Apple Releases Shake 4.1, Drops Price To $499 110
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."
Market share not profits (Score:5, Insightful)
So Aperture got a price reduction, Shake has just dropped through the floor, and the machines are competitively priced... I was quoting "old" and "new" above because the guard hasn't really changed, but it seems the rules of engagement have been given a bit of a shake-up. I like the "new" Apple better, bodes well for things to come
Simon
Re:No Justification (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's look again at your "no possible way to justify" bullshit statement. If I develop a game, say Sims 2, I might sell a couple of million copies. At 50 bucks a copy, that's a healthy profit. If I develop, say, a motion compositing program used by animators and effects people, there might only be a couple of thousand people who even have any desire to use such functionality. I need to charge a lot more money to even recoup the costs of writing the software, let alone making a profit.
Economics of scale is a bitch.
Re:No Justification (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure there is, it's called "the market."
If people are willing to pay that price, it's justified.
Even at 500 dollars, I will just go and download it on mininova.
You're not their target market. I don't really think they care if you download it, since all it's likely to do is influence your buying decisions in the future (you or someone like you). However, a production studio of any size and legitimacy would not risk their entire business just to save $500 or $3000 on software.
Expensive software is exactly why people pirate stuff anyway. Why dont people learn this?
Why should they have to "learn this" when they are making money selling it at the prices they choose?
Just because you can't afford it or won't pay it doesn't mean no one's buying it.
Typical Slashdot user myopia. "If I'm not doing it, no one is!"
If you sell your stuff cheaper, people will actually BUY it.
Yeah, why not give it away for free and make your profits up in volume?!
Re:No, not MacBook. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No Justification (Score:4, Insightful)
Expensive software, at least the kind that people use to make money with, is expensive for the most part because the seller is trying to capture some fraction of the revenue you will make from using it. If you are downloading it from mininova you most likely aren't trying to make a buck off it. In that case, a smart vendor probably looks the other way at that kind of piracy because it increases the user base at no real cost.
Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Part of the requirement for being part of the elite is to *act* like a member of the elite. Don't apologize; indeed, you haven't. But if you want to graduate to the elite of the elite, you need to stop waving your elite membership card around. For that is what separates the truly elite from the merely elite; the truly elite, the super elite if you will, know it shows and have no need to impress their eliteness upon the lower classes.
Re:Universal? Why??? (Score:2, Insightful)
One button mixed message (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a 1337 thing, it's a business thing. When powerful software gets into the hands of the untrained, the trend seems to be that it lowers the value of the services of people who do know what they are doing.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that people will get a chance to use Shake (and software like it). But look at the trend in the design world. As the barrier to entry is lowered, so is the quality of work as well as the value of that work (over the entire industry).
I can't tell you how many times I've heard agencies say "We don't need to use a post house, we have Final Cut Pro now." Only they can't attract the tallent or experience that a post house has. Taken one step further, there was a client of an agency we work with who decided to get FCP and some cameras and drop the agency all together. Only now their commercials are stuck with a 4-year-old campaign (that's starting to look dated), their tallent looks like he's aged about 15 years because of poor lighting, and the editing and graphics are lacking.
I'm not saying the price drop in Shake is entirely bad, just that it will bring in more people who think they know what they're doing, when really they have no idea. And suddenly the professionals who have been using it for quite some time look like they're gouging their clients because some kid in his mom's basement can get the same tools.
Oh, and to anyone who says "Hey, your business model should be changing to fit the market." That's not the issue, it's that the market thinks our services should be cheaper because Timmy, the VP's nephew can do the same thing because he has a computer with FCP/Shake/Photoshop/whatever. They for some reason don't realize that experience and training go a long way.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice price drop (Score:3, Insightful)
...and to think, you were marked as "friend."
See my post above. If people know what they are doing, great! We need more tallent out there. The issue comes in when people think that a tool makes the artist; when people think "hey, I can get Shake now. That's all I need!" and never follow up with either getting training, or getting beyond the basics and labeling themselves as composite artists/designers/editors.
Let's move the example a little closer to home. Take web design. It is very cheap to design and host web sites now. How many times have you seen sites and thought "who the hell designed/coded this?" Chances are, it's someone who has got the tools, never learned to use them, never read a book on design or coding, labeled themselves as a web developer/designer, and charged far less than any professional or even semi-professional designer/coder would have. Hey, I like to tinker with web design/programming too. I just don't announce myself to the world as a web developer/designer.
Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
what i've found more often than bad designers lowering the price of business is bad designers charging as much as good designers for bad work. thereby making clients appreciate good work even more when they pay the same price for it. not too many folks want to make the investment of time and money to learn shake (or photoshop or indesign in my case) in order to make just a little bit more than they currently make. they want to get into those fields because they pay well and, hopefully, they enjoy that type of work.
Re:No Justification (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would you do that? You clearly don't know what Shake is, or who uses it, or why it costs what it does. What use would you have for it?
Re:One button mixed message (Score:2, Insightful)
No, you are confused. The iMac comes with a one-button mouse that can click two ways depending on where your fingers are. The MacBook comes with a one-button trackpad that can click two ways depending on where your fingers are.
Re:Yes, it runs (on) Linux! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
1. They get what they pay for.
2. They kid in his mom's basement will be just as good as the professionals (if not better) in 5-10 years.
3. Competition is good.
Now go beat the pants those kids.
Re:Yes, it runs (on) Linux! (Score:5, Insightful)
No they didn't. And, really truly it doesn't matter. The price drop here is to try to attract users of other software, like Autodesk Discreet Flame or the Avid DS-Nitris [avid.com]. The former runs about $80,000 for a full workstation and the latter is $125,000.
Apple here is unbundling render farm licenses and providing potential users with a look-see that is designed to sell Macintosh computers. The Mac version works better with Apple's Motion, so you can see that this is being marketed at the hobbyist and the very small studio with lots of time to render (on one machine, rather than a farm).
The high end motion picture and feature people who are working at film resolution totally don't care about a relatively minor price drop like this. They're willing to pay what they're willing to pay to get their job done. Is it cheaper than film processing? Yes? OK, let's invest. They don't care if it's cheaper now, they care that their visual effects artist knows the application. And they'll be buying whatever their VFX artist knows (and recommends).
So you can see this in two ways:
Apple is selling hardware by reducing the Mac-only cost.
Apple is trying to seed more people who know the application into the stream of up-and-coming VFX artists
Either way looks good for Apple.
Disclosure: I use Avid's DS-Nitris for compositing for a national television network in the United States.
Re:Yes (Score:1, Insightful)
Just because you've got the tangible goods that professionals use to do their job doesn't make you a pro. People don't consider themselves master chefs when they buy a nice set of pots and pans, why do the same with the creative arts?
Re:Yes (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure any dickhead can pirate a copy of CS2 and diddle around with some layouts. Put an an art school graduate with an illustration and design background behind the same computer and wow what a differnce! They understand color, typography, composition, etc. There are lots of garage albums recorded in shitty studios that somehow trancend poor production values, but that can't be relied on. How do you know if the world will think you are a genius or just some schmuck with a bunch of toys and too much time?
The right tools for the job holds true here:
If it is a small job or a test, we edit in house. If this is real commercial that will be seen on national TV, we get a top shelf director, cut it at a first rate edit house, etc. etc. Heck, if the director wants to shoot on film even, the budget's the limit !
Low price does not prevent piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
That is complete nonsense. People will pirate if they can do so easily. It is as simple as that. As you make piracy more complicated, sales rise. That is why there is a thriving successful industry offering software copy protection even though the security is easily defeated by a small number of more technically capable users. The latter are irrelevant.
An example. I once worked on commercial software that was bundled with a college textbook. It was well regarded software used in the industry. We were nice and didn't use copy protection. The academic version was US$15 with the coupon shrinkwrapped to the textbook. At numerous campus bookstores the software sales volume was 10% of the book despite being required for classwork. The next quarter we had an upgraded version and used one of the lowest cost software based security products available. The sales volume increased to 90% that of the book despite there being no shortage of crack programs. Sorry, but low price doesn't work, copy protection software does.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes, it runs (on) Linux! (Score:3, Insightful)
You are 100% right that Apple's strategy is to sell more boxes. They create killer applications and sell them in a manner that will encourage the purchase of more Macs.
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.
I disagree that Shake is never used in a facility with someone looking over one's shoulder. Art Directors insinuate themselves into every process in the world I work in, and a Shake compositing suite is definitely one of them. I would argue that the Shake-FCP workflow is a little bit of a problem for that because, with art directors, one tends to get a person who cannot visualize how everything is going to come together. I would prefer to never have to deal with them, though I might be tempted were they to be outfitted with a shock collar that will stun them whenever they become excessively stupid (which tends to happen within five minutes of their entry).
If you are working more on film and less on television, I do see your point. Editors and Compositors are taken seriously in that realm and are offered respect and status. I tend to work with television, where we're generally viewed as scum that does not substantially add to the product.
My primary tool is the Avid DS-Nitris. The workflow on the DS is superior to that on Shake-FCP as you can edit as you composite. Some of the tools on the Autodesk boxes are outstripping the Avid product presently, which is causing some consternation within the ranks of DS artists. Apple's Shake has a better blue/green screen keyer and so do the Autodesk tools, there are issues with the way the DS handles premultiplied and non-premultiplied keys that cause us problems, but we do get on the air pretty fast with a DS where I don't think the Apple solution could deliver.
I have added you as a friend. Your comments are insightful and based on reality.