# A big blow to the PC community: Nothing Real to discontinue Shake support for Windows



## simX (May 3, 2002)

Ahahahahahaha.

This is just one of those times I want to point my finger and stick out my tongue to the PC community as a whole:



> _Originally posted by MacMinute_
> In an email sent to customers yesterday, Nothing Real, which was acquired by Apple in February of this year, revealed that the forthcoming version of its Shake product (v2.5) will be the last for Windows, according to fxguide. The company is currently working on completing Shake for Mac OS X and has pledged to continue support for Irix and Linux through the end of 2003. Shake is the industry's leading compositing software for high resolution feature film effects.



Ha!  People who want future versions will need to buy a Mac, I guess.   That is, if they're not already smart enough to use them already...

Heehee... Apple sure is cornering the high-end video editing market.


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## ddma (May 3, 2002)

Haha. For video editing, we have Final Cut Pro. For 3D rendering, now we have Shake.

But, would those Windows geeks switch to Maya?


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## genghiscohen (May 3, 2002)

All I have to say is, "Payback's a b*tch!"


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## dricci (May 3, 2002)

Wow, that should get Apple a whole nother 100 customers!

You do realize how small the market for this product is, right?


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## ddma (May 3, 2002)

I don't think Apple was interested in those existing customers, but the technology. Apple doesn't own any 3D software but they don't have to rewrite a application from the ground up. They have 2D graphic designers, film directors, school teachers/students, home users... in the future, will have 3D graphic designers.


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## bighairydog (May 3, 2002)

Smacks of M$ tactics if you ask me. I doubt the move is financially justified on the basis of maximising profits from shake, so it must be to further the mac platform. If MicroSloth did this We'd all be screaming our heads off about anticompetitiveness.

Having said that, HA HA! eat that windows scum!

Bernie     )


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## googolplex (May 3, 2002)

bighairydog, things like this are allowed as long as you aren't an illegal monopoly. So I'm not shaking my head.

I think this could be for a financial. They might loose intial money from not selling shake on windows, but they could gain from it by making a great technology for OS X and selling possibly more macs and using it to create new good 3D technologies in the future.


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## bighairydog (May 3, 2002)

Don't get me wrong 'plex, my morals only stretch to mild cynicism at the motives behind this decision, not as far as disagreeing with the move. Any inconveniance to windows users is one step further towards people realising that they can change platforms, so I'm all for it really.

This should help with the comments I get from graphical friends who use Windose, constantly citing the professional programms that don't come on the Mac. Now I have ammunition to fire back with.

Bernie     )


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## simX (May 3, 2002)

> _Originally posted by dricci _
> *Wow, that should get Apple a whole nother 100 customers!
> 
> You do realize how small the market for this product is, right? *



dricci:  Since when did the number of customers EVER matter?  Apple has always historically had a very low market share, although they CONTINUE to be one of the healthiest computer companies.

The point I was trying to make was that Apple is just trying to corner the high-end video editing market.  It doesn't matter if there's only one customer using Shake  it's just a piece of software that soon will no longer be able to run on Windows, thus securing Apple's hold on this market.


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## dricci (May 3, 2002)

> _Originally posted by simX _
> *It doesn't matter if there's only one customer using Shake  it's just a piece of software that soon will no longer be able to run on Windows, thus securing Apple's hold on this market. *



And somebody else will just come along with something better for Windows, OR the company will just upgrade their Windows NT machine to Linux when they need to switch to the latest version Apple releases, since the Linux version is still being developed.

I think Linux is the enemy in this battle


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## ulrik (May 4, 2002)

I am not that thrilled...

These marketing tactics are what made Microsoft what it is today...a company most people hate.

Allthough I am happy that Apple will gain marketshare by this, they managed it with pure money! They bought Nothing Real and now they discontinue the windows ports. IMHO, that's the same thing people critized on Microsoft...


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## dricci (May 4, 2002)

It's not the same. I don't think Microsoft bought any Mac software companies, well, except Bungie. But still...

Apple's focus is in the Mac and Unix areas, not the Windows Market, so it makes sense for them to discountinue the Windows versions. The Irix and Linux ports are still going strong, mostly because there are a lot of shake Linux renderfarms. I see nothing wrong with Power Mac workstations and Linux renderfarms.

This will improve Shake by having Apple's strenght and programmers behind it making it kickass like Final Cut Pro and all their other Apps. Developing a Windows version would loose a lot of development time and money because it'd have to be totally redone for Windows. It's a lot easier to Port between Mac OS X, Linux, and Irix than to and from Windows NT.


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## Valrus (May 4, 2002)

Yeah, it sure is.

<nelson>
Ha ha!
</nelson>

Apple doesn't own 90% of the market, so they can - and should - get away with crap like that.

In my opinion. 

-the valrus


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## ulrik (May 4, 2002)

> _Originally posted by dricci _
> *It's not the same. I don't think Microsoft bought any Mac software companies, well, except Bungie. But still...
> *



Still, Microsoft often bought companies which produced software they just wanted not to be released. So they bought the company and shut down the software development to secure their market share.

I don't say that it is a bad move from Apple, all I say is that IMHO, it's close to what Microsoft did for years and why most people hate them.

Put yourself into the situation of somebody who has an NT renderfarm using shake. He won't be that thrilled, I guess...
He can't just wipe all disks and install Linux, he has to completely restructure his workflow processes, maybe even fire some NT sysadmins, just to continue to use shake. 

It is a clever move from Apple, their first step back into the *real* workstation market (I still pray every night that they buy Alias|Wavefront), but let's say it's not "gentlemen-like"...


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## Valrus (May 4, 2002)

Seems to me the computer industry hasn't been "gentleman-like" for years. 

-the valrus


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## voice- (May 4, 2002)

No Valrus, but Apple have been gentleman-like for years, and that is one of the main reasons they have me as a customer. I can't speak for others, but I would believe someones shares my thoughts here.

This IS what we hate MS for and if Apple keeps it up, I, for one will switch. I don't want a monopoly, so till they have around 80% of the market, I'll be with them.


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## dricci (May 4, 2002)

If the render farms switched from NT to Linux, then they'd save potentially millions in licening fees and would probably get better performance. I don't see why it would be so hard, or why their current NT people couldn't learn Linux.

That's just how it works. In the end, it ends up  saving them money.


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## ulrik (May 5, 2002)

You can't just switch a render farm from one OS to another. It costs thousands of dollars! If you want to keep your personal, they have to be trained in Linux! I can't give specific numbers, but I can guess that a mid-sized render farm costs at least 8 or 9 thousand dollars a day, so every day you loose (due to switching to another operating system, due to personal who has to be trained etc. etc) costs you that amount of money. And don't forget: while you might save some licensing fees, Linux is harder to maintain than WinNT (one fact in which Microsoft tells the truth).

Switching an OS for one person might be a task of a weekend, or maybe a week till he is comfortable in the new OS, but for a company it means much more, you have to change the whole workflow of your company, reducing the productivity in the beginning of the change...


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## .dev.lqd (May 5, 2002)

I disagree that Linux is more difficult to maintain than WinNT.

I've seen Windows machines sporadically break for reasons I couldn't even hope to unravel.

My redhat or openbsd machines have stayed up and running for months without issue... even with heavy use and processor load. When they broke- it was fairly apparent what had happened (and it was actually due to my shoddy bargain hardware (frickin' SiS)) that the machines failed.

The most expensive render farms are the poorly maintained ones. If you don't have an automated backup/restore/replace system that can continue working when a few machines go down, then you deserve to be toast.

The other issue is OS agnostic distributed rendering systems, like Renderman. Renderman works on all kinds of operating systems (even really wierd ones), so you could take the machines down even one at a time if you had to and add them to the cluster as linux renderman nodes instead of NT renderman nodes. I'm pretty sure most rendering clusters that rely on each member to stay up are being phased out for more robust/redundant/stable distribution architectures.

As for training- any IT professional who invests themselves specifically in one architecture without exploring any others isn't doing a good enough job (IMHO). Adaptability should be of paramount importance if you want to keep your job. I'm not saying specializing is a bad thing... I'm saying that ignoring the rest of the world doesn't make it go away. 

A lot of the video/3D industry buys built-to-order solutions from one company anyways... this is just changing what's interchangeable. PC's pride themselves in being able to swap components and repurpose components... the problem is that you end up with lots of specialized hardware that's not very good for anything other than what you had it for. What apple seems to be doing is OK- you've got your workstation... do you want to use it for prepress? DV/HD editing? 3D compositing? broadcast graphics? titling? 

Instead of buy once... install anywhere, now we have buy once, USE anywhere.


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## simX (May 5, 2002)

Personally, I can't say this doesn't smack of Microsoft tactics.

I'm just wondering Apple's motives behind this discontinuation.  I'm not about to yell "monopolistic tactics" at the top of my lungs just yet.


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