I am beginning to doubt that it could happen this decade. I bought Archicad in 2005 and with each never version I was hoping that the GUI would be updated to OSX standards released in 2001. Well it never happened in that decade and now no compliance with Lion and I suspect it is impossible without a major rewrite to have unified and full screen mode.
You see, I have a Macbook with I sometimes attach to a 23" LCD. If I close the lid to my Macbook with a saved Archicad file still open, hoping to pick up where I left off on the bigger screen. When I do get back on the larger screen I have to go to the saved environment setting for each monitor which by the way has too many dialog boxes to invoke. Sometimes even this is not enough to prevent window borders from getting hidden and tucked under the top icon menu bar of the gui frame. The problem is that is all of these separate magnetic menu bars and toolboxes. This is an old pre-OSX convention and is now very counterproductive. OSX has long had unified app windows and now with Lion it is being put to full use with full screen mode.
I just don't understand why they continue to ignore this in Budapest. It is like they just don't care and do not intend to get with the modern Mac. We need to set up some protest to show we are serious as users.
Funny we have to beg daddy like a family of starving children. I would choose Revit if I wanted to give up the Mac but I can't bear to do it. Here is a customer using stale software just so he can use a Mac. Why would anyone use Archicad over Revit if they are on Windows - just to be marketable. There are some nice things about Archicad but fighting the Revit tide does not seem worth it. Alas, I have no choice...
I do imagine soon I will have a choice to run Revit in the cloud on a Mac. I have also heard that Autodesk are making their products platform agnostic and will run in the browser of sorts.
I have a nice workflow in Archicad and not really wanting to switch. I would rather Archicad get better... and more capable in the marketplace.
Archislave:
The way GS codes AC it is clear it is ported to each platform from base code, so os specific optimizations are unlikely.
Also re Revit for your money get a Win7 pc for that and a MacBook air for everything else! Best of all worlds....
I think they are just using some old shell to export the base into like the carbonized version of OS9 maybe. Anyway, there are plenty of modern OSX apps that are concurrently developed in windows. All of these are suited to their OS's and appear to use the latest api's. Look at how fine the OSX Autocad GUI appears.
I run Revit 2011 on my MacBook pro using Windows and VM Ware. Works fine but would still rather use Archicad on Mac OS. Yes there are short comings but try Revit using Workshare and you'll realise the speed benefits of Teamwork 2. The Save to Central in Revit is veeerrrryyyy sloooowwww
I starting to think that Graphisoft just does not have the staff and resources to compete. Not sure they will ever be able to fix these things and are in denial. It is sad as they loose market share. I do care because I would hope for a competition with Autodesk and so far they do not make a Mac BIM product. Maybe this reprogramming to cloud based tools will solve it. Just like Autocad WS maybe we will have a future Revit WS or some other cross platform BIM.
There is a large architectural firm in my home town that the software of choice for any project is the decision of the project director, be it AutoCAD, Revit or Archicad. One project director gave a presentation at a recent Archicad 15 launch. Their use of Archicad is on the increase finding it more efficient for large complex projects for a number of reasons but mainly, I suspect, because of the efficiencies gained with Teamwork2. This is interesting for someone who uses Revit in my ‘day job’.
