When it comes to Apple products, the iPad and the iPhone get all the headlines.
But in recent years, the company’s Macintosh line of computers has enjoyed a remarkable revival that has been vital to Apple’s emergence as the most valued technology company on Wall Street.In the latest sign of that comeback, Autodesk plans to announce on Tuesday that it is bringing its flagship AutoCAD design and engineering software to the Mac for the first time in nearly two decades.
The return of AutoCAD to the Mac could help Apple sustain its momentum in the competitive market for personal computers, especially with business customers, where Apple has made significant inroads recently. Autodesk estimates that 10 million people use the AutoCAD software around the world, and the company said that its customers had been asking for a Mac version with growing frequency.“This is an endorsement from our side that design and engineering customers are taking the Macintosh seriously again,” said Amar Hanspal, senior vice president for platform solutions at Autodesk.
The Mac was once a popular platform for AutoCAD. But Apple’s share of the personal computer market dwindled in the early 1990s, so Autodesk made its last version of AutoCAD for the Mac in 1992, and stopped supporting it in 1994. The company continued to make other products for the Mac, including software used in the entertainment industry.
Autodesk could no longer ignore Mac’s comeback, Mr. Hanspal said.The Mac accounted for nearly 10 percent of all PCs sold around the world in the first quarter, according to Gartner, or more than double its share just a few years ago. In the most recent quarter, Apple sold nearly 3.5 million Mac computers, a 33 percent increase from the same quarter a year earlier. That rate of growth far exceeded the overall PC market.
In a news release, Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide product marketing, said his company was thrilled that Autodesk was bringing AutoCAD back to the Mac. “We think it’s the perfect combination for millions of design and engineering professionals,” he said.
The Mac version will cost $3,995, the same as the PC version, and will be released in October. AutoDesk will soon introduce a free mobile version of the software that will run on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. That version has more limited capabilities, Mr. Hanspal said. But with it, an engineer, for example, could bring drawings to a job site on an iPad, rather than on a big roll of paper, and make annotations on them.The mobile version will be able to read any AutoCAD files, whether they were created on a PC or a Macintosh.
Mr. Hanspal said AutoDesk was considering making mobile versions of the design software for other tablets on the market.