Archicad Marketing

[KeesW]

What a disappointment. Went to the annual RAIA conference and associated design exhibition in Sydney a few weeks ago. It is the largest building product exhibition in Australia. Autocad and Revit were prominant but guess who was missing? No prizes here - no ArchiCad! Was chasing building material information on the net and came accross companies producing details for about 6 CAD packages - even for DataCad would you believe. But --you guessed it --- not ArchiCad.

I think Graphisoft is taking its users for granted. I like seeing my software of choice prominantly displayed and used in our industry. I don't like being reminded that Revit is probably as good and are trying much harder to get market share. When was the last time Graphisoft made an irresistable offer to entice other CAD users? When did they last make existing users an offer they couldn't refuse? Instead, those of us on a subscription in Aus get access to 'freebies' that are mostly out of date, going back to version 6.5 that we can't even open!

But I am wasting my breath and indignation. Graphisoft is not interested. If I change to Revit (and I have considered it) it is because of Graphisoft's indifference to its competition, its complacency, and its habit of producing upgrades with ragged edges, that never quite work as promised.

[Anonymous]

Chazz wrote:

• 1) There appears to be a profound shift in the world of computing that, at the moment, favors Apple/OSX over Microsoft/Vista.
I do think Vista is an improvement over XP, but it is still far behind OS X in polish, elegance, features, integration, etc. It seems inevitable to me that we will see a steady increase in Mac market share. It's only a matter of time before more and more companies start porting their software to the Mac.


2) The above shift unleashes powerful market forces on companies (particularly publicly traded companies like AutoDesk and companies in the "creative" field) to consider porting their wares to OSX. Are there technical issues involved? Absolutely. Still, back in 2003, many people claimed that rumors of Apple's port to intel must be specious because the technical issues were just too thorny. But for Apple, there were powerful market forces to grow share and so the company bowed to them and made the investment. I think it worked out well for them.

Actually NeXT OS was running on Intel before Apple bought them. The real challenge was getting OS X to run on Power PC. I understand they had a version of OS X running on Intel (hidden away in some secret closet) all along.


3) For a large swath of users Bootcamp/Fusion/Parallels is no substitute compared with going native; I count myself as one such user, this guy is maybe another )

This guy? You can call me by my first name if you like. We're all (mostly) friendly around here. I'm actually a pretty happy camper now that I am done with the huge time sink of dealing with Autodesk's draconian licensing rituals. Curiously Windows seems to be running even faster in VM than in Boot Camp. Considering that Boot Camp on a Mac Pro already beats HP and Dell machines at least on some benchmarks (and costs a lot less) I must say I am well pleased.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

Chazz wrote:
.....

2) The above shift unleashes powerful market forces on companies (particularly publicly traded companies like AutoDesk and companies in the "creative" field) to consider porting their wares to OSX. Are there technical issues involved? Absolutely. Still, back in 2003, many people claimed that rumors of Apple's port to intel must be specious because the technical issues were just too thorny. But for Apple, there were powerful market forces to grow share and so the company bowed to them and made the investment. I think it worked out well for them.

Yes, but what you conveniently seem to forget or ignore is that there was a much larger incentive (mostly financial) for Apple to port to intel-based hardware, and thus more broadly port into the PC universe than there would be for any PC-based software development (or hardware) firm to port the other direction. If anything comparing the potential marketshare and Return-on-Investment to what they would have to actually invest in order to successfully port over or be fully dual-platform, they would likely be looking at taking an initial financial hit or losses.

That's why most PC companies can't be bothered to switch over the to the presumably 'superior' platform - and really, why most of them wouldn't be doing it any time soon.

As for your other comments:

Chazz wrote:
.......

More broadly, I'm a little appalled that both of you (out of insecurity? lack of coffee? poor parenting, maybe too much coffee?) feel the need to impugn my intelligence with playground insults in order to make your point. I freely concede (and conceded) that I may be wrong about the outcome but there is little doubt of the contributing factors I cite, which I think are interesting and relevant. OK?

All I can say is...grow up. Or at least grow a brain cell. Whichever is easier.

In your own post you've admitted to being needlessly provocative in response to someone else's post and then when called up on it you try to play the victim by decrying our 'impugning your "intelligence" with "playground insults"'? Playground insults are what you have in the first set of parentheses in the quote above, not anything that myself or Tom posted in response to you.

Besides which, it's a little difficult to impugn something that's not really there or has yet to make an formal appearance - especially considering the fact that this isn't the first time you're posting 'provocative' posts as you put it, or generally being belligerent or a general nuisance to other posters.

Like I said, a little maturity (and actual intelligence) will go quite a long way as far as your concerned.

[Chazz]

Bricklyne wrote:
All I can say is...grow up. Or at least grow a brain cell. Whichever is easier.

I'll be sure to work on it. Thanks for your post.

[Jere]

Chazz wrote:
The discussion of marketing is a weird one. I mean, what do we as users care if a product that we rely on is marketed aggressively? All we really want to know is that it works today and will continue to work tomorrow. In fact, an argument could be made that GS/Nemetsheck would better serve its users by spending resources on development rather than advertising. Still, it seems to annoy people that the company is sort of invisible to all but this discussion group. I guess GS feels that no one is going to make the serious investment in time and money to use Hi end CAD and not at least do a web search..

It would be nice though to see that Graphisoft is aggresively seeking to increase its market share. I'm getting tired of listening to other architects explain to me how BIM and Revit works. "you can actually model in 3D and cut sections...." I then proceed to explain that I've done that for years in AC. "ya, but, with Revit you can have interactive schedules, etc, etc."

It's annoying, but also a clear indication of how successful Autodesk has been in marketing their product. They have so many architects convinced that this is a new thing.

[Dennis Lee]

I never heard of ArchiCAD either, until 2 years ago when I heard of Revit - and in the process of doing some due diligence before making a significant investment to change from AutoCAD, I found ArchiCAD.

[__archiben]

Bricklyne wrote:
... especially considering the fact that this isn't the first time you're posting 'provocative' posts as you put it, or generally being belligerent or a general nuisance to other posters.

pot, kettle and black mate. chazz is normally pretty balanced - it's your postings and tone that i typically find arrogantly belligerent and a general nuisance.

...as far as your concerned.

"you're" or "you are". if you insist on spouting it, do try to check your grammar.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

~/archiben wrote:
.....

...as far as your concerned.

"you're" or "you are". if you insist on spouting it, do try to check your grammar.

........wow, spell checking and grammar correcting on an internet posting on a talkback forum no less. Right.

That's quite an achievement..........Now if you're done doing what probably qualifies as youR version of saving the world, I'm sure there's some space that needs wasting somewhere out there, just crying for your immediate attention.

Considering the fact you are, or rather WERE one of the posters on this board that whose contributions I actually appreciated and respected, I can honestly say I wasn't looking for a fight or an argument with you on any level, nor am I still searching for one.

But I will point out or remind, that he did admit to being provocative and snide and basically trying to bait Tom - which he succeeded in doing, along with me in the process. But clearly that's a non-issue for you (since he WAS being "pretty balanced" after all) beyond trying to get a dig in. A+ for effort to you on that count.

So in anticipation of your inevitable yet pointless reply, here's a suggestion; take your opinion and along with that reply and shove them for all I care. I'm quite done with this thread but you just go ahead and amuse yourself by spell-checking this post - doubtless, there's lots of life-fulfillment to be discovered by you here.

[Wokka]

Isn't this post about how poor the marketing is for ArchiCad is in Australia?

I'm with you Cornelius, I only signed up for the subsciption to get a reasonable upgrade cost spread over a year. The so-called freebies are useless! I suppose we should voice our displeasure directly to Graphisoft Australia.

Cheers guys

[stefan]

Wokka wrote:
Isn't this post about how poor the marketing is for ArchiCad is in Australia?

I'm with you Cornelius, I only signed up for the subsciption to get a reasonable upgrade cost spread over a year. The so-called freebies are useless! I suppose we should voice our displeasure directly to Graphisoft Australia.

Cheers guys

Oh no, someone put the thread back on topic!!!

It makes sense to discuss your considerations about resellers on this forum, especially as GS might hear it. And other resellers and end-users can relate to it.

The last time I made a negative comment on my local reseller, it was actually forwarded to them (might be because Djordje forwarded it to GS, IIRC), they reacted directly to me, I created a very long response (still have it somewhere) with all my gripes and that was it. Everybody is still where they were.

[Rakela Raul]

i believe there is an option now for 2 and 3 years of subscription.
im very much just putting away the boxes when the next version is by the door...dealing with libs again!