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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."
Shake is going mainstream (relatively speaking).
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
Min Requirements say 1ghz cpu. Darn, this couldn't run on the Frozen CPU
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.
The product's mascot?
It looks as though Apple is really going for the jugular in terms of wanting market share. The "old" Apple would have kept the price high and raked in the profits, the "new" Apple price hardware and software keenly (still with a slight premium if you don't want the h/w extras that come with a Mac), but still far cheaper than they used to be.
:-)
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
Physicists get Hadrons!
heir high-end compositing application
Misread this as a composting application. I knew you mac boys like to think different, but my ten dollar garbage can, month old table scraps and watering can are more than enough for this type of job.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Display with 1280-by-1024-pixel resolution and 24-bit color
MacBook doesn't have that.
Sig Nature
on the frozen PC's 500Ghz processor, 300Ghz at room temperature... quite a bit faster than the 1Ghz requirement. Emphasis added for clarity.
You aren't exactly the target market for Apple to sell shake to. This isn't a home user software package - it's a high end pro package. And with that high end pro price tag comes high end pro service. A production shop that actually needs this kind of software to do real work will gladly pay a couple grand for a software package for the support that comes along with it. Plus, when you're using hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of computers to do your editing, shake doesn't look so expensive anymore.
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.
There is no possible way to justify software costing 3 Grand.
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?!
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
it does run on a 12" powerbook... cramped but usable...
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
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.
It'll be interesting to see whether or not this will lure them into using Macs. Even though Apple have traditionally owned the graphic design and a large segment of the video editing market, they haven't made much of an inroad into movie visual effects where Windows and Linux dominate. This price drop might pay for half a workstation to it certainly lowers the risk for companies considering using Macs.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Am I the only one that thinks this is a bad idea?
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.
Infuriate left and right
Well, since their entire line of computers is moving to the Intel chips, it would only make sense to develop your software for the chips that will be in your computers. I didn't think it was that difficult to understand.
Slashdot: where repeating an article in a post is "+5 Insightful"
The iMac comes with a two button mouse with scroll button. The MacBook still has only a single button. Apple is confused.
Infuriate left and right
You should see the EDA software we sell... $2million list price for CAD software to design chips.
And yet, there are very few pirates.
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 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
In what way has it jumped ahead? When I read the specs for Nuke I feel like I'm reading a copy of the specs for Shake.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Even at 500 dollars, I will just go and download it on mininova.
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?
It's all very nice, but if I wanted to do some no-budget compositing, how do the alternatives compare?
The only free compositing packages I know of are Cinerella and Jahshaka - what's the difference between them and Shake?
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.
And to stay on topic, it's good to see more and more of apple's prices come out of the stratosphere. Now how about dropping that 20" cinema HD display to match dell's $400 on a similar screen.
There is no possible way to justify software costing 3 Grand.
I'm staring down a possible (though not likely...we'll lease) $170,000 bill for a full suite of Cadence Allego apps.
Oh if only it was only "3 Grand."
Thanks jcr for the comment. Slashdot wouldn't be the same without you.
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Trolling?
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Ah, I missed that. At my last two companies we pushed Apple (and Nothing Real as it was then called) hard to support proxies properly because it was one of the most important features of any compositing system that we'd consider using. I think that might eliminate Nuke from the running for a lot of companies. But it is still a pity that Shake development has ground to a halt.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Expensive software is exactly why people pirate stuff anyway. Why dont people learn this? If you sell your stuff cheaper, people will actually BUY it.
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.
I'm all for lowering barriers to entry, and decent software at cheap prices is a great thing for the masses (many of whom learn on pirate copies anyway). But I doubt this move will be welcomed by the major studios.
It costs a lot of programmer time to develop decent software, especially complex apps like this. And the smaller your target market, the higher the cost per copy, simple as that. Basic economies of scale.
Now add to that the cost of in-depth technical support for each of your customers - not just installation problems or bug fixes, but answering usage questions, suggested techniques, basic training, occasional specialised plugin development, timely response to feature requests, rapid response to critical bugs, and the assurance that if the studio (who has committed their workflow to your product) ever has a show-stopping issue, you'll do whatever it takes to help them through it. THAT's what the high prices are for, and in my experience, most professional studios are more than happy to pay it.
Thus, we see Apple dropping all of that, as $500/copy simply can't cover the cost of supporting a complex and mission-critical app like that. The biggest studios may find it necessary to drop $50K on the source code to be able to fix bugs themselves, but not many would be willing to continue full development (not their business), and will doubtless be looking at phasing out Shake in favour of more actively-developed alternatives (most have been doing this for some time).
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Somebody should re-moderate the parent before this gets forgotten ... MSFT != Troll
So if you think something is too expensive, you steal it? Great philosophy. A lot of people buy Final Cut Pro, far more than steal it. And expensive software is not why people pirate software. The #1 reason is because they don't want to pay at all #2 is because they don't want to have to deal with draconian licensing.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
Thanks for the tip. Didn't know it could do that.
Infuriate left and right
Read this post (also here). I quote: "Apple will no longer be selling maintenance for Shake and no further software updates are planned".
Apple will not be making the base product more stable, they're dropping it completely, in favour of some future product (apparently due around 2008). While the price drop will doubtless expand the market into the low end in the short term, the high-end users started their move away from Shake the moment Apple bought it (at least, those that wanted to keep running Linux and not Mac OS). Perhaps I didn't stress enough how important support is to high-end customers. Now the end of the road is clear, nobody is going to want to invest significantly in the Shake platform - including major plugin vendors.
I don't doubt Shake's technology will live on, but whatever Apple is working on will be a new product, and will not be released for Linux. Since something like 90% of Shake licences were Linux (which isn't even getting the price drop), most users will not see this as a good thing.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
You should see the retail cost for an Inferno system in Japan.
Still, it sounds like Digital Fusion has improved. I'll probably bump into it again some time soon.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.