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Dave and Chris celebrate their 555th show by doing a live Q&A recording. There was also a video version:
#555 – Timing is Everything
The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast
A weekly show about the trends in the electronic industry.
Kia recalls 147,000 Seltos and Soul vehicles for fire risks… Its not only EV that catch fire!
Dave is right about Kicad vs Altium. I gave Kicad a really good chance to win me over and I ended up deciding that life was just too short to spend it banging away in Kicad trying to do things I can do in Altium without any effort.
When a person (not me for sure) who designs complex PCBs all day every day develops seriously high levels of skill and efficiency they can deliver a polished product very quickly. I could just not get over the level of effort required to fine tune a design with Kicad.
Its not a fair contest granted as I would need to invest the same time into both tools to truly compare them. Again who would be bothered doing that?
This effect is known as primacy bias. All people compare subsequent alternatives to their first and then even in the absence of any real difference are much more likely to prefer the first.
In my case my first was Mentor Graphics an nothing since compares with what you can do with that. Altium now days is pretty awesome so its my choice now based on features/price.
If you want to make a living you need to produce quality quickly. You need a tool with a lot invested in it.
No amount of sharpening and skill will make a saw made from cheap steel into a good tool that makes sense for a professional to own. A cheap saw can be a good choice if you are only doing odd jobs.
The original question was never addressed though.
Will Kicad end up eating Altiums lunch?
Its a real possibility and I think Altium need to rethink how they make their product available to hobbyists and professionals who use it occasionally.
Their subscription model may help but I think they seriously have underestimated the threat. Kicad is still an attractive option.
Good analysis and thanks for sharing your experience! The points about workflow are something I try to focus on when I’m talking with the development team. They are already in that mindset, being EEs themselves, but there is a lot of history with KiCad that must be carried along.
I agree with your final points about whether there is truly a threat. I think it will be more like the situations described in “The Innovators Dilemma” where low cost upstarts gain market share and the higher margin companies they’re competing against don’t consider it a big enough threat. As the market share of the upstart grows, so do resources that go towards improving it. And you don’t get much lower cost than ‘free’.