We briefly touched on new Civil 3D releases, upgrades, service packs, and our projected behavior last time. Maybe I should have said these two posts go together like Whine and Cheese.
Yes, and now there’s already a Hotfix for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2014, but only if you’re in the new Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-bit operating system. That OS is faster, leaner, and meaner and maybe not quite so annoying to us. We are the often touch-deprived, huddled masses.
“Touch Me Feel Me”
Speaking of Touch and its impact on our AutoCAD world, touch interface and the affect on our work would have been one of my chosen futurist and unexpected topics at AU 2013. However, this year I decided not to submit or speak for the first time in a long time. That’s unexpected. Sorry folks (and to the kind fans who’ve asked), by now you’ve obviously discovered there will be no People Skills seminars or workshops at Autodesk University either. This year I will miss that and you all too. You can see the past People presentations on AU Online. If you go to AU in Dec, hoist a brew for me.
“He has such a supple wrist. How do you think he does it? I don’t know. What makes him so good?”
I perhaps don’t think the touch UI will manifest itself quite the way you might. Oh, I trust you’ll get touch in AutoCAD apps real soon now. That merely replaces the mouse functionality in a clunky way. As Windows 8 has aptly demonstrated, many will resist. We use Qwerty keyboards for a reason that has no reason. Your kids won’t and don’t resist. Kids don’t share our adult “issues”.
How does this change? The smart people would say,
“We must go after their neuroplasticity in another way.”
Huh?
It’s About Visual Focus not Finger Pointing
I’d bet on the silicon and what we see today as Google Glass. This is also a matter of money, shareholder value, and market cap. Look for chipset makers to build plug in “sensory” processors – touch, vision, and speak are simply built in. Think of them as the video chipsets we know today. Soon these are added to everything and to the most important thing- you. Do such sensory wafers exist already? Hmmmm?
A Sense of Discontinuous Innovation
In today’s marketplace the Phone Lords want it in the phones. In the beginning the Phone Lords will probably get it and “win” according to the pundits of consumer tech. The silicon makers they do depend on for that edge and their forward motion may be able to spread the tech out FAST. That is an issue of platforms and food (value) chains. I won’t bore you with the emergent details.
By all of this I mean:
A smarter phone “accessory” will someday (sooner than you think) become more important than the phone appliance from OUR personal perspective. From a social, marketing perspective this will be a most significant thing.
App numerology, despite being the Apple of the Eye, is maybe not as important as integrated App functionality.
Ka Ching
Pay Attention to the Sound of Falling Money?
Why is Microsoft in the hardware space now? Surface and Kinect are a play but not the game.
What has Intel been doing about this for longer than most of us may imagine?
Note carefully what Samsung has been able to accomplish in the marketplace thanks to Apple and their own very hard work. Oh. Doesn’t Samsung have a flexible display surface too. Yikes!
What could be done with THAT? Maybe I should invest in hats, caps, tiaras, and a fashionista’s game of crowns? What headspace could imagine that status could be determined by headgear? A Nerdist?
What about Google you say?
“Search me for answers and trends all you who are forsaken…
and I will lead you back to your personalized expectations that you may be satisfied”
Speaking of the weather "Cloudy isn’t it?"
This seems to happen before storms and when I get all choked up by touchy-feely stuff.
“There has to be a twist”
I’d bet on the unexpected instead.
No so long ago you’d have to be a twit to expect Twitter’s bootstrap web interface to become the vogue prototype of Responsive website design. It did.
“That deaf, dumb, and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball.”
All of which brings us right back to you and that Service Pack 1 for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2014, AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013, or even AutoCAD Civil 3D 2012.
Happy beta-testing.
Siri is often kind enough to remind me of the task.
It’s always our job from all of their continuously developed perspectives.
You can now dismiss the final installation dialog box of your service pack install and
Get to Work
A special thanks to the Who. The rock opera “Tommy” seemed a most appropriate soundtrack.
Yes. I do need to find a better way to do the blog post soundtrack thing. It would be more fun.
“Pete. Pass me the popcorn-min.js.”
“What?”