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(RD) I believe that was around 1996, at the [Apple] worldwide developers conference. (AFR) So unlike Adobe, who has a publicly open policy of being 'platform neutral' and is sort of politically correct about staying out of the platform wars, there is nothing philosophical about the platforms you develop for? (RD) That's correct. Our motivations are really very simple and we like serving users on both machines. There is nothing philosophical about it. If users asked for a BeOS version of VectorWorks we'd make a BeOS version as well.
(AFR) You hear lots of things about Apple and how they treat their developers. How is your relationship going with Apple these days? And how does it differ from Microsoft? (RD) Apple is doing a really good job treating developers. I think the bar for Apple was raised so high from the very early days (with lots of hand holding, marketing, money, trade shows) a lot of developers were expecting them to be like mothers. Microsoft does none of that. Apple has always done more. Apple doesn't need to open up markets for me, that's my job. At architectural trade shows I don't see Microsoft there, so why should Apple be there? (AFR) As a leading CAD developer do you feel Apple is doing enough for Macintosh CAD and AEC? What can they do better? (RD) One fault with Apple was not seeing the technical developers as important. In the 1988-89 time frame the DEDA organization produced a short list of items to improve in QuickDraw 3D to make it more suitable for the engineering market, things like higher precision, support for rotated text at the operating system level. A few years later they came up with an over-engineered QuickDraw GX -- and no one ever wanted to use it. Apple could have done much better in the engineering market. (AFR) Now I would like to ask you some questions regarding Apple technologies and the future of VectorWorks. Many Mac AEC and CAD pros are excited about the prospects of Apple's new G4 chip architecture and what it can do for the Apple Power Macintosh line of machines. Can VectorWorks users expect an updated AltiVec version of VectorWorks anytime soon?
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