Shake it off: Remembering Apple’s Academy Award–winning failure

People are reminiscing about 25 years of the iMac, which is fine and all, but I’m doing to do something a little different. I’m reminiscing about 21 years of Apple’s Shake.

What’s that? You have no idea what I’m talking about? You just want candy-colored computers? Too bad. You’re going to learn something you’ll never need to know, whether you like it or not.

In February of 2002 Apple acquired Nothing Real, a software company based in Venice, California that made the industry-leading Shake compositing software. It was in that weird period where Apple was picking up steam, and trying to convert PC users to Mac users. There was no Shake version for the Mac, but there was for Linux, Windows, and Irix (RIP).

Just a few months after that acquisition, Apple released Shake 2.5 for the Mac (along with the existing supported platforms). Shake 2.5 would be the final version for Windows.…