The King of Pointland

Grapher? I Just Met Her!

You say Spotlight? I say shmotlight. You say Dashboard? I say shmashboard. You say something cool? I take that something, replace the first consonant with shmuh, and you are undone.

Why is no one talking about what is clearly the most awesome part of OS X Tiger? I'm talking about Grapher. Look, I can't even hyperlink "Grapher." The best I can do is direct you here. It's down there on the left somewhere. If you happen to have Tiger, look in the Utilities folder (inside the Applications folder).

When I accidentally stumbled upon it, I thought Grapher would be a cute little toy that could show you what y=x² looks like. While it can do that, it can do a whole lot more. Check it out:

It's all Apple-ey, too. If you type y=x^2, it moves the cursor up when you type the carat so you can work on the exponent. Want to go back down? Just hit the down arrow. What happens if instead of "y=x²" you enter just "x²" ? Then, if you're in 2D mode, it gives you a contour plot. Pretty much any expression that makes sense can be graphed. If you type "x² + y² = 10" you get a circle. And it works in 3D, as well: "x² + y² + z² = 10" gives you a sphere. You can also use parameterized equations to produce surfaces. You can define and view a 3D vector field with arrows distributed in space. You can grab the graph with your mouse and rotate it. You can pan, zoom in and out. And it is all beautifully rendered with shadows and shinyness, using OpenGL I suspect. It's just so much fun to play with and experiment. In no time flat I was demonstrating conic sections to my friends! In 3D! I have no life!

Think of Grapher as a poor man's Mathematica (without the symbolic math). It's almost worth what I paid for the entire OS.