Autodesk’s corporate culture (espoused very strongly by Carol Bartz, but dating back to John Walker) encourages brave attempts that may lead to failure. That, of course, makes it much less likely that there would be a second or third release. Any Mac user with any sense wouldn’t touch the first new Mac release with a bargepole. Would this happen again? Yes, I think it probably would. Fortunately, there weren’t that many of them. Autodesk had little option but to pull the pin on a non-viable product, but the orphaned users weren’t happy. The early 90s attempt at AutoCAD for Mac lasted for two three releases: 10 to 12. Last time this was attempted, it was a failure. Things like paper/model space functionality, the command line, 3D, LISP, the ability to use third-party apps… AutoCAD for Mac LT Lite, anyone? If the APIs are not all there, that means no OS X version of any of the AutoCAD-based vertical products, either.ĪutoCAD for Mac would be bad for Mac users The Autodesk survey implies that serious consideration is being put into a version of AutoCAD that is missing some of the things that make AutoCAD what it is. Not just half-baked in the usual let’s-put-this-out-as-is-and-maybe-we-can-fix-it-later way, but half-baked by design. The user interface is likely to be an uncomfortable square-peg-in-round-hole effort, which will work badly and be derided by OS X users. The bug level is likely to be abysmal, both for the above reasons and also because the number of pre-release testers available to Autodesk on this platform is likely to be relatively tiny. They would be trying to make significant changes to the code base at the same time that that code base is being modified for the next release. Developers with AutoCAD experience are going to have little or no Mac experience and vice-versa. The stability is likely to be awful, because this will be new ground for almost all of the developers involved. The performance is likely to be poor, because all the Windows-specific stuff will have to be redirected, recreated or emulated. If it were done, I think it would have the following outcomes: Reversing or working around that process is a very substantial undertaking. Any Windows-specific advantage the developers can take has been taken. Since then, the code base has been spreading its mass of roots deeper and deeper into the Windows soil. Also, not relevant to the point I’m about to make.Įver since the last multi-platform AutoCAD (Release 13), Autodesk has dedicated its primary product solely to Windows. They look good, they’re well made, they work well, the Mac OS has been shamelessly copied by Microsoft for decades, and so on, ad nauseam. My experience of Apple products has generally been very positive. I’ll concede right here and now that you are probably right. If you’re a Mac fan who wants to tell me the benefits of your chosen computer family and how inferior Windows is, save it. Now, this sort of platform discussion often degenerates into a quasi-religious debate, so let’s see if I can head it off at the pass. If you’re one of those users, I’m sorry, but I think this is one of those cases when giving you what you want would be bad for everybody, and bad for you in particular. It pains me to write this, because I’m very much a user advocate and I’m arguing here against something that some users have been requesting for a long time. The more I think about this, the more I am inclined to believe that this would be a bad idea. There has been a fair bit of open discussion from Autodesk lately on the subject of a possible future OS X AutoCAD version.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |