Tableau announces Mac version to be released 'early next year'

At its customer conference this week in Washington, D.C., Tableau Software announced that a Mac-compatible version of its software would become available along with the newest version, Tableau 8.2, to be released most likely "early next year," according to the Tableau Public blog.

Tableau's public and desktop versions of its data analysis and visualization software have become popular in several newsrooms and have been demonstrated at the last several IRE and CAR Conferences. Much of Tableau's appeal for journalists is its ability to provide a user interface for producing interactive maps and data visualizations without requiring knowledge of computer programming.

Earlier this year, IRE and Tableau announced a partnership that provided free access to Tableau Desktop -- a license worth $1,999 -- for IRE members. This more robust version of Tableau allows journalists to:

• Save files locally, as opposed to on the web, so they can develop stories in private before they publish them to Tableau Public.
• Publish to the Tableau Public service when a story is ready. Tableau Public provides live, interactive visualizations that can be embedded in web pages.
• Work offline.
• Access databases, Hadoop and a wide variety of data sources. 

Soon, these capabilities will be availble for journalists with Mac operating systems.