Shake 2.5 for Mac OS X Half Off

dtype writes "Now we can begin to see where some of Apple's latest purchases are heading. Shake 2.5 for Mac OS X was announced today. It is notable that the Mac OS X version costs half as much as versions for other operating systems, and that current customers have the option of doubling their current number of licenses at no cost by migrating to Mac OS X." Mac OS X 10.2 will be required, so add $120 to the cost of each license, too. It's still a bargain at just over $5,000, though.

Comments

i think that'll make people switch

[cheezus]

The price difference between the linux/windows version and the OS X version is about $5000. You can buy one really nice new pimped out pro mac with that kind of money. My guess is they are tempting current shake users to make the "switch"

Re:i think that'll make people switch

[chrismear]

This doesn't seem like a bad tactic on the part of Apple to get some film studios to use Macs more. There was some worry that Apple would simply discontinue the Windows/Linux versions, and force people to switch in order to stay upgraded and supported.

Also, I'm pretty certain that the $5000 Mac price is a discount off the original price, rather than the Windows/Linux prices being hiked up from the original price. All in all, it seems a pretty decent policy, IMHO.

Re:I don't know...

[foobar104]

First of all, I think you need to look up the words ``competition'' and ``monopoly.'' I do not think they mean what you think they mean.

Apple's competition is Dell, IBM, and other makers of Windows PCs, and to a much lesser extent, SGI and other makers of Unix workstations. Nothing Real isn't Apple's competition.

And a monopoly is a situation in which only one source exists for a class of product or service. It's not meaningful to talk of monopolies on single products. You could say that Apple now has a monopoly on Shake... but that would be a meaningless statement. If every other compositor-- including things like After Effects and, hell, Photoshop and Microsoft Paint-- ceased to exist, then Apple would have a monopoly on compositing tools. But that's not the case, and it's not bloody likely to happen.

And as far as .mac goes, I for one would rather see Apple stay solvent and profitable (I'm a shareholder). They were losing money big-time on iTools, because it was far more popular than they expected it to be. It was either turn it into a for-pay service, or dump it entirely. I agree completely that the current situation isn't wonderful, but I consider it the lesser of two evils.

Re:I don't know...

[MrResistor]

Apple has had the advantage in video ever since Amiga died. There are a lot of video hardware manufacturers that only make hardware for Mac because the QuickTime framework makes it so easy to do so.

That said, though, I think that this move with Shake is an indication that Apple is coming to the realization that it may not matter given the fact that Apple is currently losing the hardware race.

I'm not writing Apple off, but I think it's time to recognize that IBM/Motorola aren't supporting them. PPC, despite being superior on a clock-for-clock basis, is now so far behind on clock speed that said superiority is no longer enough. My advice would be to start porting OS X to a 64-bit arch now. Naturally, I'd love to see OS X on Hammer, and it seems like that is the more likely choice, but considering that Apple has no legacy x86 code to support, maybe Itanium would be a better choice for them?