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What was your perception of the internal dynamics of the group during the Autodesk phase? Did it strike you as effective/likely to produce something?

Animats 9y ago
They had some really good people, but did seem to be spinning their wheels. It was completely separate from Autodesk. Xanadu had offices on California Avenue in Palo Alto; Autodesk was in Marin County. Autodesk was quite good at getting working software out the door, but that didn't reach Xanadu. Lack of an identified market was a big problem. One market that was considered was financial newsletters. There are lots of expensive newsletters you can buy which have extremely detailed coverage of something important to traders, such as what's happening at the Henry Hub or the Port of Rotterdam or in the Bahamas. These cost $50-$1000 a month. ("Offshore Alert", which covers scams run from tiny island countries, "Platts Oil Letter", which is now a big service, and the Dines Letter, for the gold bugs.) There was no centralized distribution for these, and they had tiny circulations. That didn't go anywhere. All of those are now on the Web as subscription products.
- keithpeter 9y ago
  Interesting observation - so there was some consideration of a specific information market rather than the 'Kinko's for information' idea that Nelson has described in the Wired article. It was more the development process that I was thinking of - the actual production of software, a working system. I take your point that Autodesk's programmers could certainly produce software. I was wondering if the Xanadu project was seen by Autodesk perhaps as a bit of a 'moon-shot', in the sense of low probability of success coupled with great potential.
  - Animats 9y ago
    I was wondering if the Xanadu project was seen by Autodesk perhaps as a bit of a 'moon-shot', in the sense of low probability of success coupled with great potential. Yes, it was. Autodesk has done a few of those. They were into virtual reality very early, before 1990. It turned out that doing CAD with gloves and goggles was like trying to paint wearing oven mitts. Precise positioning is tough. So they gave up on that. Getting into 3D animation worked out better. Autodesk itself did 3D Studio, and gradually acquired other 3D animation companies as they got into trouble. This worked out well, and there was crossover with the CAD business. The really good radioiosity renderer from one of the animation programs was connected to an architectural design program. Now you could place real light fixtures from a library and see the result before building the building and embedding light fixtures in concrete. Carl Bass, as CEO until last February, was into 3D printing. He thought home 3D printing was going to be a much bigger deal than it turned out to be. So Autodesk came out with several low-end CAD programs that were never very profitable and did a lot of work to make 3D printing easier. Not profitable. Bass is gone. Autodesk keeps plugging away at boring but useful stuff. Market cap around $25 billion. (I'm long out of Autodesk, although still a stockholder.)

Animats 9y ago

They had some really good people, but did seem to be spinning their wheels. It was completely separate from Autodesk. Xanadu had offices on California Avenue in Palo Alto; Autodesk was in Marin County. Autodesk was quite good at getting working software out the door, but that didn't reach Xanadu. Lack of an identified market was a big problem. One market that was considered was financial newsletters. There are lots of expensive newsletters you can buy which have extremely detailed coverage of something important to traders, such as what's happening at the Henry Hub or the Port of Rotterdam or in the Bahamas. These cost $50-$1000 a month. ("Offshore Alert", which covers scams run from tiny island countries, "Platts Oil Letter", which is now a big service, and the Dines Letter, for the gold bugs.) There was no centralized distribution for these, and they had tiny circulations. That didn't go anywhere. All of those are now on the Web as subscription products.

keithpeter 9y ago
Interesting observation - so there was some consideration of a specific information market rather than the 'Kinko's for information' idea that Nelson has described in the Wired article. It was more the development process that I was thinking of - the actual production of software, a working system. I take your point that Autodesk's programmers could certainly produce software. I was wondering if the Xanadu project was seen by Autodesk perhaps as a bit of a 'moon-shot', in the sense of low probability of success coupled with great potential.
- Animats 9y ago
  I was wondering if the Xanadu project was seen by Autodesk perhaps as a bit of a 'moon-shot', in the sense of low probability of success coupled with great potential. Yes, it was. Autodesk has done a few of those. They were into virtual reality very early, before 1990. It turned out that doing CAD with gloves and goggles was like trying to paint wearing oven mitts. Precise positioning is tough. So they gave up on that. Getting into 3D animation worked out better. Autodesk itself did 3D Studio, and gradually acquired other 3D animation companies as they got into trouble. This worked out well, and there was crossover with the CAD business. The really good radioiosity renderer from one of the animation programs was connected to an architectural design program. Now you could place real light fixtures from a library and see the result before building the building and embedding light fixtures in concrete. Carl Bass, as CEO until last February, was into 3D printing. He thought home 3D printing was going to be a much bigger deal than it turned out to be. So Autodesk came out with several low-end CAD programs that were never very profitable and did a lot of work to make 3D printing easier. Not profitable. Bass is gone. Autodesk keeps plugging away at boring but useful stuff. Market cap around $25 billion. (I'm long out of Autodesk, although still a stockholder.)