Somehow, we got on to the subject of how Autodesk, their business, and their products have evolved (or devolved, in some respects) since those glorifed wild-west days:
- AutoCAD LT used to come with network licensing, and was barely over $1000 per license.
- The updates for AutoCAD Rx versions were c1, c2, c3, c4 and out-of-band updates were c4a, c4b, etc.
- R10 was when the public started paying attention
- R11 was a significant evolutionary upgrade
- It was all DOS until R13 for most customers (yes, they released Windows and UNIX versions earlier, but nobody paid any attention until R13)
- R13 sucked ass
- R14 was when AutoCAD took off on the highest trajectory
- AutoCAD 2000 pissed off everyone with the changes to plotting
- AutoCAD 2000i was one of the stupidest Carol Bartz ideas.
- The transitition from MDT to Inventor for A.D.N. folks was about as smooth as two blind cats trying to have sex on a frozen lake.
- ADT folks saw the same oafish transition coming their way with Revit.
- Today's pricing for AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT are in the same mushroom-swilling, crack-inhaling rodeo circus as Adobe's products. Even pricing for converting a standalone license to network has been tied-off and injected with free-based marketing juice.
- The early days were dominated with developer dreams, designer ideals, and customer wishlists. Today is dominated by shareholder value.
- Their biggest competitor was once Bentley.
- Anyone remember Actrix? Stop laughing. The best way to tell that story is like this: There was once this fast-running, smart-mouthed little kid in the neighborhood named Visio. Autodesk decided to go beat the shit out of him and chased him with a feeble Actrix beating stick all the way up to when the little Visio kid knocked on the door to big-brother Microsoft. As soon as the door opened, the Actrix stick disintegrated into thin air. (note: it actually lives on in crap like EDSA, which is now Paladin DesignSpace)
- Remember Volo? AME? ADE?
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