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Please start producing REVIT for Mac. It is a must have application for architecture students and the mac industry occupies a huge part of the computer industry. We really need the software.
@kylem1701 I think it is an interesting discussion, but I think somebody needs to make a case for it with numbers. Just saying a lot of people use Mac doesn't work because people think "macOS is less than 10% marketshare" which does appear to be true. What is telling though is that iOS + macOS is about 23% of OS worldwide with Windows at 35% and Android at 37% or so.
The real potential issue is not Mac vs Windows vs Linux, it is what happens when the cheap, general compute compute power is gone because most people are using task-specific ARM architecture, such as iOS and soon to be macOS.
I think what we need to look at is how do we do what we want to do on all platforms--yes I'm talking about thin clients. Does it make sense? Probably not right now, but as bandwidth goes up, it starts to make more and more sense.
What does thin client mean? Remote desktop into system running Revit? Docker instance that runs on anything? Mabye a thin program that is relatively easy to maintain (not Java, please) that uses a powerful backend? Not sure, just throwing ideas out.
All that to be said, if someone is serious about asking Autodesk to commit millions of dollars to fork their product, someone needs to come up with a good business case for this. 🙂
@dplumb_BWBR just shutting down the conversation doesn't help, maybe try and have the conversation and effect change. You may not want it, but it may be useful in the long run. We need, as an industry, to look out farther than x86. It appears to be dying, what happens next?
I'll give you that, you didn't shut it down. But, just because it doesn't seem like a good idea now doesn't mean it's a bad idea to consider in the long run. Generally I agree a macOS-specific build (which I know is a huge understatement of what it takes to make it happen) is not a good way forward, but maybe there is a different idea that could be spurred from the conversations, especially as a big player (in marketing and name recognition) goes away from x86.
How is “never going to happen” not shutting down the conversation? And why wouldn’t a Mac build be a good idea? What makes Revit so special that every other app in the universe has a native Mac version, but it doesn’t? This desire on the part of Revit’s windows users to keep it exclusive is the exact kind of elitism Mac users are accused of.
@kylem1701@dplumb_BWBR please let's move past the "shutting down" comment, bad idea on my part. Let's focus on what could be.
@kylem1701 you may want to look into the complexities of programming. It is extraordinarily complicated, especially with a legacy code base. Keeping it exclusive isn't the point, the point is that it is complicated and already needs a lot more love and programming dedication that Autodesk can afford based on business models. Doubling that effort (which is effectively what it would be) and maintaining two code bases with two times the amount of bug reports for different this is probably not tenable right now, but, as I said, if someone really wants it, they should put together a business case for it. I'd like a bigger house on a large piece of property, but just wanting it doesn't make it a reality, I need to figure out how to do it--and so far I haven't been able to :).
@paul.erskine@dplumb_BWBR It kind of is about exclusivity. That's the general argument from the Revit user base at least. Mac's raw market share numbers are meaningless to the conversation. This isn't 1992. Billions of people own computers. 9% of billions is a hell of a lot. Plus Mac's market share demographic is heavily skewed. More people in creative fields are on the Mac platform. That marketshare has been enough to put every other piece of creative software, including Autodesk's own offerings, on the Mac. So that argument is moot. As @pendean said in another post Autodesk has no way of knowing who's using their product on Macs because all they sell is Windows licenses no matter what. Only a minuscule portion of them will post in this forum. All the more reason to be outspoken with requests.
@kylem1701 put together a business case as prove Autodesk wrong, that's probably how you'll effect change. It still doesn't negate the argument that it would be two code bases that Autodesk would have to maintain for the life of the product. Twice as much work. If they could justify the cost, maybe they would do it. They don't seem to want to try and justify the cost, so you should justify it for them.
For macOS, they would need to use Swift with a combination of custom UI and Swift UI. For Windows, they're probably using C++ with maybe some other things sprinkled in, such as C, C-Sharp, some assembly. You cannot just copy and paste between these and it'll magically work, there are many person-years of development that would be required to "build" a new verson.
9% of billions is a lot, let's take the high end and say 10B x 9% = 900 million for discussion sake. That is a lot of computers. How many of those would purchase Revit is the question. Answer that, and you may be on your way to getting Autodesk to listen.
I still don't think splitting the code base is the answer, I think there is a different answer: how to make Revit run on both (or all) through some sort of virtualization (just not Java, ever), be it Docker or some other form. The 2020WWDC keynote did everything on Apple Silicon showing the power of Rosetta 2. There may be enough power there to "natively" run Revit. Maybe Revit gets re-written for server-side code only and everyone has a "Rosetta" on whatever platform they choose to make it work. That would be more realistic than maintaining two code bases. This is even more possible as more things are hosted on BIM360, the underlying OS data storage isn't as critical.
Think of it this way, if your client came to you and said, "I want you to design your building using Revit and Microstation, but I won't pay you any more, just do it" would you? I guess it depends on how much you are being paid and how big of a client it is for you. Those need to be factored into these discussions and requests, which is why I keep coming back to, if you want it, make a business case.
Frankly, I don't care either way, as long as I get a few more electrical-specific features added to Revit. 🙂
Thanks for the detailed response, Paul. You are right on. I (for one) don't want to see Revit development grind to a halt for two years in order to create a parallel version for 13% of the market
I apologize if I'm coming across as snippy. I've posted my comments on this topic many times before.
As I've said in previous posts, we're much more likely to see a Browser-based (OS independent!) version of Revit before we see anything else.
In fact (I hope this is public knowledge) most of the beta testing for Revit is being done on a Frame-based system.
I am curious, though, what do people thing they're going to get with a "Mac Native Build"?
What's the advantage? Is it simply to avoid switching to Parallels or Boot Camp?
Or do you think your going to get a Revit that works like every other Mac app? Because you're probably going to end up with something that looks like a Windows app running on your Mac. Reworking the entire UI is probably almost as much effort as rebuilding the underpinnings of the program itself.
If I had to guess Autodesk already has done this cost analysis and that is why they said they are not making a Mac version. While the Mac population is most certainly growing worldwide Mac is still hovering around 12% of all computer users. If only 12% of the computer population uses Mac then only 5% of those Mac users want Revit there might not even be 50,000. It is easy to see that the demand for it is really low, in four years this post has not even received 3000 votes. That further pays credence to the lack of Mac users that need or want Revit to function natively.
macOS ACAD? Autodesk has had many years to create a new Revit for Macs especially Mac Pro on Intel Xeon. They didn’t. Why? Revit Windows is based on MS Game GPU in XBox for 3D Graphics & motion. Apple uses 3 different GPUs & Metal XCode.
i would like to have a MAC, because the batterie-life is much better then for all windows-laptops. I would use MAC but yes, i have two win-laptops. 😞 so I am a part of the ~90% WIN-Users, like would change to MAC
What are you even saying, Revit is based on .net API and Direct X both created long before the first Xbox. Apple uses lots of different GPUs over the years, the new mac pro has 3 however, together with the current iMac and iMac pro use another 5 combined different GPUs.
That might be true when running a low powered GPU laptop and will be the case with the new apple silicon. However, if you are running with a high powered GPU you are going to burn the battery no matter what.
I mentioned this earlier but it's even more applicable now that Apple is moving toward Arm processors. The Microsoft .net framework, which revit consumes, has a new release coming out soon. This .net 5.0 release will allow for a single application to be written that can be run natively on:
There is some minor work to do converting from .net 4.8 to 5.0 but it's not a rewrite by any stretch. Obviously there's a lot under the hood of Revit but I think the writing is on the wall that frameworks are developing to the point where one can write it once and install it everywhere.
@dplumb_BWBR@paul.erskine I don't know what's hard to understand about not wanting to boot into a VM or a totally different operating system. You also have to actually buy a license of Windows to do either. Making MacOS users happy on the interface side is not as hard as you think. It only means moving the menu bar from the window itself to a bar at the top of the screen and getting rid of any app containers so that windows are free floating. And even that's not necessary. Cinema 4D just got around to doing this with version 21. Again, 13% of the market is not necessarily the right number to be looking at. And even then, 13% of users wanting something is more important than singular users and their pet features. Honestly, the answer to every idea in this forum should be "give me a break, who cares. Prove anyone needs this." It's not even in the same league.
I also don't understand why this splitting of the code base is so hard if it's done for literally everything else in existence. If MacOS was some kind of seriously niche OS that nobody coded for at all what you're saying would make sense. But no one is asking for the Amiga version of Revit. I don't need to make a case study to show that every other major application including those from Microsoft, are worth porting to a major operating system. You're just being purposefully obtuse because a port doesn't matter to you personally.
I am not sure if merely converting it from .net 4.8 to 5.0 would do it though it would be awesome. Revit is old and who knows how much of the original non-autodesk Revit code is still floating around. For a while now it is been fairly easy to code something once and compile it for each discipline. But that is when it was coded that way from the start. Unreal will not let you compile on a Mac a game that runs on windows. However, you can save your project and open it on windows and compile it.
@kylem1701 I'm going to change what I said. Can you reach out to Cinema 4D and ask them what their experience was? May be we will discover something we don't understand! I'm always willing to learn.
