SPSS
is back in force on the Macintosh platform. After a 4+ year absence, the statistical software giant is preparing to launch SPSS 10 for Mac OS X in September. SPSS abandoned a struggling Mac market in 1996 after releasing version 6.1. Development has continued with an improved feature set since then on the Windows side.
The resurgent Mac market, and the forthcoming release of OS X, has offered SPSS a chance to get back onto the Mac. SPSS gave the Mac Observer a brief overview and product demonstration, and the feature set is rich and impressive. Holding nearly all the same functionality of its Windows counterpart, SPSS 10 for the Mac will offer ease of use, and improved cross platform compatibility.
SPSS 10 features all of the analytic tools that one might come to expect from SPSS, and a full array of powerful graphing features. SPSS 10 allows for nearly every aspect of a graph to be customized with a simple interface, including graph style, font, color, and orientation. Users can also view the graph in a 3D perspective, a feature especially useful for examining scatterplots and examining data for regression analysis.
SPSS users are familiar with the modular nature of the product. SPSS representatives assured us that even though , essentially plug-ins adding more features, will need to be written for both Windows and Mac that we can expect to see cross platform releases for further updates.
Although OS X will ship in Beta format only, now seemingly some time in September, the final version of SPSS 10 is expected to be released in September as well. Pricing information will be announced shortly.