Apple removes Shake software extension from online store

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Speculation has arisen that Apple has discontinued Shake, its film digital effects and digital compositing software, after the application vanished from the company's online store.



Although the official Web site for Shake was still online early Thursday afternoon, it was later changed to forward to the page for Final Cut Studio. MacRumors received word that Apple sales representatives were informed that the product was discontinued.



The current release, Shake 4.1, debuted in 2006. A minor update, bringing it to 4.1.1, came out in 2008. As an extension for Final Cut Studio, the software was been the tool of choice for major motion-picture studios and leading effects houses to create award-winning visual effects including Peter Jackson's "King Kong."



The $499 software worked in tandem with the Final Cut Studio. Last week, Apple updated that suite and lowered the price to $999. More than 100 new features were added to the latest Final Cut, perhaps negating the need for Shake entirely.



Rumors that Shake would be discontinued first began to swirl 2006, when the project called "Phenomenon" was believed to be in Apple's future plans. It was not long after the release of Shake 4.1 that Apple informed customers it would no longer be selling maintenance for Shake as "no further updates" to the application were planned. The company also slashed the price of the software by 80 percent, down from $2,999 to $499.



Rumors at the time suggested Phenomenon would be based heavily on the codebase for Motion, Apple's professional graphics animation software.



Apple did not yet officially confirm the discontinuation of Shake Thursday.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 51
    bloggerblogbloggerblog Posts: 2,462member
    Apple employees maintain that Motion is superior to Shake. I find Shake's interface to be much more efficient and intuitive.
  • Reply 2 of 51
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    I expect Shake to become integrated into a future version of Motion to improve production efficiency.
  • Reply 3 of 51
    Aw, man. As difficult as Shake was to pick up, it's a ridiculously powerful tool, and I actually enjoyed learning and using it it. I'm kinda sad to see it discontinued.
  • Reply 4 of 51
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    It seems so. The Shake link now redirects to the Final Cut Studio page.



    http://www.apple.com/shake/

    http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/...mpositing.html



    Hopefully they've fixed the interface hang-ups and various other bugs like motion blur applying to everything including opacity. I love the hardware-acceleration in Motion but layer-based editors are rubbish for keying. Even if they'd allow node-based editing for just that.



    Parameter linking is nice in 4 - hope that means proper expressions and not just basic linking. Behaviors aren't powerful enough.



    All is not lost regarding Shake, at least the original developers had the sense to move to The Foundry and work on Nuke and take their innovation there so that their creativity will live on instead of dying in Apple's hands.



    I suppose they had to take Motion back to basics in order to build it the way they wanted but deleting Shake from memory isn't the way to make Motion better.
  • Reply 5 of 51
    Comparing Motion to Shake is laughable - Motion is not even the equal, yet, of After Effects, existing as a quicker, simpler piece of software. CS4 also now apes many of the GUI improvements of Motion, whilst still delivering a better result - anyone who argues differently doesn't use both, or use them for a living.



    Shake was a node based compositor - that's the major difference between it and even AE. You could reach into layers in Shake far more easily to isolate and alter comps. That's why newer software like Nuke is node based, along with the likes of Flame, Inferno etc.



    If Apple has discontinued it (it's still listed in the UK store) I'm not suprised, but saddened to see them move away from their only fully-pro post software. As software like this is unlikely ever to sell a million copies, I think there's a very slim chance Apple will ever release something like this in the future.
  • Reply 6 of 51
    shookstershookster Posts: 113member
    "More than 100 new features were added to the latest Final Cut, perhaps negating the need for Shake entirely."



    Not at all. Shake houses will NOT be moving to Motion - they will most likely be moving to Nuke, as I will be.
  • Reply 7 of 51
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by beneditor View Post


    Comparing Motion to Shake is laughable - Motion is not even the equal, yet, of After Effects, existing as a quicker, simpler piece of software. CS4 also now apes many of the GUI improvements of Motion, whilst still delivering a better result - anyone who argues differently doesn't use both, or use them for a living.



    Shake was a node based compositor - that's the major difference between it and even AE. You could reach into layers in Shake far more easily to isolate and alter comps. That's why newer software like Nuke is node based, along with the likes of Flame, Inferno etc.



    If Apple has discontinued it (it's still listed in the UK store) I'm not suprised, but saddened to see them move away from their only fully-pro post software. As software like this is unlikely ever to sell a million copies, I think there's a very slim chance Apple will ever release something like this in the future.



    It's not in Apple's DNA to do truly high end software. Or to put it more succinctly the company has never delivered an a complex professional application tailored for a narrow vertical. I had my doubts that Phenomenon would never see the light of day.
  • Reply 8 of 51
    virgil-tb2virgil-tb2 Posts: 1,416member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by beneditor View Post


    ... CS4 also now apes many of the GUI improvements of Motion, whilst still delivering a better result ...



    Sorry, but you lost all credibility with me with this comment.



    Unless you meant FCS4.
  • Reply 9 of 51
    cuttercutter Posts: 17member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by beneditor View Post


    Comparing Motion to Shake is laughable - Motion is not even the equal, yet, of After Effects...



    Thank you.



    I guess since Shake wouldn't run on an iPhone, Apple lost interest in it.
  • Reply 10 of 51
    I recall hearing that large Shake sites were offered the non-exclusive full source code for a flat fee if they wanted to continue working with it.



    Motion is fun, but it is not the Unix-scriptable power tool Shake is. Was. Whatever. Nobody will be doing feature film compositing in Motion any time soon, if ever.
  • Reply 11 of 51
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by beneditor View Post


    Comparing Motion to Shake is laughable - Motion is not even the equal, yet, of After Effects, existing as a quicker, simpler piece of software. CS4 also now apes many of the GUI improvements of Motion, whilst still delivering a better result - anyone who argues differently doesn't use both, or use them for a living.



    Shake was a node based compositor - that's the major difference between it and even AE. You could reach into layers in Shake far more easily to isolate and alter comps. That's why newer software like Nuke is node based, along with the likes of Flame, Inferno etc.



    If Apple has discontinued it (it's still listed in the UK store) I'm not suprised, but saddened to see them move away from their only fully-pro post software. As software like this is unlikely ever to sell a million copies, I think there's a very slim chance Apple will ever release something like this in the future.



    That's a little dramatic, don't you think? Apple will find a way to integrate Shake as a plug-in or make it part of Motion...
  • Reply 12 of 51
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    More than 100 new features were added to the latest Final Cut, perhaps negating the need for Shake entirely.



    This is the most ignorant statement I think I've ever read on Appleinsider. Shake was once the industry leading compositing app that Apple allowed to die after buying Nothing Real. There's nothing in Final Cut Studio that compares to what Shake could do. You will never see big films crediting Final Cut or Motion for their compositing. Final Cut gets credit as an editor, but that's a very different tool.
  • Reply 13 of 51
    wally007wally007 Posts: 121member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2 View Post


    Sorry, but you lost all credibility with me with this comment.



    Unless you meant FCS4.



    i'm sure he means CS4. Motion is nothing but problems..... now AE has its own problems but at least figuring them out will hand you great powerful app. Motion will just leave you saying ... " is that it ? ".
  • Reply 14 of 51
    poochpooch Posts: 768member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    More than 100 new features were added to the latest Final Cut, perhaps negating the need for Shake entirely.



    should read:



    More than 100 new features were added to the latest Final Cut, perhaps negating the need for Shake entirely. Or perhaps not, I don't know. I'm too lazy to actually do the research needed to make a factual statement so I'll just throw it out there as speculation.
  • Reply 15 of 51
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post


    That's a little dramatic, don't you think? Apple will find a way to integrate Shake as a plug-in or make it part of Motion...



    Why? There's no market for it. The FX industry mourned the loss of Shake and has moved on to other apps and left Shake in the dust. Apple has made it clear from the design of Motion that it isn't interested in high-end FX and compositing. Apple purchased Nothing Real in 2002, if they were going to integrate anything more from Shake (Smoothcam and Tracker were from Shake, I believe), it would have been done by now.
  • Reply 16 of 51
    charlitunacharlituna Posts: 7,217member
    to me what is more shocking than Apple cutting Shake, is that anyone seems surprised. they forewarned this 3 years ago.
  • Reply 17 of 51
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by pixelcruncher View Post


    Why? There's no market for it. The FX industry mourned the loss of Shake and has moved on to other apps and left Shake in the dust. Apple has made it clear from the design of Motion that it isn't interested in high-end FX and compositing. Apple purchased Nothing Real in 2002, if they were going to integrate anything more from Shake (Smoothcam and Tracker were from Shake, I believe), it would have been done by now.



    Maybe it's more difficult than you think to integrate it in an intelligent way. They would probably want to create a clean, smart pipeline for real production environments.
  • Reply 18 of 51
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hmurchison View Post


    It's not in Apple's DNA to do truly high end software. Or to put it more succinctly the company has never delivered an a complex professional application tailored for a narrow vertical.



    What do you call Color?
  • Reply 19 of 51
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post


    What do you call Color?



    Color isn't high end.



    Da Vinci is. Final Touch brough Color Grading down to affordable levels but

    it's certainly not high end from within the video production vertical.



    There are much more expensive incumbents that still dominate for major productions.
  • Reply 20 of 51
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hmurchison View Post


    Color isn't high end.



    Da Vinci is. Final Touch brough Color Grading down to affordable levels but

    it's certainly not high end from within the video production vertical.



    There are much more expensive incumbents that still dominate for major productions.



    Wasn't it a $25,000 package before Apple bought it? I don't think that's a high volume product.
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