I’ve read it somewhere on the Internet a few days ago. Somebody was saying that Apple was looking at buying Autodesk and switching all their products to Mac OS only. It’s obviously a ridiculous speculation and I really don’t believe it could happen. EVER! Nevertheless I’ve let my imagination run wild for a moment and decided to write down what I was thinking…
Why would it be so beautiful?
Just a few of my personal reasons why I would love to see that happening:
- Big blow to Microsoft’s dominance
I have nothing against Microsoft as a software maker. I just hate that I have no choice and when I’m not happy with their product I can’t simply switch to something different. For me, just like for millions of engineers, designers, detailers, draftsmen and other technical professionals there is no choice - we run whatever AutoCAD and other Autodesk products run on. - I would get to work on a Mac
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not an Apple fan boy. My system of choice would probably be Linux, but since I am stuck on an evil proprietary platform I’d rather be stuck on something as good as Mac OS (security, performance, stability, usability) additionally running on beautifully designed hardware. - No funny looks at work
Our industry (CAD/CAM/CAE) is so Windows centric that when I tell my colleagues at work that I am sometimes using a Mac at home they look at me as if I was trying to be original. A snob with a girly notebook (my gf’s MacBook). - Just for the fun of it
It would be really exciting to watch, just like a big storm on the sea. Not a lot of people would probably see that one coming and implications of such a move by Apple would be huge to the whole industry.
What could make you think it is possible?
During the last couple of months a few things have happened that could be seen as signals of something significant going on. No hard evidence but still enough for a hungry mind…
- This job posting.
Autodesk is looking at hiring a BDM for AutoCAD and Apple is mentioned as one of vendors who would be selling and marketing it. Here’s an excerpt in case the original expires:
| Business Development Manager: AutoCAD | Posted 02-Nov-2007 | |
| Location: 3950 Civic, SRF | ||
| Are you ready to travel the world, develop partnerships with major technology players, and grow a half billion dollar business as the Business Development Manager for AutoCAD? You must be a highly-motivated business person ready to develop a product strategy for selling and marketing AutoCAD with vendors such as hp, Dell, APPLE, Lenovo, Amazon, CDW, and many others. |
||
- Windows application compatibility in Mac OS
A few weeks ago someone has noticed something that was interpreted as a chance for Windows compatibility coming to Leopard in future versions. - Autodesk buying out its own shares
I won’t pretend I know what and why they are doing but maybe they want to accumulate some stock to actually have something to offer to Apple?
(Edit 1:10 pm, 20 Dec 2007) - They both like nice new toys
Multitouch namely. We all know the beautiful and intuitive multitouch interface of iPhone and iPod touch, but if you read Scott Sheppard’s blog you have probably seen this and earlier posts on the subject. Multitouch interfaces seem to be perfect for CAD software and Apple definitely knows a lot about them.
Why I don’t believe it will happen?
I would be happy to eat my gym shorts if I’m not right but I simply think that Apple buying Autodesk is not possible. No matter how strong you wish for something to happen it won’t happen JUST BECAUSE you wish, unfortunately…
- Autodesk and Microsoft are too close
Autodesk is all buddy-buddy with Microsoft. The next version of AutoCAD looks as if it was an Office 2007 application (ribbon control). They have created their DWFx file format as an implementation of Microsoft’s XPS and it is natively viewable in Vista. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next generation omnipotent file format called DWGx (if rumors turn out to be true) would be somehow based on the OOXML format. - Too much work to port products to Mac OS
I can’t even imagine how much time and resources would it take to port, even just the most important Autodesk products, to Mac OS. Maybe temporary use of some kind of Windows compatibility (as mentioned above) would be a good temporary solution but I find it hardly believable that anyone would like to use critical applications in non-native environment. - Too much resistance from Windows users
A lot of computer users don’t cope with a change very well. Especially if they use their computers as tools at work and they only care about getting their job done. For them a change of platform would be just an unnecessary disruption.
Why would it make sense for Apple?
Obviously it’s all about the number of users and revenue that they bring to the company. Think about over 8 million of seats of AutoCAD (only legal) and multiply that by the price of a single Leopard license. That alone would give a number close to $1 billion and although it is the biggest, AutoCAD is not the only Autodesk product that people would like to use on a Mac.
- Access to a huge community of technical clients
Apple hardware and Mac OS would become an instant standard in a number of different engineering industries. They are already pretty strong (or even dominant) amongst professional photographers and graphic designers. There is also a decent number of architects using ArchiCAD on Macs but bringing Autodesk products to the table would introduce Mac OS platform to all sort of engineers and big corporate customers. - Halo effect or platform synergy bringing new customers
Huge number of people use Windows at home just because they use it at work. Either because they simply don’t know Mac OS or they don’t want to use two different environments. Bringing AutoCAD (Inventor, Revit, etc.) to Mac OS would introduce it to a lot of people that would simple prefer it over Windows or again use it at home just because they use it at work (or school). This way the number of new Mac OS licenses would probably be much bigger then the number of Autodesk product licenses. - Media & Entertainment products
Over the last couple of years Autodesk has acquired a few companies that that are widely used in TV and movie production. Disney and Pixar are probably amongst significant users of those systems. Can you smell the connection already? Huge render farms running on Mac OS on XServ must sound appealing. - Leverage in product politics
Apple never knows when Microsoft decides to kill off Office for Mac. If they decided to keep Autodesk products running on both platforms they would have something to keep Microsoft playing nice. Of course before iWork becomes a full blown Office replacement. It would also give a lot of ISVs a reason to treat Mac OS on the same conditions as Windows.
Why would it make sense for Autodesk?
Well, I don’t believe it would unless they make it run on both platforms, but that’s not really the point here. If Apple buys Autodesk it is supposed to be good for Apple, but looking at the graph below I know in whose boat I would like to sit. Apple is still worth half of Microsoft but its value is growing quickly and consistently. They have overtaken IBM already and probably have enough cash in the pocket to buy Autodesk as a Christmas gift to all the people patiently waiting for AutoCAD on a Mac all those years.
Click the image for 6 year value growth history.
Update (10:40 am, 20 Dec 2007):
We all know how impossible that story is, but if you have something that would back it up I would love you to see your comment. That could develop into a nice bogus gossip. :-)
It would be very difficult for this to happen. All Autodesk products are heavily developed in Microsoft’s .NET. To reprogram all of the applications would take a very long time, meaning that they wouldn’t release new features for years and that would make Autodesk users very upset.
I read most of this as maybe Apple helping Autodesk port many of its programs to work on Apple since it is now an Intel cpu system. Running on both OS’s would be a win-win for the users of the software.
This would be the Autodesk that haven’t even bothered creating a MAC OS compatible viewer application for their “universal” DWF file format after, what, a decade or so?
@Troy:
I definitely think that having Autodesk products run on other platforms would be great, for both Autodesk and customers but unfortunately there is more to it than just what’s good for customers.
About possibilities - who knows, how much of AutoCAD is written in .Net and how much is exposed as managed APIs. I would suspect that the whole core of AutoCAD is still written as unmanaged C++ code and just the “visual” bit on top are .Net. Beside it, there are .Net implementations that run on other platforms (www.mono-project.com). Also, in a rather unexpected move a few months ago Microsoft has announced that they will be releasing the whole .Net source code for everyone to look at - Apple could easily sign some sort of agreement with them and reimplement .Net on Mac OS. With their resources hardly anything is impossible.
@Robin:
Exactly! I think the first time I have read about DWF reader for a Mac was 2003? Maybe Apple decided to rectify the situation on their own… :-)
By the way, just like you, I’m also a big fan of mind mapping (www.psycho-project.org).
And, Google will shortly be purchasing Microsoft. :o)
@Robert:
Microsoft is dead (http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html) so why Google spend their money on a luke warm corpse. Especially that they killed it in the first place. :-)
With softwares like VMware and Parallel, one can use mac and still run Autodesk products.
@Rob:
Yeah, I’d like to see that in a big corporate environment. Buying additional operating system and virtualization software to run it and them managing that in the whole organization. Good luck… :-)
Actually (and I myself am a litle surprised by this), our software QA has become increasingly dependent on VMware. Part of it that is that there are so many versions of Windows to deal with: 2000, XP32, Vista32, Vista64, occasionally XP64, and once a year IA64. I think an argument could made for VMs and vertical software, since setup/maintenance requires more work (and VMs are easier - note the “-er” to manage). With the latest hardware (and TONS of memory), the speed is fine. Disclaimer: I’ve only seen this all done under Windows.
I think it’s not about selling os x client licenses to Autocad users. Microsoft dominates in client licenses through office, but it also dominates with exchange and windows server. Lotus notes is in decline.
Apple now has os x server / i cal server at close to par with MS and at a far superior price. They need an office product to push os x server licenses and displace MS exchange from the corporate office.
You might be able to force maya users to dump windows and linux, but I don’t think apple can force autocad and 3ds max users to switch because of all the custom macros for autocad and the fact that 3ds games are being produced for windows.
It looks like autodesk, adobe, and apple all want to grow a business in content management server software related to whatever content their tools produce. With Autodesk’s products apple can develop back end apps that are integrated across all of apples pro software , and even if autocad/3ds max/maya users are still using windows, apple can push os x server and server based products.
The other big key is 3ds max. If apple controlled the tool that people use to develop 3d for games, it might be able to push more opengl and make it easier to develop games for both windows and mac.
And I’m a software engineer and I don’t see porting a .net app to mac as that big of a deal. Yeah, it’s been heavily integrated with windows since they added visual basic support eons ago, and autocad is a beast, but the chance to knock down MS in games and the office is worth billions to apple. Apple’s already done this on a smaller scale with their pro software and the user interface improved in the process.
Well, Microsoft, even if Autodesk is Friendly friendly with them just fucked them. They realeased Vista 64bit without any OpenGL support….Well autoCAD runs mainly on OpenGL & it can run on Direct3D but it looses 2 (out of 5 features) of their biggest 3d Features. Smooth line rendering and another. So they have to program on .NET wich.. as the latest 2009 is not nice to work with . A program that works….about at 50% on Vista 64bit (plotters dont work, some drivers dont work) & they are stuck with Direct3D…AutoCAD 2002 can be easily ported on MacOS it runs fine on WINE (crossover) and now with MONO by Novell that translates .NET on Linux & MAC it would be great.
OpenGL is fully supported on MAC & Linux
64-bit programming as been done AGES AGO on MAC & Linux
Most programs fully use processors multi-threading in Linux and MAC
… why would you go with something that works 1/2 the time.
Google works mainly on Linux and MAC…and its huge.
Why not Smaller companies.
I think Apple may yet acquire AutoDesk. At this point, with the growth of Apple and the growth of Linux over almost a decade now, Microsoft just doesn’t have the Kung Fu grip on it’s customers with Office that they once had. At least 1/2 or more of Windows customers perceive that there are alternative options to Windows that are available to them which has never been the case. Apple owning AutoDesk wouldn’t really effect MCSFT even if they discontinued Windows development. If Adobe stopped development on Windows that would adversely effect Windows just from the standpoint of not having Flash would cripple most Windows users that go on the internet. Point is it would take several major applications with major market share leaving to make a significant difference with MCSFT. (Which could happen, since the necessity of Virtual Machines has dominated the Windows scene just to ease the transition from other versions of Windows.)
3DS Max isn’t a dominant app in the games space and hasn’t been for a couple of years now which is why AutoDesk acquired Alias. Max’s relevance in the market was fading. AutoCad used to be the standard for engineers, designers and architects, but with the advent of CAM and multiple other specialty enigineering areas that now have design along with the calculations, the markets got splintered which is why AutoDesk is constantly acquiring companies that are dominant developers in splintered markets that they once owned. The major issue with AutoDesk is that constantly buying dissimilar code bases, never integrating them, and essentially running them as full companies under one roof is eventually going to take them under when outside competitors continue pushing on them.
Architecture/Engineering is important to Apple, but ultimately since Apple is already heavily invested the entertainment space an AutoDesk acquisition would secure that investment by keeping the tools that create a significant portion of the content that’s fed into Apple’s Entertainment tools on the Mac and optimized for OS X. I don’t necessarily see Apple taking the same kind of stance as AutoDesk with the engineering tools just for the pure simple fact that many companies making competitive products decided to to partner with Apple a long time ago…However, where you look at say the SolidWorks and Bentley Systems markets they are rather large and those companies never sided with Apple. With buying AutoDesk Apple would secure a large investment they already have, become a market leader in architecture design and get the tools to get after some rather large markets in ways they haven’t seen before with a level of usability that they haven’t seen before. There are a lot of pluses. The major minus would be for Apple to take on the task of merging the similar code bases as much as possible to dramatically reduce development costs. As one reader mentioned porting the apps to OS X probably won’t be that hard, but merging the code bases would be another story, but if any company could do it, make the applications better and cheaper to develop it would be Apple.