“I have long, long been of the opinion, that Apple (AAPL) should take a crack at the enterprise market, and in doing so, it should penetrate through the CAD / PDM niche. Apple’s extremely loyal user base of creative professionals can find a great encore in the industrial designers, mechanical designers, and architects,” Sramana Mitra writes for SeekingAlpha.
“So far, however, Apple did not look strong enough to go after the broad enterprise market. In fact, DNA-wise, I still don’t think they would,” Mitra writes. “However, Graphics and Design related applications are very much in their sweetspot, and CAD is a large enough niche, that an Autodesk-Apple partnership would be just splendid for both players!”
Mitra writes, “And today, boy, does Apple look strong!”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Nathan” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Note: Autodesk’s last release of AutoCAD for Macintosh was Release 12 in June 1992. From what we hear, AutoCAD has become a morass that’s hopelessly enmeshed with Windows; a total ground-up rewrite would be required for a Mac version of AutoCAD. By the way, Autodesk’s current market value is just $9.37 billion.
A guide to 2D/3D Graphics & Animation software for Apple Macintosh is here.
Related note: Architosh serves a worldwide audience of Macintosh-based CAD/3D and AEC professionals and students: http://www.architosh.com/
Related MacDailyNews article:
Autodesk requests AutoCAD for OS X feedback – May 05, 2003