Dear Apple. I Covet Thy New Toys.

This week is the NAB conference in Vegas. I’m sure that most of you see that and say “what, in the name of all four Beatles, is ‘NAB’?”

Well, I’ll tell you.

NAB is the National Association of Broadcasters and this week is their annual trade show in Las Vegas. [cut to Vince Vaughn yelling “VEGAS BABY! VEGAAAS!” and we’re back…] Basically, once a year, most of the major hardware and software manufactures come out and tease poor artists with great new tools that their superiors will not purchase at any time in the near future.

And so this year is no different. Except that Apple dropped a veritable menagire of toys this year, and dropped prices at the same time. We’ve got new PowerBooks and iBooks, a few random low level software updates, and then the beef. Shake 3.5, which basically features a warper (the Meticulous m3Warp for Shake is still free) and a 1/2 price discount ($3k for mac, $5k for Linux). Apple also released Final Cut Pro HD, DVD Studio Pro 3, and Xsan—a massive file storage system for those of us who just, well, need more HD space.

And the kicker is Apple’s Motion appliction. A $300 direct attack at Adobe’s Digital Video line and their (newly updated) After Effects program. After Effects is still the pro-level app, but Motion does a lot that most people couldn’t touch before for a low price point.

And for the non mac people, check out nVidia’s new renderer, Gelato. Anything named after yummy Italian ice cream has to be at least somewhat decent. Then again, time will tell.

So who’s got some venture capital to burn through? Is Apple causing detriment to the film market by lowering the entry point and creating a bevy of bedroom editors and compositors, or will this raise the overall quality of the finished product because more cash can go into software development due to more license sales?