Thanks Boyd. Now, someone needs to tell the 2 Apple employees I spoke to about that as well.

Just goes to show you, there's no substitute for doing your own "due diligence." The information is easily found on Apple's website. Who did you ask at Apple? Since you asked on the first business day since the product was announced, it isn't all that surprising that people weren't aware of some of the finer details.

A TON of people called Apple Sales and asked about this, myself included.

My bet would be that they made the change after getting all these calls.

Of course that's possible, who knows? Also another good reason not to buy something on the first day that it's released :-)

Shake 4 does look really nice but I was surprised that the video tours on Apple's web site don't even mention the MAJOR addition of working in 3D space! Since that is the biggest thing they added you would think they might want to at least mention it. Kind of baffling to me.
It is funny that you don't always hear too much about Shake and it's used in TV and Film production constantly. It's used even more than it gets credit for too. I've also wondered why they never mention Renderman. I mean, I know it's not "made" by Apple but since they share the same CEO you would think there could be a nice co-marketing opportunity for ultra high-end users. Maya, Renderman and Shake go together like peanut-butter, grape jelly and Wonder Bread!

I'm glad to hear that they "are" going to offer the $499 upgrade to current owners of all the products, that's a nice surprise (and a little out of character for them too).

I've been a Mac user forever (my first Mac was a Mac plus with the massive 20mb hard drive... that's dating myself, my daughter doesn't call me "dad" anymore, it's "oldness on the loose")

I've found in the last couple years that apple will often try to work with you on issues like these. It may take a few calls though; I'd assume this situation was a "nobody thought of it" deal; Apple is generally pretty liberal about "fairness of upgrades".

I'm obviously on board with the "macs rock" thoughts... I'm amazed how much stuff you really have to know to keep a PC running well. Mac's aren't as seamless as apple posits in their marketing, especially when you get a little esoteric with complex software (3d modeling & rendering packages in particular). But lordy-- my daughter was 12 when she decided to fool around with iMovie; in one night, she shot a stop-motion flick with my digital still camera, edited it, added music and dialog, and rendered it for emailing. I wouldn't be surprised if we have a real renaissance in film around 2015 or so, when all the kids that have learned to shoot, light, edit, and write in their childoods get jobs in the business. Something akin to the home-recording revolution of the 80's-90's.

Which leads me to ponder... picked up a musical equipment catalog lately? Hopefully the economies of scale in killer, affordable mics, recorders, etc. that began with tascam's portastudio will happen with cinema gear before long.

FWIW, if you have the Adobe Creative Suite (like me) you can upgrade to CS2 for $349 (as did I, only in Swiss Francs). If you own the three components of the suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign) you can upgrade for $499 ... the same price as if you own Photoshop alone. Them's the breaks I guess.