#future platforms
2 messages in this thread
Richard,
I agree with what you say regarding the MAC except for 1 important point
(BTW, I'm with McIntosh Analytical, a HperChem VAR NOT selling MACs). Your
30% figure is a good one overall but can be misleading when you look closer
at the target audience. I think if you counted MAC's in the pharmaceutical
non-analytical R&D areas like sythesis, discovery, and other important
areas of modeling, that MACs make up a much higher percentage. Thats due
in large part, I believe, to the EARLY limitations of the PC's ability for
graphics and in the early penetration of ChemDraw (no disrespect for HAWK
products). I do think the MAC is struggling to compete with the power of
486's, etc because of the price/performance advantage over the QUADRA. The
MAC's power is in its graphics and user interface, not its computing power.
In fact, some of our performance limited MAC users are now looking to step
up to SGI systems.
Nice to read your comments, though.
>> Your 30% figure is a good one overall but can be misleading when you
look closer at the target audience. I think if you counted MAC's in the
pharmaceutical non-analytical R&D areas like synthesis, discovery, and
other important areas of modeling, that MACs make up a much higher
percentage.
Mark,
I think you are right about that specific subset of chemists, but I also
think that the Autodesk people are trying to expand modeling beyond its
traditional core base. And if the overall percentage is around 30%, but
the core subset has a higher Mac percentage, than the percentage of Macs
outside of the core is even lower than 30%.
And the long range question for Autodesk is whether the Macs currently
installed will be replaced by new Macs. You indicated that some of your
users are moving up to SGIs — how do Indigo sales look from your
perspective? And even ChemDraw is being ported to Windows — a significant
step for CSC, which was the staunchest anti-IBM group I'd ever known.
I don't know what a cross-platform product like Alchemy's sales have been
like DOS vs. Mac. I suspect that the Mac version does sell better
(Alchemy/Mac is also a better product than the DOS version, IMO).
I think there's room for a good Mac modeler (is CAChe too expensive?), but
I don't think that the future of the Mac is strong enough to make it a
strategic platform. Mac fans would disagree. But if the Mac is not
strategic long-term, Autodesk is probably too large to mess with it, even
if you could make a couple of bucks in it.
Rich
P.S. Our 2-D drawing stuff can now act as a HyperChem front end for
drawing (including DDE control) — just a plug… What's your geographic
location?