Igor 10 for Mac

So that your post is not unanswered ...

The topic has been raised on the Igor Pro email list server. I will comment only to your closing proposition. AI-assistance requires human oversight to prevent hallucinations. The investment in AI for reliable software development is not as free, easy, and guaranteed as you might otherwise want to believe.

Hi,

I have also been told that the code base is too large to fit into the memory space needed to be useful.

Andy

jjweimer wrote:

So that your post is not unanswered ...

The topic has been raised on the Igor Pro email list server. I will comment only to your closing proposition. AI-assistance requires human oversight to prevent hallucinations. The investment in AI for reliable software development is not as free, easy, and guaranteed as you might otherwise want to believe.

Thank you. With the dramatic advances in AI, I am still wondering whether this will become possible in the future.

hegedus wrote:

Hi,

I have also been told that the code base is too large to fit into the memory space needed to be useful.

Andy

Hi Andy,

That’s a very interesting point. I agree that the size of the code base is currently a major challenge. However, I think AI agents are changing the way we approach this problem. With a proper harness, agents do not necessarily need to keep the entire codebase in memory; they can retrieve relevant information, reason over different parts of the project, and progressively build an understanding of the system.

Together with the rapid improvement of foundation models, I believe agents will become increasingly capable of handling much larger and more complicated codebases.

Best,
Lingyuan

Since I really hate using Windows I am sticking with version 9. The rub is with the next version of the Mac operating system Rosetta goes away. Which brings a real dilemma: don’t upgrade operating system, be forced into windows. Or retire IP altogether.

Not a great position.

Andy

Hello,

I am a long-time Igor Pro user in a university chemistry lab, and I would like to add my voice to this thread.

Igor Pro has been the core of our data analysis and plotting for many years, always on the Mac. I read the March 2025 announcement with great regret, and I appreciate that WaveMetrics has supported the Mac for as long as it has.

My colleagues (many!) and I want a native Apple Silicon version of Igor Pro, and we would be willing to pay substantially more than the current license price for it, of course. For us the cost of leaving the Mac, or of running Igor under emulation, is far higher than a higher license fee. Until a native version exists, we intend to stay on Igor Pro 9 on macOS rather than move to Windows.

If price is the obstacle, I hope WaveMetrics will consider offering a Mac version at a higher price rather than no Mac version at all. Thank you for reading, and for the many years of excellent support.

Best regards,

Shun

This is further complicated by newer OS getting rid of Rosetta library necessary to run IP 9.  So to keep native IP means not upgrading OS as well as not upgrading IP. 
Andy

Thank you, Andy. Agreed, and that is exactly why we hope for a native version...

Shun

An ARM-Mac version of Igor Pro 10 (or 11?) would be very welcome on my part. While it's likely that Crossover will be able to run Igor Pro (Windows) on Mac ARM by the time macOS 28 is released, a lot of performance is lost usinge the translation layer of Codeweavers.

I understand that this wasn’t a high priority for Wavemetrics at first, but by the time macOS 28 is released, seven years will have passed since the first ARM Mac version was released.

Therefore, I would like to join in that request.

s.dekura wrote:

If price is the obstacle, I hope WaveMetrics will consider offering a Mac version at a higher price rather than no Mac version at all. Thank you for reading, and for the many years of excellent support.

How much would you actually be willing to pay for a macOS license of Igor if it were ported to ARM?

macOS users make up a relatively small proportion of our total users and the costs to port Igor to ARM are very high (probably 6 or 7 figures). If we wanted to make an ARM port cost neutral, we'd need to substantially increase the license cost for macOS users (and add the complexity of platform specific licenses) without losing any macOS customers in the process.

Even if money grew on trees, which my father tells me is not the case, there are still substantial hurdles to an ARM port, described at https://www.wavemetrics.com/news/igor-and-apple-arm-processors.

The costs of a port would need to be paid by our corporate owners long before benefits of the port were realized. Or maybe we should open a Kickstarter project :)

Thank you for the direct question, and for the link to the ARM article.

To answer it plainly, and speaking only for myself rather than for my colleagues: for a native Apple Silicon version I would pay about three times the current price for a perpetual license, with major upgrades paid separately as they are today. I would also accept a separate macOS-specific license type if that is what it takes.

On the Kickstarter idea, I should be honest about one constraint. We buy software with research grants, and grant rules generally require that what we pay for is delivered within the funding period, so pledging grant money years ahead for a product that does not yet exist is difficult for us. What we can do with grant money is pay a high price at release, or place a firm pre-order against a defined delivery date. That said, if WaveMetrics did open a Kickstarter-style campaign, I would personally back it out of my own pocket, modestly but gladly. Igor Pro and your support have carried a great deal of my research over the years, and I would like to see the company succeed on the Mac again.

Best regards,
Shun

Yeah, I was joking about the Kickstarter idea. I think the vast majority of our customers would be unable to participate in that sort of a campaign even if they wanted to support the effort. But if we ever design an Igor Pro board game we'll be there!