So everyone in the compositing world (defined for me as fxguide.com and This Week in Media) is talking about how Apple has dropped the price of Shake to 500$ (from 2000$) and has stopped development on it. They plan to spend the next two years or so developing a next-generation compositor to replace it.
This is all fine and good for Macintosh users, but as a Linux user I see the writing on the wall: No more compositor from Apple. There is no way that Steve would develop a next generation compositor and maintain Linux compatibility. He’s going to make sure that their new software is going to fit snugly in with the rest of the Final Cut Studio, and that’s absolutely his right.
The support of Shake for Linux was only out of necessity and was half-assed to begin with (not even basic /dev/dsp sound output!) but with this announcement there’s no question about where the Linux graphics market is headed. It’s Autodesk on the ultra-high end or nothing.