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| Architosh News Reports | |
| Architosh Staff ([email protected]) |
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Mac AEC developers at Macworld Expo NY: More, or less?
Next week's Macworld Expo in New York will NOT play host to as many Macintosh AEC developers as in previous years in Boston or as recently as San Francisco '99. So far, compared to the recent San Francisco show, all of the following CAD, rendering and AEC developers are not listed to attend Expo New York: Abvent, Ashlar, AutoDesk, auto-des-sys, Bentley, Play, and Strata, to name some of the biggest names. Also missing in attendance will be Graphisoft, the makers of ArchiCAD, the recent CAD Shootout winner. Graphisoft is scheduled to attend Apple Expo Paris this coming September. So who is coming to Expo New York to serve the AEC crowd? For starters, longtime attendee Diehl Graphsoft, the makers of MiniCAD VectorWorks, will be there (booth 1631). Deneba, makers of Deneba CAD, will be at booth 406. And when it comes to CAD, that's about it! Sad to say, but for any number of reasons CAD developers are seemingly not as interested in showing in New York, as they are in San Francisco, and how they were in Boston. Even during the dark years (1996-97) of the Macintosh, many CAD vendors exhibited in Boston -- sometimes in a combined Apple Science, Engineering and Technology area. Bentley, AutoDesk, Engineered Software, Microspot, etc. were familiar faces at the Boston show. Also familiar faces were the people from Strata and auto-des-sys, makers of Strata Studio Pro/Strata Vision and form-Z, respectively. One of the possible reasons why AEC developers are not as interested in the New York show could be because of that show's emphasis on "consumer" products. Last year the focus at the show was on the iMac. This year it will be the iMac portable, rumored to be called the iBook. With Apple focusing on the consumer side of their product line at New York Expo it may turn off professional AEC software developers from exhibiting at the show. After all, people who are there to check out the iBook are not likely to run a few thousand dollars worth of CAD and rendering software on it. Other AEC wares at Expo While that line of reasoning may hold water for some, it certainly doesn't please architects, engineers, industrial designers and related professionals who will be attending the New York show next week. And it probably isn't as wise; if Diehl Graphsoft and AEC Software feel New York is a good enough venue, it probably is. But not all is lost. Aside from the two CAD vendors mentioned above (and any other last-minute exhibitors) there will be companies of interest to the AEC crowd, especially if the focus is on networking, Internet apps, and general business:
Other companies to check out include printer and scanner companies like Canon. VST Technologies (1901) is the maker of FireWire drives and wares for PowerBooks with media bays. Some in the AEC crowd will be interested in visiting the SGI booth (355) to get a look at their hardware/software offerings. SGI's machines don't run the Mac OS (instead they run NT or Unix) but somehow they come off as Mac friendly. And, of course, everybody will want to check out the Apple booths and pavilions, watch the stage presentations (hopefully offering sneak peeks at Sonata and Mac OS X) and visit the Gaming Pavilion. Hot games include the Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace titles from LucasArts (booth 1867) and other big game publishers like MacSoft (booth 978). So while Mac AEC seems to favor other venues like Macworld Expo SF and Apple Expo Paris, it is good to see a healthy showing of general business, accounting and productivity software vendors, as well as those offering networking and Internet products.
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