Eagle is painfully backwards in a FEW KEY ways.
Namely, the method of saving and opening/finding/renaming files is super weird. I still don't know if I'm doing it right.
Also, group cutting and pasting/deleting is clearly different.
There are a few other quirks, but those two things were some of the hardest for me to get over.
But once you get over those major affronts to your higher sensibilities, the meat and potatoes of the software is actually quite powerful and intuitive, and it doesn't take the latest quadcore processor to use it.
Making custom library parts/footprints is a chore, though. Grab a sheet of paper and a calculator. Every time. But you get used to that. Actually, I like using abosolute coordinates and think Eagle has this part right. Every datasheet
could include absolute coordinates for the center of each pad, given any arbitrary origin or arbitrary pad as the origin. Providing a location/dimension only relative to another location, relative to another location, etc, etc, is sorta stupid in my own way of thinking.
I have heard complaints about other things, such as how polygons are prioritized. It makes perfect sense to me, and I don't actually understand how else you would expect to overlap multiple polygons are have any control over the outcome?
One potential disadvantage for a MAC user is that the right mouse click is very handy in Eagle.
Big upfront hurdle in Eagle: making library parts for your devices/components. Because making them is a PITA, but it is still probably easier than finding ones that work.
I've tried several others. The "backwardness" of Eagle is all relative, and among top design software, Eagle is in fairly good standing in this regards. They are all unintuitive and difficult if you have never used them before! If other softwares are more intuitive than Eagle, maybe it's because maybe they are more similar to each other than to Eagle?
Based on what numbers? It might be a de facto standard for hobby projects
I have heard this bandied around, as well, and I don't see how any software could be considered the "standard" in the industry. The only standard are Gerber274x files. So I always thought this "defacto standard" thing is meant to be applied to the actual manufacturers (rather than designers like you or me). Not that manufacturers necessarily need pcb design software, but it seems like some of them will accept design files, directly, with EAGLE.brd files being the main one. Maybe I'm totally wrong.