Autodesk late Monday released an announcement about their commitment to the Apple Mac platform, which according to information in Monday’s Apple Worldwide Developer Conference keynote address, has tripled in size from an installed base of 25 million in 2007 to 75 million strong in the current year. Apple’s ability to triple its Mac base in just two short years answers the question that many key developers have been asking: will this development investment in the Mac justify itself?
Alias 2010 Adds to Autodesk’s Growing Mac Design Tools
Since shipping in April of this year, Autodesk Alias Design 2010 and Autodesk SketchBook Pro 2010–part of the solution for Digital Prototyping–have drawn accolades from designers and creative professionals within the Mac community. The 2010 release marks the first time that Alias Design has offered native support for the Mac OS X operating system.
“Designers from all over the world have given us enthusiastic feedback on the Mac version of Alias Design and SketchBook Pro,” said Samir Hanna, vice president, Digital Factory and Industrial Design, at Autodesk. “We look forward to providing our growing community of Mac users with increased ability to use Autodesk Digital Prototyping software to improve time to market and increase competitive advantage.”
“With Alias Design now available for Mac OS X, the best designer software now runs on the best designed hardware,” said Joshua Maruska of Teague Design, a pioneer in industrial design.
01 - View of Alias Design on Mac OS X, showing clean interface and wide workspace for this helmut design. Autodesk has dramatically changed its view on Apple and is increasing its development resources for the production of native Mac software.
“SketchBook Pro completely replicates the feel of paper for me and also fits in perfectly with my Mac environment,” said Andrew Meehan of Viacelli, creator of iconic technical illustrations. “I used to scan sketches, clean them up in Photoshop, then save them as jpegs and send them off. Now I just use SketchBook Pro as my integrated ideation center.”
Alias Design software provides consumer product designers with control over the entire design process–from ideation to the final surfaces that are passed to engineering. Designers can rapidly develop and communicate product design concepts using sketches, illustrations, photo-realistic renderings and animations.
Autodesk Leads Key Rivals to Mac Platform
Announced earlier this year at Macworld in San Francisco, Autodesk intends to grow its portfolio of Mac native software for creative and technical professionals. It currently leads several key rivals like SolidWorks and Bentley in making the first moves to address Apple’s resurgent Mac platform.
To learn more visit: www.autodesk.com
Other Autodesk tools for Mac include, Autodesk Maya, Autodesk Mudbox, Autodesk Toxik, Autodesk ImageModeler and Autodesk Stitcher.