OK, so I got my 4.1 email from apple and read the "Important Notice" 4 times over. However I still dont understand what it means. Apple are dropping shake or not? If not why withdraw support? If yes, why say that they are working on the "new generation" of Shake.
Adobe didnt withdraw support for photoshop 6 a year before releasing CS.
If anyone from apple is reading this, please note. I like many other professionals make my entire income from not only being a digital compositor but an expert in Shake. You are making me nervous. You are up to something and keeping the details for yourselves, however that something is going to have some sort of impact on my livelihood. I need to protect myself and if I need to I will do it by reskilling myself so that when clients say "what about shake, is it wise to invest in a sinking ship?" I can say, "how about nuke/toxik/fusion instead". This is a multi billion dollar industry you are fucking with and you are making us jumpy. Unlike the consumer sector we have no brand loyalty and your marketing efforts arent going to pacify us. This isnt about selling expensive mp3 players to yuppies anymore. White plastic and shiny chrome wont satisfy people who face tight deadlines and constant pressure deliver on their promises. Let us know whats going on or face a mass dissertion to your competitors.
Peter Warner, Billy Woody and anyone else from Nothing Real who might be reading this. Firsly thankyou for your commitment and secondly please if you can, pass this on to whatever ipod wielding moron is responsible for the "Important Notice".
Mike,
Seriously, get over your problems with Apple. Or at least separate them from your concerns about Shake. Every message you ever post is in this inflammatory, anti apple, vitriolic style. It's tired.
I think you might find the lower price works for some of your clients. Try justifying why they should now spend 10 times as much on software to their accountant. As people have pointed out, some places are still running shake 2.5 on windows which is also officially unsupported. And if you are relying on being able to show off the new bells and whistles in a new program, rather than being able to produce quality work with the tools you have, it only reflects poorly on you.
Finally, if it takes you a long time to get up to speed on a new program, should you think of getting out of an industry that moves so fast?
I'm off to watch something on my white plastic and shiny chrome video ipod.
Toby
I'm sorry Toby, I wasnt aware that what I said would be so offensive to you that you would feel the need to throw wild assumptions into the forum about my professional capabilities. I think that it is commendable to have a religious affiliation to a computer hardware company. Personally, I am atheist but nevertheless, I applaud you.
QUOTE(mikemarcus @ 06/22/06, 01:17 AM) [snapback]240433[/snapback]
OK, so I got my 4.1 email from apple and read the "Important Notice" 4 times over. However I still dont understand what it means. Apple are dropping shake or not? If not why withdraw support? If yes, why say that they are working on the "new generation" of Shake.
The notice looks pretty self explanatory.
QUOTE
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.
Reads pretty plain to me. Shake is canceled and they are working on the next gen version of it. This next software is essentially their Maya (A/W's combo of all the technologies from Alias Studio, Power Animator, Wavefront Advanced Visualizer, TDI Explore, Dynamation, Kinemation, etc.... ). This is the combo of technologies from Shake, Tremor, Rays, Chalice, etc...
Also this is no different then when as previously mentioned Maya or XSI was coming out. I felt really bad for XSI users, they had to wait almost 5 years(I saw demos of that thing at siggraph 97). Packages last well beyond their final run. Crap, I know places still running Cineon and Illusion. They don't just magically become door stops just because it isn't being updated anymore. Actually Fusion just finished going through this exact same thing. Version 5 was essentially a ground up rewrite, which is why it can't read any flows from version 4.0 and why Fusion 5 is so damn buggy. There was a 2 year wait between version 4 and 5. The package didn't exactly die in the mean time. Now that I think about it, AE did the same thing. The time between 6.5 and 7.0 was over 3 years (again, big rewrite).
Luckily, total guess here, but I don't think we will have to wait till 2008 like the rumor sites are saying. Siggraph is right around the corner.