Apple Acquires Silicon Grail

mac writes "Silicon Grail's web site has an interesting update: it has been acquired by Apple. Their product RAYZ and Nothing Real's Shake are the two major products, as far as compositing software goes. Nothing Real was bought by Apple also back in February. With both companies held by Apple, who will fill the void in the Windows and Linux?"

Comments

No Worries

[donnacha]

With both companies held by Apple, who will fill the void in the Windows and Linux?

From the May story:

...in an email sent out to Shake users, Apple has declared that Irix and Linux versions will be developed at least through 2003.

No doubt they'll apply the same sort of schedule to Rayz and then stick both packages into some sort of suite, available on Windows and Linux in the same way that QuickTime is.

Or am I being ridiculously optimistic? Do I need to Think Different to understand Apple's financial decisions?

Interestingly enough

[Qwerpafw]

Though I don't think anyone as yet has made this point, it is (quite obviously) the crux of Apple's strategy with these software purchases.

Step 1: Purchase a company that makes widely used software and sells it for ridiculous prices.
Step 2: Make only minor changes to the software, and create a macintosh port.
Step 3: Release a very mac-optimized version, that takes advantage of everything macintosh. After a while, drop the price a whole bunch, and cut support for non-mac versions, or alternatively, just don't cut the price for the non-mac versions.

Now, what this effectively does is make it so that the people who used to shell out big bucks for the software product now have two choices: find a new piece of software, or spend less money than they priviously wold have spent on an upgrade, and buy a powermac and the mac version of the software.

This is actually quite a brilliant strategy. Think of it this way: I use product x. Product x costs $20,000 and an upgrade costs $5,000. Product x is the core of my business. I use windows PCs to run product x. Now apple buys company x, who makes product x. Nothing changes for a few years. Product x's windows support is phased out, and the mac version's price is dropped to $2,000 for a new product, and $999 for an upgrade. I can now purchase a powermac for $5,000 and a product x upgrade to mac for $999 and end up spending only slightly more than I would have otherwise. Furthermore, in the future, upgrades will be very very cheap. Or, if I don't like apple, I can stop using product x, and instead use product y, which, since I never used it before, now costs $20,000, and has an entirely different interface...

See why Apple's strategy is smart?

Re:Interestingly enough

[donglekey]

You are damn right it is smart. I do 3D. If they bought Maya and dropped the price for the Mac version (even more) and also I could get a cheap copy of Shake, what would I be using ? A mac baby all the way. Actually if I did more compositing and they dropped the price of just Shake or Rayz that would be incentive enough to buy a Mac.