@Wayne: Yessir, second language, sir! In spite of the ugly blot on my shirt You uncovered I will strive for perfection, english being not only my daily bread as a scientist but my passion language- wise…
@jgo: I am not sure I got You right- in terms of making the primary readout I think it’s the least amount of hassle to take what’s connected and running the software predestined to do the job- in contrast to the processing part where for almost any data there’s an open source solution for Your Mac. There are exceptions to this, MicroManager being one: this opensource software connects to Your fluorescence microscope and is actually designed to take over the control- it proves very fruitful to very naively search the the net for a solution, just as Burly pointed out…
finally, I couldn’t find better words than christoph rounding up things… thank You for being in the City, all of You!

That’s quite unlike the mess which characterizes current Linux PCs at the desktop level. And even more unlike the inscrutable black box which is the OS internals and many applications of Windows PCs. And before someone flames me: I use and support both of these latter platforms, but hate them with a passion for their shortcomings. The Mac simply lets me get my work done.

Not that I am a Mac zealot. If there’s ever a better platform and Macs start to lag behind, I will move on. Just like I’ve done previously with VAX VMS, SUNs and SGIs. But right now (computing) life is good.

I’d direct people to http://macresearch.org/ if you really want to get started. There are a mass of options. Also all the Linux based stuff pretty much runs on OS X and X windows so that adds to the arsenal. Python (scipy) is fairly amazing. There are a lot of tools out there. Some labs here are almost entirely mac based, some are entirely windows based and some are entirely linux based. Others mix and match. Often it’s historical presendent that sets a labs computer base and until a dedicated student comes along and assembles something new the presendent sticks. There is nothing wrong with using any of these platforms to do your work. After all it’s not what platform your on but your results which matter.

Yeah, you may need to write some code, or get a tame programmer to do this for you – but its not impossible – and more companies are releasing drivers all the time.

Ocean Optics (for example) do a fantastic USB spectrometer, with OSX software as a starter for 10.

Can I assume English is a second language for you?