Walking Randomly

Christmas isn’t all that far away so I thought that it was high time that I wrote my Christmas list for mathematical software developers and vendors.  All I want for christmas is….

Mathematica

• A built in ternary plot function would be nice
• Ship workbench with the main product  please
• An iPad version of Mathematica Player

MATLAB

• Merge the parallel computing toolbox with core MATLAB.  Everyone uses multicore these days but only a few can feel the full benefit in MATLAB.   The rest are essentially second class MATLAB citizens muddling by with a single core (most of the time)
• Make the mex interface thread safe so I can more easily write parallel mex files

Maple

• More CUDA accelerated functions please.  I was initially excited by your CUDA package but then discovered that it only accelerated one function (Matrix Multiply).  CUDA accelerated Random Number Generators would be nice along with fast Fourier transforms and a bit more linear algebra.

MathCAD

• Release Mathcad Prime.
• Mac and Linux versions of Mathcad.  Maple,Mathematica and MATLAB have versions for all 3 platforms so why don’t you?

NAG Library

• Produce vector versions of functions like g01bk (poisson distribution function).  They might not be needed in Fortran or C code but your MATLAB toolbox desperately needs them
• A Mac version of the MATLAB toolbox.  I’ve got users practically begging for it :)
• A NAG version of the MATLAB gamfit command

Octave

• A just in time compiler.  Yeah, I know, I don’t ask for much huh ;)
• A faster pdist function (statistics toolbox from Octave Forge).  I discovered that the current one is rather slow recently

SAGE Math

• A Locator control for the interact function.  I still have a bounty outstanding for the person who implements this.
• A fully featured, native windows version.  I know about the VM solution and it isn’t suitable for what I want to do (which is to deploy it on around 5000 University windows machines to introduce students to one of the best open source maths packages)

SMath Studio

• An Android version please.  Don’t make it free – you deserve some money for this awesome Mathcad alternative.

SpaceTime Mathematics

• The fact that you give the Windows version away for free is awesome but registration is a pain when you are dealing with mass deployment.  I’d love to deploy this to my University’s Windows desktop image but the per-machine registration requirement makes it difficult.  Most large developers who require registration usually come up with an alternative mechanism for enterprise-wide deployment.  You ask schools with more than 5 machines to link back to you.  I want tot put it on a few thousand machines and I would happily link back to you from several locations if you’ll help me with some sort of volume license.  I’ll also give internal (and external if anyone is interested) seminars at Manchester on why I think Spacetime is useful for teaching mathematics.  Finally, I’d encourage other UK University applications specialists to evaluate the software too.
• An Android version please.

How about you?  What would you ask for Christmas from your favourite mathematical software developers?