MAC Install

http://images.apple.com/powermac/images/solutionsscience20050427.jpg

Installing MacPyMOL

http://delsci.com/macpymol/macpymol350.jpg

Essentials

The download is about as straightforward as it gets, and you can install it wherever it makes you happy.

I (Bill Scott) wrote a pymol shell script (and zsh function) to invoke this on the command line. It uses mdfind to find the executable that lives in MacPyMOL.app/Contents/MacOS/PyMOL and pass arguments to it.

Extras

PowerMate Dial

The PowerMate dial works nicely with pymol.

http://www.griffintechnology.com/images/products/prod_powermate_a.jpg

Stereo

The latest Macs finally support stereo in a window.

Installing X-windows based pymol on Mac OS X

Why would you want to do this?

http://totl.net/InstantAbsolutionOnline/saint.jpg

1. You want to run a free, guilt-free, open-source version of pymol
2. You just happen to prefer the tkinter menu
3. You want to use plugins, for example, the apbs plugin for free grasp-like electrostatic calculations.

Simplest Installation

Install pymol with Fink

By far the simplest way to install the X-windows based version of pymol on OS X is by using the fink package management system. To compile it, all you need to do is issue the command

fink install pymol-py24

(This will install python2.4 in fink, along with an X-windows based tkinter. There are also versions that permit you to install pymol to interact with python2.3 and even python2.2. Fink uses its own unix-type python installation, but you can trick pymol into using the aqua framework to get a prettier GUI after the fact.)

The fink pymol package currently exists in the unstable branch of fink, so you will either have to activate the unstable branch or make the following symbolic links:

sudo ln -s /sw/fink/dists/unstable/main/finkinfo/sci/pymol-py.* /sw/fink/dists/local/main/finkinfo/.

You might need to create the latter directory if it doesn't already exist, i.e., issue the command

sudo mkdir -p /sw/fink/dists/local/main/finkinfo

I (wgscott) have put a whole lot of further information on how to use fink to install crystallographic software on my own wiki and website, including instructions on how to install precompiled binary packages using fink.

The fink pymol package is currently maintained by Jack Howarth.

Install APBS and friends with fink

To use the electrostatics plugin, you will need APBS and its dependencies. These are also available as fink packages, and include apbs, maloc and pdb2pqr. If you have multiple processors available, you might wish to install the mpi version of apbs.

Issuing the command

fink install apbs

will install apbs and its required dependencies for you. The fink pymol package is already preconfigured to do the right thing to use apbs as a plugin.