According to Jetpack site statistics, these were the most viewed posts on this blog of 2016. Many of them are from previous years. Note that these stats began being collected in May when the blog became active again so the list doesn’t cover the entire year.

1. AutoCAD 2012 – Putting things back to “normal” (April 2011)
2. AutoCAD 2011 – Putting things back to “normal” (March 2010)
3. Disaster in progress – Autodesk’s all-rental plans are failing (June 2016)
4. Why AutoCAD for Mac is a bad idea (May 2009)
5. AutoCAD 2017 – Putting things back to “normal” (July 2016)
6. What is loaded at AutoCAD startup, and when? (September 2008)
7. Olympic Fencing – Mythbusting the Shin v Heidemann Controversy (August 2012)
8. Autodesk perpetual license owners to get screwed big-time (December 2016)
9. Autodesk desktop app. Worst. Name. Ever. Is the product better than the name? (May 2016)
10. AutoCAD 2010 – Putting things back to “normal” (June 2009)
11. AutoCAD 2013 – Download the trial without Akamai (March 2012)
12. Battle of the Bullshit part 1 – Bentley’s terminological inexactitudes (August 2016)
13. Battle of the Bullshit part 2 – Autodesk’s sophistry (August 2016)
14. Restoring Hatch double-click in AutoCAD 2011 (May 2010)
15. Any Autodesk/Akamai people care to explain this? (March 2011)
16. AutoCAD 2009 – Putting things back to “normal” (March 2008)
17. Disaster in progress – Autodesk continues to lose heavily (September 2016)
18. AutoCAD 2017 Service Pack 1 is out but you probably don’t want to install it (July 2016)
19. Battle of the Bullshit part 4 – Bentley tells the truth (October 2016)
20. BricsCAD V17 – the best AutoCAD upgrade in years? (November 2016)

I can understand why most of the items on this list are relatively popular, but I am struggling to understand why my 2009 thoughts on a then-possible future AutoCAD for Mac remain such a reader magnet. It’s not a measurement aberration; I often see the same thing in daily traffic reports and my domain-level statistics that use a different measurement method. Lots of people really do keep reading that post.

If you’re a Mac user, don’t bother; download the software and try it instead. Draw your own conclusions rather than relying on my speculation (even though it turned out to be largely correct, with a couple of exceptions). You’ll probably fall into one of these camps.

• It’s on a Mac, therefore it’s wonderful.
• It may not be great, but it’s on a Mac so we shouldn’t complain. Be grateful for what we have.
• OK, it’s way short of the functionality Windows users have, but Autodesk will get round to fixing it up any year now.
• It’s a half-baked rip-off and Autodesk is playing us for suckers.
• I’m using BricsCAD for Mac, it’s way better than this, more fully compatible with real AutoCAD than Autodesk’s effort, yet a fraction of the cost.

Similar story with the post about downloading AutoCAD 2013 without Akamai. Given that we’re talking about software 5 releases old, downloading without Autodesk’s awful Akamai-infested download manager is obviously still really important to quite a few people. Several thousand every year, in fact. For downloading more recent software without having to battle against a mechanism that sucks donkey balls, those people should refer to this post instead.