Apple Releases Shake 4.1, Drops Price To $499

chasingporsches writes "Today, Apple released the long-awaited Universal Binary version of Shake, their high-end compositing application. Its new version is 4.1 and is available from their online store or as a crossgrade from version 4.0 for $49. The price of Shake has been dropped significantly, from $2999 to $499. (Educational version is $249.) The minimum system requirements imply that this could run on any new Mac, including the iMac, Mac mini, MacBook Pro, and MacBook, as well as older PowerPC-based Macs."

Yes, it runs (on) Linux!

[richdun]

Linux

* 1GHz (or faster) Pentium III, Pentium 4, or AMD Athlon processor or faster
* Fedora Core 4
* 512MB (or more) of RAM
* 1GB hard disk space for disk cache
* Workstation-class graphics card, such as NVIDIA Quadro2 or Quadro4
* Display with 1280-by-1024-pixel resolution and 24-bit color
* Three-button mouse

Well, it runs on Fedora Core 4, but whatever.

No, not MacBook.

[Swedentom]

Display with 1280-by-1024-pixel resolution and 24-bit color

MacBook doesn't have that.

Re:Yes, it runs (on) Linux!

[ptomblin]

Yeah, but they didn't reduce the price for the Linux version.

Re:Yes, it runs (on) Linux!

[clem.dickey]

Has Apple done prepackaged software for GNU/Linux before? Why Shake>

Apple purchased Shake's creator [slashdot.org] and dropped the Windows version but kept the Linux version, at least for now.

Re:No Justification

[mozumder]

You should see the EDA software we sell... $2million list price for CAD software to design chips.

And yet, there are very few pirates.

Here's the more interesting internal email...

[asparagus]

Apple will no longer be selling maintenance for Shake and no further
software updates are planned as we begin work on the next generation of
Shake compositing software. While we're excited about the innovations we can
bring in the future, we understand you have a business to run today that
requires Shake. To that end, we will provide all Maintenance customers with
the following three options:

A. Customers can continue with end-user e-mail support, as well as SDK
support for the duration of their Maintenance contract.

B. Customers may elect to cancel their Maintenance and receive a pro-rated
refund for the unused portion. Existing software licenses would continue to
function according to the Software License Agreement. Maintenance customers
that wish to cancel their contract must do so by July 23, 2006.

C. Additionally, Maintenance customers may choose to license the Shake 4.1
Source Code for $50,000. The Source Code license includes a 5,000 seat
volume license of Shake 4.1. This offer is designed to help facilities with
significant Shake investments maintain a reliable and controllable visual
effects pipeline. Maintenance customers that wish to license the Shake 4.1
Source Code must do so by July 23, 2006. Apple reserves the right to refuse
any maintenance customer source Code access.

I like shake, but it's never really fit in amongst the other Apple apps. But to EOL it for their (rumored) own app seems short-sighted. It's more likely people will migrate to Nuke [d2software.com] in the meantime, which has jumped ahead while Apple has mostly let shake wither on the vine.

A year since version 4, and we've got bug-fixes and an universal binary. Whee.

-b

Linux is their biggest market.

[delire]

From what I hear their biggest market is Shake on Linux, now a standard production platform in the feature film industry. I wonder if this is due to 64 bit systems being the favourite of big production houses, or whether it's because Linux is also more widely used in 3D animation and rendering roles. King Kong (pictured on the Apple site) was almost entirely made on Red Hat Linux machines running on IBM workstations AFAIK.

Re:Here's the more interesting internal email...

[Lars T.]

I like shake, but it's never really fit in amongst the other Apple apps. But to EOL it for their (rumored) own app seems short-sighted. It's more likely people will migrate to Nuke in the meantime, which has jumped ahead while Apple has mostly let shake wither on the vine.

Beg your pardon?

Apple will no longer be selling maintenance for Shake and no further software updates are planned as we begin work on the next generation of Shake compositing software.

Re:One button mixed message

[idiot900]

Two, actually - once you check the correct box in System Preferences, put two fingers on the trackpad and click the button to simulate a right click.

Re:Nuke doesn't support proxies?

[asparagus]

I've heard good things about version five of Digital Fusion. Sorry, don't know about Toxik either. Autodesk's entry into the vfx industry is interesting...they've bought a lot of good stuff, but I'm not so sure that sticking them all together is going to work quite so smoothly as they would hope. That's my theory that that's where Apple is ultimately aimed with all this, a shake/discreet/ae + san fcp-integrated beast. They've got the people, and if they're not working on shake (or motion) then here's hoping they're trying to make our lives easier.

-b

Re:Yes, it runs (on) Linux!

[pulse765]

Shake does not compete with the core business of Autodesk Flame/Inferno or DS-Nitris. They are very different animals. With Shake you are not going to sit down with a client behind you in the room and interactively change around your composite while the client makes comments, viewing changes on a broadcast monitor. Shake is not designed to work that way. Shake is a fantastic tool for dealing with complex shots - which tend to exist mostly in the feature film world - but is not very client interactive. Clients are (currently) still paying big bucks for the interactive tools mentioned above to complete jobs on an hourly basis, complete with an online edit and everything.

In the business we have been wondering about this move by Apple. It's generally being viewed as a good thing but it brings into question the future of Shake. In an email sent out, apple includes this interesting tidbit:

"C. Additionally, Maintenance customers may choose to license the Shake 4.1
Source Code for $50,000. The Source Code license includes a 5,000 seat
volume license of Shake 4.1. This offer is designed to help facilities with
significant Shake investments maintain a reliable and controllable visual
effects pipeline. Maintenance customers that wish to license the Shake 4.1
Source Code must do so by July 23, 2006. Apple reserves the right to refuse
any maintenance customer source Code access."

This is aimed squarely at facilities like Weta Digital, who currently have (so I've heard) hundreds of Linux shake licenses. At $50,000 would take care of all the licenses they would ever need and all they would need is a Mac to run it on. Access to the source code would put them in a better position to expand their custom shake plugins and integration into their pipeline. The idea being that Weta and companies like them would be inclined to buy more macs. Apple is first and foremost a hardware company....

Just my .02 from within the VFX realm....

-pulse

Re:One button mixed message

[Finque]

iBooks for awhile now (memory says since late 2004, I could be off) have had trackpads that supported scrolling. Using iScroll 2 [rwth-aachen.de], you can enable the two-fingered-right-click, along with good customization of the scrolling.