to my amazement, autodesk has made a definitive agreement to acquire Alias. autodesk acquired discreet some years ago and acquired 3ds Max. Now maya and motion builder may die since they directly compete with autodesk products. only the future will know the actual outcome, but this is not good for competition.
maya and motion builder were also the power players on mac OS X, so maybe 3ds Max may move to OS X too, but maybe they’ll drop support on my platform of choice.