MWSF: Autodesk Loves Apple – New Mac Ports Coming

I just had the pleasure of sitting down with the Autodesk folks in a private meeting room in a chic hotel near the Moscone center. My first vendor meeting has gone well and the CAD and visualization software giant has some exciting announcements to break tomorrow, the day of the keynote. 

While most of the details of the announcement are under embargo until tomorrow what I can share today is the general tenor of the meeting and about how Autodesk is seeing the 3D and CAD industries evolving. The key bottom line is that the Mac is growing at an accelerating rate — not just within the overall computer industry per se but within the markets Autodesk serves in particular. 

Rob Hoffmann, Senior Product Marketing Manager of Autodesk’s Media & Entertainment division, said that the Mac has now become a common tool within the complex production pipelines in the entertainment industry. “If you asked me four years ago about the Mac I would have said they were a rare sight within the production studios, but now they are a common sight,” says Rob Hoffmann. “The Mac is just like any other platform within entertainment sharing the same roles as Windows and Linux.”

Autodesk’s World View – Let the Artists Decide

Autodesk’s new world view regarding platforms is actually not so new. “Autodesk has always been about serving the user,” says Hoffmann. “What we are experiencing across the entire Autodesk software portfolio is strong demand for Mac support.” 

When pressed for which products in particular are being requested more than others Hoffmann only stated that “besides the biggies” that everyone knows about (eg: AutoCAD) the company’s strategy in terms of current porting, future porting and future Mac products is based on a mixture of factors driven by such things as demand, complexity of software development (ie: how hard it is to accomplish Mac support) and relationships to other products in the portfolio that are already on the Mac. 

The three products that Autodesk will formerly announce tomorrow all share a common thread in their relation to each other and Maya. But more importantly, the three products that Autodesk is announcing for the Mac tomorrow also just the beginning.