What are the alternatives to Foundry (Nuke/Katana/Mari, etc.) on Mac?
Foundry are ditching Mac, like Apple disgracefully ditched "Shake"!
Errrrrrr, no. Foundry is keeping the software targets that are making substantive money. Apple did something different.
3D is going to explode in the near future, with VR/metaverse, Indie/home movie producers, etc.
These new high performance Macs are great and all but where is Phenomenon that was supposed to replace Shake?
Are you waiting for 'Godot' ?
With the news that Shake 4.1's release brought a $2500 price drop to the popular compositing application, most people seem to have missed a...
www.macrumors.com
If you have been waiting since 2009 then you have got major 'issues'.
The top uprated post on that thread has this clip.
"... Here's something that doesn't get taken into consideration enough when talking about Shake and Apple... The fact is that (whilst it is used on all the big VFX films) all the big VFX companies use the Linux version. All the Shake shots for King Kong and LOTR were done on Linux boxes. Most of these big FX houses have complex data piplines built round Linux scripts, and the OS X version of Shake just isn't an option. Also the Linux version is the one the big boys go with because it is faster... "
The standard Apple modus oprandi is that if they buy a mulitple platform software product they kill off the non Mac (or/and non iOS ) versions either rapidly or over time. (e.g, The darksky API is disappearing. ). [ although Shazam is a corner case. Probably the data mining of the songs matched has upside in Apple Music purchasing and advertising biz. Data mining the users is far less profitable for content creating apps. ].
Apple neglected 'pros', dumped amazing softwares like Shake (WHY DID YOU BUY IT IN THE FIRST PLACE)?
Why? In part, because Steve Jobs was 'full time' CEO of both Apple and Pixar in 2002. There were several projects that had overlap between those two companies that got green lights probably because they were more familar projects than necessarily 100% best thing for Apple.
At some point someone at Apple probably made a pitch on how they would herd the Linux Shake users onto a "better Unix than Linux" Mac OS X. That didn't work out so well even will deals to lower and/or expand licenses to jump to Mac OS X.
Compositing also made its way into more mainstream editors along the way. It is in part why Blackmagic Resolve also has Fusion. " Phenomenon " was supposed to be coupled to Motion. ( and Motion did get updates). Skills and code fragments made transitions.
Neglected Logic Pro with serious bug that was left for years.
Everything significant size has good older bugs that don't get fix. That is a bit of a reach.
Now Apple is really changing? They realise the massive revolution coming? Extremely powerful machines?
Apple is on the path were only Apple GPUs are suppose to matter. That is going to put them at odds with a number of heady duty 3D software packages. Especially where the unit volume and revenue model is for relatively low unit volumes (and high licensing fees. ) .
P.S. Given Apple's typical standard process of making software macOS only buying Foundry would be an extremely dubious way to spend money. If the company is walking away from macOS because it doesn't work ... Apple buying the software rights has a real good chance of really not changing that much. If it is "Apple can buy Foundry with petty cash money and just pass on return on investment" rationale. That doesn't make any sense. Apple has lots of money in part because they usually don't frivolously throw it away.
Apple also has very little interest in relatively low unit volume software. That isn't what they do.