Support for Mac OS Leopard?

[brickf]

FYI, after a bit of tinkering, I have found the cpu spikes which momentarily slow windows down that I'm having with fusion and Ninja are related to disk performance. My disk was over 60% utilized which would explain the gradual increase of cpu spikes over time. I upgraded my HD and performance improved with Ninja, though I still do get some spikes at peak times when the data feed increases, just not as many. so either way I do suspect Fusion has gotten worse over the last 3-4 releases. Throwing CPU at the problem would probably solve it. I do plan to upgrade soon anyway.

What I did find that has worked is running the VM on an external HD. The CPU is much happier and I haven't had any spikes from Ninja data that have caused any system slowdowns.

So regardless of the setup you have, considering running the VM on a separate disk from your system disk, either internal or external, and it should boost your performance.

[phlegma]

Mac Support

Good luck to all Mac OS X users running some sort of VM. All trading tools are resource intensive. The VM is not cut out or design for that. Running word and excel.. maybe. Trading with real $... I don't think so. Cheaper to buy 2 computers than loosing 10 points on ES.

I disagree. This VM software is designed for handling modern games which thrive on the utmost capabilities of your comp. All that's coming into NinjaTrader is text data that refreshes every second or so and renders little candles on a screen. Even though you've got charts all over the place and are placing trades left and right, you really aren't consuming much processing power here. You surely aren't rendering intensive graphics. The underlying issues with compatibility are likely in the programming differences.

At the moment on my Mac I'm running thinkorswim natively, and NT under VMWare. Yet my network is only taking in 5kb/s for all those quotes and price data. CPU is still 96% idle.

Grab yourself iStat Pro (free, google it). This is a widget that lets you monitor all your resource use, network, cpu, engine temp, you name it. Watch it in the heat of your NT activity. I think you'll agree.

Nonetheless, I would fully support a NT that works natively on the mac.

[paulchow2k]

Thanks for that. I agree that just running NT by itself is fine without extra stuff turned on. EG: Recording course of sale etc.

I've also seen serious setups where traders have multiple screens & multiple apps etc. When I attempt to do that, my macbook pro with Parallels/VMWare slows down to a crawl. That is until I switch over to BootCamp v2 or v3.

My setup consist of 3 screens off a macbook pro 2008 model. So the apps I'm running concurrently when I Trade:

Interactive Brokers TWS [Futures & ASX Data]
MultiCharts
NT 6.5 with recording of trades]
HUBB Investor [Eod Of Day/Snap Shot Data]

Paritech Pulse [Australian Realtime Data Provider]
Data Director 3 [Snap Short intraday MetaStock Data]
WebIress [Australian Realtime Trade Execution Platform]

FireFox
Outlook

So my Windows Task Manager range between 22 - 35% CPU usage while things are idle. But when things are moving... eg: pre market or when things are moving quickly and NT 6.5 needs to record lots, then disk access + CPU action would make it much slower under VM than native book camp.

So running anything casually, VMware or Parallels is fine. But for serious highend/resource intensive games/trading then you would need to run it natively... as suggest by this article.

http://macosx.com/forums/boot-camp-os-virtualization-mac/297314-problems-games-vmware-fusion.html

Running anything natively would be great. If ALL the tools i've listed is native on the Mac, I would switch back. However, I treat this business as my bread and butter so as such I find the best tool for the job which gives me the EDGE.

Hell, I would move back to Apple's System 9.0 if my platform would execute 5 millisecond quicker than everyone else!

In the meantime, my edge is the speed which bootcamp gives me under these conditions.

Happy Xmas. May your wishes for Native NT comes true. regards

paul

I disagree. This VM software is designed for handling modern games which thrive on the utmost capabilities of your comp. All that's coming into NinjaTrader is text data that refreshes every second or so and renders little candles on a screen. Even though you've got charts all over the place and are placing trades left and right, you really aren't consuming much processing power here. You surely aren't rendering intensive graphics. The underlying issues with compatibility are likely in the programming differences.

At the moment on my Mac I'm running thinkorswim natively, and NT under VMWare. Yet my network is only taking in 5kb/s for all those quotes and price data. CPU is still 96% idle.

Grab yourself iStat Pro (free, google it). This is a widget that lets you monitor all your resource use, network, cpu, engine temp, you name it. Watch it in the heat of your NT activity. I think you'll agree.

Nonetheless, I would fully support a NT that works natively on the mac.

[Mr Ed]

My setup consist of 3 screens off a macbook pro 2008 model. So the apps I'm running concurrently when I Trade:

I thought the MacBook Pro only had 1 video output port. How are you driving three screens at once?

[paulchow2k]

I thought the MacBook Pro only had 1 video output port. How are you driving three screens at once?

Google matrox triplehead2go. That's a 3 screen solution or DisplayLink which is a USB solution.

Paul

[Mr Ed]

Google matrix triplehead2go. That's a 3 screen solution or DisplayLink which is a USB solution.

Paul

Thanks. I was wondering if those video over USB solutions worked. Glad to know they do. I will be checking this out.

[Wessel]

Amazing how many people follow these postings it's almost 6000 much more than other posts

[danielmartins]

I´d love NT on my mac!!!! I´d even pay for that!

[paulchow2k]

I´d love NT on my mac!!!! I´d even pay for that!

You are. Through VM emulator. Lol

Make sure you don't turn on recording. CPU spikes will cost u even more

Paul

[danielmartins]

You are. Through VM emulator. Lol

Make sure you don't turn on recording. CPU spikes will cost u even more

Paul

so does MS DOS...
I meant native.. putting VW or Paralells on a Mac is like putting offroad tires in a Ferrari so "it can get to places".. I bought a mac for a large number of reasons, and running windows is not one of them.

I don´t think I´m asking for the world.. Besides, as we can see through this post, there would be plenty of users happy with that!

[orion176]

NT will run just fine on VMWare.

What most people don't take into consideration is that if you are running two OS's is that you need enough memory for two OS's.

Today 4GB is the bare minimum for proper computer performance, so if you have anything less than 8GB VMWare's performance will suffer.

[billitin]

Yes NT is the only reason why I'm still stuck with Windows. And I'd like to switch to Linux or Unix for that sake, because of my outdated beliefs that progress means doing more with less resources, rather than needing 4 to 8Gb RAM.

[Chap41]

NT for MAC.

Hi,

NT 7 0.0 was ok for the VMWare, but the new one, does not runs at all. What are your advise: Try to download the window 7 or buy a new computer only for NT?. It would be a shame to have a good computer and not being able to use it.

Nowadays, smaller enterprises have programs for both-pc and mac- Why NT does not have the same for Mac users?

Thanks for your help.

nice weekend.

Chap

[NinjaTrader_Kyle]

Hello Chap41,

Thank you for your post and welcome to the NinjaTrader support forum!

There are no known issues between the current release of NinjaTrader and VM Ware Fusion.

Are you seeing an error when loading the software? If so, what does that error report?

[The3Pearsons]

Amazing how many people follow these postings it's almost 6000 much more than other posts

I am a member of a MAC users trading group and we would all like to find a good trading software package that will run in native mode. While some leverage the virtual or dual boot approach to run Windows trading software on their machines, others just leverage java based, albeit less robust, offerings from TOS(thinkorswim), Investor/RT, others. We would all love to see Ninja Trader or Trade Station run in the native MAC OS environment. There are thousands of MAC users that would love to see Ninja for MAC!!!!!!