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Graphics Businesses Software Apple

Shake 2.5 for Mac OS X Half Off 69

Posted by pudge from the bring-it-on dept.
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.
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Shake 2.5 for Mac OS X Half Off More

Shake 2.5 for Mac OS X Half Off

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  • i think that'll make people switch (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cheezus ( 95036 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @10:26AM (#3937407) Homepage
    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chrismear ( 535657 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @11:08AM (#3937723) Homepage

      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.

      • Apple better be going after the market....

        "Minority Report" Mobile Editing Studio Uses Dell [dell.com]

        Excerpt:

        Dell Precision Workstations and Other Dell Equipment Saved Production Crew Valuable Time and Money

        Dell played a major role in creating "Minority Report," an action thriller directed by Steven Spielberg. It is set in Washington in the year 2054 and takes place in a world where the police have developed a psychic technology to arrest and convict murderers before they commit their crimes. Detective John Anderton, head of this "pre-crime" unit, finds himself accused of a murder he hasn't yet committed.

        The futuristic nature of the film, based on the story by famed science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, required the actors to interact with virtual objects. The crew needed a fast way to create these complex effects in real time to ensure they would fit precisely with what the actors were doing on screen.

        Dell equipment used by the "Minority Report" production crew helped accomplish this difficult task. The solution was to rent a 47-foot trailer and equip it with the latest Dell computer hardware to capture, monitor and edit video in real-time on the set.

        The production team installed six Dell PrecisionTM workstations and 10 Dell OptiPlexTM desktops, all with flat panel monitors to save valuable real estate inside the trailer. The systems were loaded with Adobe® Photoshop® , Adobe Premiere® and Macromedia® Director® Shockwave® Studio. Each Dell Precision workstation was configured with a dual 36GB SCSI RAID setup, an IEEE 1394 card and 512MB RDRAM to play back the uncompressed video in full motion as it was streaming in from the set.

        The crew used Dell InspironTM laptops for real-time monitoring and for distributing pre-compressed digital information. They also built a complete communication system to stay in contact with the set. This enabled the crew to take this mobile editing setup to the different locations during production.

        "Our goal on the set was to create the technical environment that gives maximum flexibility to the actors and the director; it was up to us to work to their rhythm, not the other way around," said Bonnie Curtis, producer, "Minority Report." "Set and talent time are very expensive and the last thing the director wants to hear is 'hold on.' Fortunately, we never had to say those words."

        "We saved a 'man-month' of labor at each location because we didn't have to rebuild, reconfigure and rewire every time, not to mention how much we saved by choosing standards-based hardware," said Matthew Morrissey, the film's playback supervisor.

        The hardware performed flawlessly," added Morrissey. We needed wicked-fast equipment, huge amounts of storage and great support. Dell delivered."

        Dell's involvement with "Minority Report" is both an example of the value Dell delivers to the film industry and a demonstration of how Dell solutions can actually reduce a customer's cost of doing business by utilizing standards-based hardware.

        • This reminds me of something funny-and-true I read a while back. Only one software tool has been used on every feature film since the advent of digital production. It's the single most popular tool in Hollywood. And the name of that tool is... vi.

          In other words, no matter who you are or what you do, you can find somebody who has used your product in making their film. Remember last winter when everybody and their sister was bragging about how Weta used their software or hardware or whatever to make LOTR? That's because Weta used one of everything to make LOTR.

          That said, the bit about using ``1384'' (i.e., FireWire [apple.com]) to capture uncompressed video sounds fishy to me. Although lord knows the bandwidth is there-- uncompressed serial digital video only needs 270 Mbps, while FireWire can handle up to 400-- I've never heard of anybody using FireWire for that yet. I'll bet the Dell boxes were capturing DV-compressed video at 25 Mbps over FireWire, just like you get out of your camcorder at home. No facts here, just an educated guess on my part.
        • If you believe the Apple ads, it seems like you could do pretty much the same thing in an airline seat. I don't suppose anyone's here who's actually used both in a production setting who can comment?

  • Taking a look at the tech specs [apple.com] for Shake, reveals that a 3 button mouse is required on the Mac platform... now where can I find one of those on the Apple store? ;-)

  • Going after MS users (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stealthv ( 225644 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @11:29AM (#3937890)
    I found this on the pre-order page.

    *Shake 2.5 for Windows is available to existing Shake 2.46 Windows customers only.

    Makes you wonder how long the Windows version will be around?

  • Mac OS X 10.2 will be required, so add $120 to the cost of each license, too.

    That would be $129, plus tax where applicable.


    • Which is bullshit-- someone who's just switched platforms doesn't have to buy the OS-- they get it ON THEIR BOX.

      Sheesh. Shake 2.5 won't be out before 10.2- as 10.2 IS REQUIRED to run it. so anyone making the switch will get their box with 10.2 on it.

      Hell, they'll probably order the whole kit and kaboodle from apple pre-installed with shake and jaguar.

      Why this constant harping on Apple as if its expensive-- its only expensive if you don't value your time (and even then, its cheaper than the windows alternative.)
  • but to me apple is starting to look like they are buying out all the competition of the film industry little by little and isn't that a monoply? correct me if I am wrong. I love apple, kick ass products but with their making you pay for .mac and the such seems like apple is getting a little to greedy.

    --

    • Re:I don't know... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by foobar104 ( 206452 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @11:57AM (#3938092) Journal
      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... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MrResistor ( 120588 )
      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 [digitalvideoediting.com].

      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?

      • You're under the mistaken impression that people buy Macs because Macs are fast, therefore the fact that Macs aren't as fast as PCs means more people will buy PCs. That's wrong.

        People buy Macs so that they (the people, not the computers) will be productive. I have a 750 MHz PIII on my desk (using it now) and a 500 MHz iBook. Right now, I'm using the PC to surf and goof off, but in a minute I'm going to go back to using Illustrator and InDesign on my iBook. It's not that my iBook is faster, and it's not that I'm using software that's not available on Windows. It's that I'm more productive when I'm using a Mac. Lots and lots of people feel the same way; even if it's only 5-10% of the desktop computer market, it's still millions of people.

        Bottom line: fast is nice and all, but there are things that are more important than fast. That's where Apple's market share comes from.
        • Did you read the article I linked. Are you honestly suggesting that a 50% performance hit doesn't adversely affect productivity?

          For general office work and such, you're right, it isn't going to matter that much. For Photoshop and AfterEffects, commonly used apps in fields traditionally dominated by Macs, it obviously will make a difference.

          That you feel more productive in the environment you are most familiar working in is something I can't argue with, but perhaps you should ask yourself how much of that productivity increase is simply due to familiarity?

          • Let's get back to the subject at hand: we're talking about Shake here. If you're using Shake, you send jobs to the render farm to render; you don't use your desktop for that. This is true no matter what your desktop system is. So the only performance question revolves around interactivity: is the computer fast enough for you to interact creatively with the software? I played with Shake running on a dual-processor G4 at NAB, and it was very interactive. So the answer to that question is a qualified yes.

            I could put a dozen 2 GHz Pentium-whatevers on my desk, but they'd just spend most of their time waiting on me. The heavy lifting is being done by the render farm in the basement.

            So yup, I'm suggesting that a 50% speed difference between a Mac and a PC doesn't mean jack shit, as long as both PC and Mac are fast enough for the artist.
      • How about Opteron? They could make a custom chipset to insure that the mobo is still propritary and use the x86 compatiblity to make softwindows smoke.
  • Now I wonder if Apple will also cut prices on software from recently-acquired emagic [emagic.de].

    Think about it: somebody who wants to get into computer music can buy a PC and pay $$$ for Cubase or get a Mac and a deeply discounted copy of Logic.

    This is a brilliant way for Apple to even out the costs of pro solutions without lowering the price of their CPUs.

  • Now that Apple's offering a higher-end software that can compete against some of the bigger players, I wonder if they'll be offering some type of demo. Many of the others like Discreet who sell compositing software--especially the one's you usually purchase through a distributor or licensed reseller--will gladly give in-house demos of their hardware or software to try and lure new business. An artist will usually want to feel comfortable with a toolset before plunking down the purchase price.

    I hope this happens in some form...whether via Apple or via the retailers. It'd show a solid desire to grow this market, and boost Shake's appeal to those who are looking for something similar to Combustion (and to some extend After Effects) but with full OS X support.
  • ...I wonder why the Mac version requires an 800 MHz G4 while the Windows version only requires a 550 MHz P3?

    I guess they have the Mac CPU doing some of the work that is left for the high-end PC graphics card to do, since the market is pretty scarce for Mac workstation-class graphic cards.

    This is not a troll - I'm just wondering if it's a good idea for Apple to post requirements like this, which I took directly from their Shake specs page [apple.com], when Apple has for so long been touting the "Megahertz Myth" [apple.com].

    • I suppose that could be for several reasons. First, maybe it's like Final Cut Pro in that you need that speed for real-time effects.

      Secondly, look at the graphics card requirements for the Windows version. I've never heard of any of those. Looking them up at their respective web sites, I can see why. The PC version requires what's considered a "workstation" video card. The Mac version can use factory cards. Sounds like the CPU gets more work to do on the Mac side of things. Let's hope it's Alti-Vec enabled.

    • because the lowest spec pro Mac available these days is an 800Mhz one (i'm talking the quicksilver powermacs - there are 700Mhz G4 iMacs and eMacs).
  • Renders take twice as long [digitalvideoediting.com] so it should cost half as much.
    • Did you happen to read that the dual proc mac was also running an distributed.net client and serving pages for a tier 1 p0rn site.

      Seriously looks a bit biases to me esp with the way they neglect to mention such important factors as the video cards used in each. I know one of the machines comes with a nice ELSA video card.

      That being said I wouldn't take that article to seriously for nothing else than the testing and reporting are kind of lacking.
      • So what you are really saying is OS X can't walk and chew gum at the same time... No, OS X has no trouble prioritizing background tasks. Running a distributed net client would not affect it in the slightest. Since a single Mac could never hope to host a tier 1 pr0n site, I'm going to assume that was a joke.

        Video card has no bearing on render time. Rendering is done by the CPU only. We're making a file not a frame. Lucky we don't have to put A Quadro 4 in every box in a render farm.

        Ars Technica Said it best:

        "Dear Steve, more bogomips. Love, Johnny.
        Posted 7/20/2002 - 9:21PM, by johnnyace

        The guys over at Digital Video Editing have taken the "what should I buy, PC or Mac" argument to its "logical" *cough* conclusion: Benchmarks. In their Benchmark Duel: Mac vs. PC, Round II, they've taken three machines, a Dell Precision 340 ( Single P4 2.53Ghz), an Apple PowerMac G4 dual 1Ghz, and a BOXX dual Athlon 2000+MP, and ran them head to head. 'Tis a shootout of high end prebuilt boxen with one goal in mind: "Which one is fastest?" In some tests, the results are negligible. In a photoshop benchmark, the dual G4 takes two seconds while the x86 machines take 1. Statistics say that I should care, but when I'm working hard, one or two seconds probably won't be a big deal. However, in the digital video tests, the Apple machine gets spanked! In render intensive tests, the G4 weighs in at 11:57, and the Athlon machine flies by at 7:11. I didn't care that the G4 box took an extra second on a photoshop render, but four minutes is a little more difficult to ignore.

        With the prosumer interest in digital video production ramping up, many people are buying Apple hardware for the convenience of iMovie and assured compatibility with Apple branded DVD-R drives. But, articles such as this aren't going to help. And to be honest, as an ex-Mac poweruser I find the entire situation to be incredibly frustrating. From a hardware enthusiast's historical point of view, Apple had some of the best pre-built systems to be had for any price, when considering hardware alone. PPC processors with SCSI disk systems were, in theory, going to kick the crap out of your standard PC, and in many ways, they were superior technologies that appealed to a number of people.

        Yet at this very same time, this killer hardware was trapped under an OS that couldn't keep up with the times. I'm sure some will disagree vehemently, but OS 9.2 and its predecessors, especially pre-8.5 systems, were the fences that kept impressive technology caged in a 10x10 foot back yard.

        And what do we have today? The reverse! Except among those who are reticent to adapt, the MacOS of yester-century is nothing more than a bad memory. OS X rectifies almost all of the problems I ever had with the earlier OS, but now that the OS is up to date, the hardware is woefully out of date. So Apple, what gives? Does Steve Jobs' brain run on OS 8? I've seen good hardware, and good software; can you please try to do both of these things at the same time? If you do, I might even switch back."

        • Boy boy boy. Are you trolling or being serious.

          There are such things as hardware 3d accelerator cards that will accelerate certain rendering functions in hardware. In high end shops you will find a lot of these type cards. Many SGIs weren't so good at their jobs because of the fabulous mips processor it was the video card they put in them that made them do such fabulous real time stuff. The Macintosh had them for a short period of time for their quick draw and quick draw 3d features but I doubt one was used in this setup. So this has a very high impact on the job at hand and not having the facts at the finger tips in the report takes away from it's credibility. Obviously you fail to see this and all I can say is march on lemming the cliff is just over there.
    • I believed I read, that the researchers later discovered that it was only a single processor application, so It becomes a bit more obvious why it was so far behind.

      Can anyone confirm this?

  • I don't think Apple is going to start making 3 button mice. First, there are already plenty of quality ones out there. Second, it might set a precedent that some Mac software requires a 3 button mouse. For power users, it's ok, but for regular users, it makes a lot more sense to have one button. I am guessing this is a case where three mouse buttons are needed, but I am guessing they will try to avoid that situation unless they have to.

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