Grapher: An OS X Secret Gem
One thing we all love about OS X is the great built in software. iLife, Safari, even Preview. But one lovely app that no-one ever seems to mention is Grapher. It lurks in the depths of the Utilities folder, and is a brilliant app for anyone who is doing math at any level.
Grapher was re-introduced to OS X in 10.4 after an absence since OS 9, when it was called Graphing Calculator. This little app has come a long way since then, and now we have an incredibly simple program for making beautiful graphs. Simply enter whatever formula you want graphed in the white bar at the top, and it draws graphs that can be exported as TIFF, PDF, EPS or JPEG.
But 2D graphs are boring! The really cool stuff is 3D, when you get into the more complicated formulas. No, I’m not rocking the super-advanced math, so I have no clue how the math works in the below screen shot, but it is a Torus Knot. Thankfully, some programmer at Apple does know their stuff, and has helpfully included a list of nifty 2D and 3D graphs building equations.
Using all the fancy technologies built into OS X, Grapher is a very pretty app and makes a great demo for showing your PC friends what your computer can do. It doesn’t matter if you only know graphs as “hey, look at all the lines”, or you are a genius and know how to make practical use of the 3D graphs, Grapher really does its job well.
Grapher is not available for download, as it is bundled with OS X 10.4. Look in your Applications folder for ‘Utilities’.
kewl i was looking for a little app like this to graph equations and parabolas.Thx good mention!:)
Grapher is usually forgotten, and thats too bad. It has gotten me through quite a few homework problems. Grapher is one of the little things in OS X that make me love Macs.
Grapher is unrelated to Graphing Calculator. The Mac OS X release of the original Graphing Calculator for Macintosh is available here: http://www.PacificT.com/FreeStuff.html. Try the Demo menu to see what it can do.
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Shut the function up, you son of a hyperbola
Damn,we surounded by eggheads. HAHAHA!
grapher is grrreat. too bad few people knows much of it. theres no manual found anywhere. even the apple stores 1 to 1 training do not support that .can any body help me out pleeeease???
in the apple store 1 to 1 ,i was told they dont support grapher which already comes with all apple computers for free,.and in the past 3-4 years ,it happened that i am the only one who is asking about it .for such a brilliant application, its totally unimaginable.can anybody within or outside of the universe help?user-manual,or…?
http://guides.macrumors.com/Grapher
That is the closest thing to a manual I have found. It really is a shame this great program doesn’t have some information about how to use it effectively.
One very frustrating aspect of Grapher (for me, at any rate) is the difficulty of assigning a particular color to a particular graph in order to distinguish between multiple graphs on the same sheet.
Assigning colors under Grapher is counterintuitive and, quite honestly, a total crap-shoot. Grapher greatly complicates a task that ordinarily should be as simple and straightforward as selecting a font color, for example. For the life of me I cannot imagine what the programmer could possibly have been thinking when designing this particular piece of the program.