It seems like a niche market that had to be filled sooner or later. After Apples decision to quit the development — and with it the support and maintenance — of shake with version 4.1, there is a big hole in the support area of shake. Of course, there are the normal forums like fxshare (formerly highend2d) or cgTalk, but for deep down support it is always nice to have the developers at hand, because only they know, what really goes on inside the code.
Well, I was not the only one who had that thought. Billy Woody, the primary support engineer from Apple, said goodby to Apple and hello to the shake community. He will be supporting shake users from his new base at shakesupport.com.
Shakesupport.com offers quite a good deal compared to the $1499,- a year one had to pay for Apples shake support. Woody offers a similar support for only a fraction of that, beginning at $100,- a year (for a single license and people who subscribe until 1st November 2006) up to a cheap $1000,- per year for the big houses with 51 and more licenses.
Woody will probably be quite busy, considering the price drop opened up shake for a whole new audience of users. But these users also will have to struggle with the user interface, which is not exactly made for the casual user. So I see a golden road ahead of Woody and wish him all the best for this project. Shake will probably keep him busy for quite some time, even after the shake successor comes out.