My Mini Mac is just 1.5 years old, and in OS X time that's like 9.0 Windows years. When I got it in March a year ago, the Mini came with OS X 10.6. Since then, Apple has released 10.7 and 10.8 -- kind of like buying a PC with XP, and then Microsoft getting around to releasing Windows Vista and 7 over the next nine years.
Anyhow, I had an interview scheduled with Autodesk over Inventor Fusion for Mac, but the software won't run on 10.6, and I figured I better try out the software before speaking with Kevin Schneider, though I wasn't keen on paying Apple $22.40 (with tax) for an OS upgrade that some were warning causes fresh problems, but then my daughter said she needed it on her MacBook (mine actually, but you know how these things go) and since Apple allows us to put the update onto three computers, I figured what the heck, that works out to just $11 each, and since I had a $10 credit on the iTunes stores, then the credit card bill would work out to $5.50 a pop, further the iTunes gift card was one of those from 7-Eleven that cost just $20 for the $25 card, and now the 4GB upgrade is $4. Wellll, $1/GB is one heck of a bargain for software (AutoCAD would then have the lowercase-d democratic price of $1.20), and anyhow that's how I rationalized it.
My daughter was w-a-a-y too busy to wait for a 4GB download onto her computer, so I read the Interweb on how to download once, then install 10.8 onto more than computer. Apple says you can, but ain't gonna help you, so some nice fella' wrote a script: download OS X 10.8; don't install it (because it erases itself after the download, which is Apple's perfect way); run the script, which copies the download to an 4GB SD card and generates the installer; run the installer from the SD card. Pretty straight forward, just took hours and hours of mowing the big lawn and painting trim while waiting for it to finish. Well, that's okay, 'cause I barely use the Mac Mini anyhow, mainly fire it up once in a while and check for software updates, or mebe get screen grabs from Acad/Mac for the occasional ebook I get around to writing.
So where was I? Oh yah: don't install Mountain Lion. Mountain Lion works great, got that creepy screen thing it does when you mouse into the one corner. My daughter says its kind of weird, the new stuff. Installed Inventor Fusion fine, played with it, done the interview and all.
So yesterday I finally got time to work some more on my incomplete Tailoring AutoCAD 2013 for Windows and OS X ebook, and fired up the Mac Mini to get some screen grabs of Acad/Mac 2013's Tool Sets. But AutoCAD complains about a path path, chugs along some more, actually quite a long time more, does the fatal error thing, and provides no solution after I submit the failure report.
Hmmm... obvious first thing to try is the 2012 version. Same thing; this time, Autodesk recommends a service pack, but only because it is available, not because it fixes the problem. After trying to start 2013 some more times, I figure well something got corrupted disk-wise seeings how it cannot find the file it needs during startup, and so I uninstall 2013, reinstall it, except that doesn't fix things either.
By now some 1.5 hours been wasted, it's getting close to supper, my wife wants to take me for my walk, and no AutoCADs are running on my Mac Mini with the best operating system ever or something like that. It's gotten to be the time where I break down and ask for help from someone else by searching support.autodesk.com to find that AutoCAD for Mac is incompatible with Mac OS X 10.8.
Yah, so go figure. Inventor Fusion won't run on 10.6; AutoCAD won't run on 10.8. And then people have the gall to whinge about fragmentation on Android. Save your twenty bucks, boys and girls.
(PS: So right about now the cloudy-eyed folks are going be going, "See, if you were running AutoCAD on the cloud, the fix would be fixed in minutes." No, seriously: you gotta go over to Matt Lombard's still fairly excellent blog and read what the cloud-has-no-flaws crows are cawing about how patches will be darn near near-instant in nirvanaCAD.)
DIGITAL JUICE
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