Autodesk Puts Its CADs on the Table
It has been nearly 20 years since Autodesk last made its AutoCAD design and engineering software available for the Mac. But now, The New York Times reports, CAD-craving Mac users with $4,000 to spend will once again be able to buy AutoCAD for the Mac. Thanks to the Mac's resurgence, Autodesk says more and more customers are asking for a Mac version, and now the company plans to deliver.
20 years. The same interval as between the first and second times I touched a Macintosh and tried to make it do something. The former was the West Coast Computer Faire in the Year of the Immortal Commercial. It quickly locked up, of course, in the hands of one not trained in how easy it was, whereupon I went back to my actual business -- which oddly enough involved AutoCAD. (No causal connection to the later support and dropping of the Mac.)
So much has changed, including the computer system on which I rely every day of my life.
More maliciously: the actual period from the first announcement of dropping Mac support to this announcement of resuming it corresponds closely to the reign at Autodesk of the current CEO of Yahoo, with a modest time delay.[giggles]
Finally, reality: the NYT story says the mobile version will read files made on the Mac *or* Windows. OMFG, you mean there was a possibility it WOULDN'T? How far had Autodesk sunk?
We are a long time AutoCAD shop and I can't say enough about how much I dislike AutoDesk. I can say that AutoCAD is a great product but it pretty much ends there.
AutoDesk's BIM products, mainly Revit, are a curse on the design world. They are expensive and immature and yet come with so much marketing hype that owners can't resist. I shudder to think of the wasted dollars and hours that BIM has brought on our industry.
AutoDesk is also ridiculously expensive when compared to competitors like ArchiCAD that offer a far more collaborative product. The others, however, simply don't have the market share to command the price.
AutoDesk is much like Microsoft ... They have some great products and some bad products but in the end they hold their positions because people think they need to be compatible with everyone else! Which they do !!!