I've had a Mac at home since 2007 and had a go at doing some python programming on it a few years ago and gave up. I got 2.7 installed, virtualenv, even Qt but eventually a few things broke and I ended up switching to programming in a Linux VM.
I might have another go now I've got a shiny new Mini with ML on it. If i have problems I'll give Enthought a try.
Given the popularity of OSX with developers it's shocking how few Python libraries have good OSX binary packages. A few times I've found the easiest platform to work on is actually Windows. For example with PySide for a long time the binaries in all the Linux repos were out of date, OSX support was intermittently flaky, but the Windows installer was complete and up to date.
Yes I know you can compile from source, but I am a Python programmer. I develop software in Python, not C. I wonder if the poor state of binary packages for OSX is actually because it's a Unix variant. i.e. module developers deliberately choose not to do binary OSX builds because hey, the users can just compile from source. No, we can't all compile from source. We're not all C hackers, that's why many of us use Python in the first place. </entitled rant>
Anaconda Community Edition installs very easily on windows, linux, and OS X, and is very easy to uninstall without breaking your system.
> No, we can't all compile from source. We're not all C hackers, that's why many of us use Python in the first place.
EXACTLY!
This is the whole idea behind Anaconda and the idea behind our beta cloud product Wakari. Wakari gives you multiple python versions, multiple numpy versions, interactive plotting in your browser, and the wonderful ipython notebook built-in. It's still in a closed beta, but people usually get approved for access the same day.
