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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."
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!
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.
Yeah, because it's not like you can connect a 30" monitor to a macbook or anything...
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.
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
We also had a lot of people who were quite capable of editing, designing motion graphics and compositing, who couldn't afford to produce a film before Apple brought the capabilities of million-dollar systems down into an under-$3K package. Get over yourself, you snob.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
...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.
Slashdot: where repeating an article in a post is "+5 Insightful"
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?
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
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. 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.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
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.
labeling themselves as composite artists/designers/editors.
So, you look at samples of their work before you hire them. What does this have to do with the cost of the tools?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.