. This one is finally running on Mac OS X, specifically it's running on Mac OS 10.2.8 or higher. Then (a year and a half later) Mac OS X 10.4 comes out and SPSS 11 doesn't work anymore. It takes them nearly 6 months to update SPSS to work on the new Mac OS X. Normally I'd be more sympathetic, but all other stats packages worked within a month of the release of the new OS. Now the best transition tragedy ever: Macs have switched to Intel processors, and SPSS actually works. But then 6 months after the introduction of Intel Macs, SPSS announces that it sometimes gets the calculations WRONG. They tell users that SPSS 13 will fix the issue when it's released. It gets released and does not fix the issue. Now they're selling SPSS 13 only for Macs with PowerPC processors when Apple doesn't even sell macs with PowerPC processors anymore. Amazing! They estimate that SPSS 15 (scheduled for July 2007) will fix the issue with Intel macs. That is a full 18 months after Apple began the transition and TWO years after Apple told the world they were switching to Intel and provided $500 developer kits to major developers to transition their software before the intel macs were sold.
So I've complained a lot, and I'm finally doing something about it. I am switching statistical software packages to Stata and JMP. Why two? JMP makes much better pictures than anything on the market and Stata is really darn fast.