🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <423c56$flc@news.doit.wisc.edu>, "Ken Kriesel, Physical
Sciences Lab, UW-Madison" <kkriesel@facstaff.wisc.edu> wrote:

[snip]

: ANSYS and Autocad, to name two.  
: 
: The cost of converting from one such application to another can be
: more than the cost of the computing hardware, in data translation 
: effort, user retraining, or software license fees.  And that's assuming
: an equivalent can be found; I have yet to find a package that offers
: all that ANSYS does: finite element analyses of structures for effects
: of mechanical forces, electrical effects, magnetics, and other effects,
: singly or in combination, statically, dynamically, linear or nonlinear.
: (And that's not a complete list of what we've already used it for.)
: 
: If the PPC truly does develop a commanding speed advantage, ANSYS Inc
: will notice and port the program.  Hasn't happened yet though.

Into this fray, I throw an interesting side note (and, in the process,
thoroughly embarass my family).

My father quit Westinghouse to start Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc., the
company that wrote ANSYS, and he was responsible for much of the early
code.

He himself does not use a Macintosh.  All three of his sons own one
computer apiece -- and those computers are all Macintoshes.  We don't
qualify as novices, having literally lived with computers since 1972.  Yet
we, individually, all chose Macintoshes for our own computers.

On the ANSYS note (not that I am not an ANSYS representative, that I
haven't worked for Ansys for several years, and that most of wht follows
is overheard):

There was an ANSYS Macintosh port briefly -- sold for the IIfx.  It didn't
sell well.  Why?  Because the IIfx was not entrenched in the engineering
circles and because the Mac port didn't make a very good Mac program
(wasn't up to the HI standards of other Mac software).  It wasn't worth
the effort -- heck, desktop computers were barely worth the effort at the
time -- you really needed a mainframe for all but the most simple kinds of
work.

The question comes up now: does the company do another Mac port?  The 604
is selling well only in a Mac form; maybe in a few months, the 604 will
sell in quantity in another platform or CHRP.  The answer is likely no --
for the next few months.  604-based Macs are hard to get; a previous Mac
product did not sell well; the market is still young.  Will ANSYS do a
port to a 604 computer in the future?  I would say very likely.  Will that
product be a Mac?  Here the waters are more murky.  Much as I, personally,
love the Mac, I haven't seen evidence of Macs being adopted in numbers in
the engineering field.  If the 604 enables Apple to make very powerful
computers at a significant higher power/price ratio (for engineers) than
other companies -- and do it *in quantity* -- then we may see ANSYS Mac.

The question, for a Mac port, is one of who is established in a vertical
market, not how good the chip is.

Again, I am in no way a representative, official, or anything more than a
hanger-on to ANSYS, Inc.  This posting is entirely opinion, with only a
few dubious and outdated facts thrown in from heresay.

-Eric S.
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