Autodesk expands support for Mac Users ….. Not

Ok this is just ridiculous. Autodesk is claiming that it has expanded support for mac users by officially supporting selected products running under boot camp. Of course, running under boot camp is exactly the same as running a PC so they have not actually done anything other than issue a press release that is to all intents and purposes rubbish. Architosh covers the details but fails to take them to task for what it is….

To expand its support of Mac users Autodesk has officially announced support for running its Windows applications under Windows with Apple’s Boot Camp dual-boot technology. Since modern Macs today run the same processors as Windows PCs all of Apple’s computers can be setup to run Windows either under virtualization (which is a software process) or directly on the hardware under a dual-boot configuration known as Boot Camp.

With Boot Camp Autodesk is announcing support of AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor and Autodesk 3ds Max, three of its most popular products. Additionally, Autodesk Revit Architecture, Autodesk Revit Structure and Autodesk Revit MEP are also supported.

I’m sorry but I don’t buy this. They could run anyway. It’s not like they will suddenly start working. If by support you mean that you will offer technical support for instillations running under boot camp then fine, but that’s not the gist of the press release, and I know lots of people who were running Autodesk products under windows on boot camp anyway. It’s not like a Mac Pro running boot camp is some special beast. As far as windows and windows applications are concerned it’s just a PC. Nothing special. People have been asking for mac versions of certain Autodesk products for years, especially 3DS Max and with a considerable amount of the professional post production industry running on Macs the customer base is there. Boot Camp is not a viable option for a lot of people. You don’t want to have to keep restarting every time you want to use your 3d package.
By the way, for those not familiar with the 3D industry, Autodesk is considered by those of us who work in the business to be the Microsoft (or Adobe either at this stage) of the CG world, buying up every application they can find and doing stuff like, well this I suppose. And because they control all the major applications in the industry if you want to do high end work, you pretty much have to use an Autodesk product, whether it’s xsi or maya.
Anyway…. rant over. Seriously though, does anyone actually buy this thinly veiled attempt to side step repeated requests for mac versions of their key software.
[Read Autodesk expands support for Mac Users | Architosh]

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