Johnny Mac buys a Mac
Ok, I had to get your attention. John McEleney (known affectionately as Johnny Mac around the office), who recently spoke at the Huntsville AL and Atlanta GA user groups, also spoke at Charlotte, NC. I was able to attend, and I took some notes.
First, the room was pretty swank. It was on the 33rd floor of a building downtown. Definitely not characteristic user group fare. The usual pizza had been replaced with fancy finger food. The place even had a dress code. I had to sneak in through a ventillation shaft and listen from the broom closet. Inevitably I arrived in shorts and sandals, soaked to the bone from the rain and sweaty.
John was already speaking when I arrived. It was a presentation I have heard before from Jon Hirschtick on the history of CAD, but Mr. McEleney had added a few items of his own.
I’m a bit of a book worm, so when he recommended a couple of books, I was sure to write them down. First was The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. This is about globalization, and how we are all connected through modern communications. John spoke a little on globalization, and the inevitability of losing jobs, and the equal inevitability of American innovation to replace those jobs. He says the best thing you can do is to change the channel when Lou Dobbs comes on the TV.
The second book John recommended was Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. This is a book on web interface design, but is relevant to SolidWorks users in the design of the interface. Stay tuned. As soon as they remove the gags, this blogger will have a few things to say about the not too distant future of SW interface design. You might also remember that the phrase “don’t make me think” came up in Jeff Ray’s (SW COO) talk at the Charleston SC user group meeting as the mantra for interface design at SW. You will be the judge as to how well they are achieving that goal…
The image to the left is a link to a little video clip of John making a point about the current and future trends in software. And for those with a sharp eye, yes, that is the incomparable Wes Cobb and Rodney Hall in the front row, leaders of the Western NC and Hickory NC user groups respectively. Van Pfifer, leader of the Charlotte NC group was also nearby.
The next thing John said that really stood out for me came during the Q&A session. It’s great that a guy in McEleney’s position can come to a user group meeting with 50 guys and take direct questions from end users. That really impresses me. He is a totally approachable guy, unpretentious, and down to earth. He is even willing to talk shop with you. Anyway, the first question was related to Spaceclaim. John responded that some new functionality in SW08 is going to look a lot like some of the functions of Spaceclaim (which enables you to directly edit model geometry, without sketch constraints, parametrics or history). Again, in a few days we will be able to talk about SW08 and describe that functionality in more detail.
Next was the inevitable Linux question. Van Pfifer beat me to the punch asking that one. On this blog I’ve been sucked into more than one discussion on alternative OSs. I love to hear John’s answer. Tell it to me again! I’ve been lectured so many times by the “zealot prophets” that I just get sick of it. Somehow, these guys think that a product that has been available for however many years Linux has been available is suddenly going to crawl out of the server closet and become a widely used desktop OS. When I say “widely used” I mean in statistically significant numbers, not by university research lab types with taped together glasses or guys programming embedded devices from their room in their mother’s basement. Anyway, I don’t have a direct quote of what John said, but it was to the effect that the body of work to port to Linux is prohibitively large. First you have to port all the products, SW, Cosmos, FlowWorks, PDM, the hundreds of partner products, etc. And then you have to do some localization for the myriad flavors of Linux. I didn’t hear a drop of optimism.
However, with a nod to “open source” in general, he said that PDMW Enterprise is looking at using MySQL. From theMySQL site, “MySQL runs on more than 20 platforms including Linux, Windows, OS/X, HP-UX, AIX, Netware”. So looking for a single ray of hope, does that mean PDMW Ent Server will run on Linux? That still might be a stretch, but it will likely run on MySQL. Stuff that penguin back in your pants.
On the other hand, what about Mac? I mean, OSX is as close to Linux as the mass market is going to see. After a convoluted tale of woe which some how involved Sarbanes-Oxley, John McEleney, the CEO of SolidWorks Corporation, revealed that he had bought a Mac for his home computer. SolidWorks already has a few products that work on Mac, such as eDrawings and Cosmic Blobs. John went on to say that Mac has a 5% market share, and “it’s all about market share”. (Linux market share is less than 1%, or if you believe some of the extremely optimistic reports, as high as 2%). Oh, say it again for me, John – “It’s all about market share”. Next time you get cornered by one of those penguin types, just tell them that “it’s all about market share, twiggy”.
The reason I like this is that it brings rationality to the Linux argument, and to the Mac argument as well. SW is not going to go out of business relying only on Windows for the time being. If/when Mac usage crosses say 15-20% and shows a continuing upward trend, it will make sense to reevaluate. Maybe by the time they have 25% it would be good to have a few products port over. Unless Apple starts selling their OS to run on any Intel box tomorrow, they aren’t going to gain that much market share that fast. I’m sure this mess with the transition to Vista is driving some folks to Mac, but not in really significant numbers. Anyway, the Mac and Linux devotees who are still holding their breath are going to start dropping like flies. Reality check, guys.
As a little aside, every time you hear someone really talk about the future of CAD operating systems, they tend to talk about interoperability through the web. At one time that meant Java. Can you program a CAD application using Flash? Maybe a Google OS which integrates the web? I’m not clear exactly what they are talking about, but I guess that leaves a couple topics for John to use at future user group meetings.
Finally, talking about the future of 3D to try to encompass more and more 2D users, John talked about a paradox. In order to win over more 2D users, SW feels that they have to make it much easier to make a 2D drawing from a 3D model. This is in part what is behind several of the new enhancements in SW08. The paradox is that once they have achieved that goal, 2D really is no longer necessary. John acknowledges that for the foreseeable future, 2D is going to play a role. I personally think it will never really go away completely, it is simply too convenient for some things.
Anyway, thank you very much to John McEleney for coming to Charlotte to talk to the users! John also purchased his own copy of the SW Bible at the meeting.