Shake

Mark's recent posting about Apple discontinuing their high-end digital compositor Shake, had me thinking of the same question of "why?"

Original developer Nothing Real sold a SGI or Windows 95/NT license for a cool $9,900. After announcing a port to Mac OS X during Macworld Expo 2001, Nothing Real was acquired by Apple in February 2002. Apple's statement at the time was that "Apple plans to use Nothing Real's technology in future versions of its products."

Later that year, Apple released the first version of Shake (version 2.5) for Mac OS X while dramatically slashing the price to $4,950. With the version 4 announcement in 2005, Apple cut the price to $2,999. With the 4.1 update in 2006, they yet again dropped the price to a bargin basement $499.

So what does the future hold for Shake's technology? Some of it has been incorporated into Motion. As far as a rumored next generation high-end compositor? Ron Brinkmann, who was a founder of Nothing Real and former Apple employee doesn't think that will happen.

If I had had ANY indication that Apple was interested in creating a new piece of software that addressed a market even SOMEWHAT close to Shake’s, I probably wouldn’t have quit 2+ years ago. Obviously I don’t know anything for certain, but I’d be extraordinarily surprised if anything more than updated versions of Motion come out of Apple in the compositing space, at least for the foreseeable future.

RIP Shake. RIP trueSpace!