Most people have forgotten that Shake was originally created at , and at the time Apple purchased it, the single seat price was $9,900 with each render license priced at $3,900. Apple had the current version on sale at the Apple Store for $499 just before taking it off the market.

Also forgotten are the innumerable films that have used Shake in some form or fashion since it was introduced in 1996. My first experience with Shake was while a friend of mine worked on the movie , as a couple of the VFX shots for the movie were created using the command line only version of the tool. The list of movies that used this tool would literally stretch for miles, and include everything from , , , , , , , and . Even the Harry Potter films have not avoided Shake's long grip in Hollywood.

Apple even touted that connection with Shake 3 in 2006, when all but one of the top visual effects movies used Shake in some way or form, and nearly every movie that had been nominated for a VFX academy award for the previous two years had some part of its visual effects workflow done in Shake.

Shake touched our visual lives on the small screen too, from effects on the X-Files series, on the long-running animated classic , the restoration and re-mastering for the re-release of the original series, and bringing John Belushi back to life for home video.

Shake has been a solid partner that offered me high-end tools when nothing else in the Apple realm did--until the latest release of Final Cut Studio. While I lament Shake's passing, Apple has finally brought into Final Cut the last few things that I used Shake for on a regular basis, so hopefully all is not lost with this long-neglected flagship tool. Motion 4 includes many of the functions that people used Shake for, but without it as part of my toolkit, all that is left for desktop level compositing are Autodesk's Combustion and the current industry leader, the Foundry's . I'm just glad it runs on Leopard.