Apple Buys Emagic

Killing by BigBir3d · 2002-07-01 01:58 · Score: 3, Informative

off the windows version is fine with me, but when it is 35% (inferred from statement that macintosh is 65%) of revenues sounds rather stupid.

not to be a troll, but it is stupid business decisions like this that hampers the growth of apple. steve jobs is good for some things, but i don't think long range planning is one of them (he is great for revitalizing the 'look and feel' of things though).

i wonder if stuff like this is filed into the memory of bill gates when he negotiates with apple? it could be on a list of reasons to discontinue ms office, or IE (no great loss that one).

Re:Killing by feldsteins · 2002-07-01 02:11 · Score: 3, Informative

not to be a troll, but it is stupid business decisions like this that hampers the growth of apple. steve jobs is good for some things, but i don't think long range planning is one of them (he is great for revitalizing the 'look and feel' of things though).

I think what the Big Steve has done over the last few years constitutes quite a bit more than "revitalizing the loook and feel of things." Give the man some credit, for god's sake. His company is not only back from near-death, but by some measures one of the healthiest computer companies around - and this through a tight-belted economy! "Look and feel" my butt. So to speak.

off the windows version is fine with me, but when it is 35% (inferred from statement that macintosh is 65%) of revenues sounds rather stupid.

I think the idea here involves more strategy than a) make software product, b) sell software product for more than it costs to make it, c) make profit.

I think we can count on a consumer and a professional application to come out of such a purchase. "iAudio" would come free on every Mac and would allow pimply teenage wannabes pretend they're DJ's, "Audio Studio Pro" on the other hand would sell for a bit less than it's competitors and have the tight hardware integration and high polish typical of Apple software. With the former, they caputure consumer sales of iMacs and iBooks. With the later they sell pro hardware and potentially capture a large portion of the pro audio software market.

What about iMovie and Final Cut Pro? I forget what Apple bought to get the core guts of these apps going...but whatever it was, if they had cut off the Windows versions to do it, would you still call it stupid after the sucess of the resulting products? I don't see how you can.

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You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Re:Killing by DavidRavenMoon · 2002-07-01 12:42 · Score: 3, Informative

What about iMovie and Final Cut Pro? I forget what Apple bought to get the core guts of these apps going...but whatever it was, if they had cut off the Windows versions to do it, would you still call it stupid after the sucess of the resulting products? I don't see how you can.
FCP was being developed by Macromedia. I don't think it ever had a name, and I'm sure MM would have made a Windows version.

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-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol

Apple on a buying streak by tolldog · 2002-07-01 02:09 · Score: 4, Informative

Apple has purchased 2 companies with compositing software and now a company with audio software.

Where are they getting all this money???

And from what I understand, in all cases they are looking at discontinuing Windows support and posibly Linux as well.

I am all for Apple having strong authoring tools, but to buy out software that people rely on to do work and then drop support for their platform is pretty shadey. It is forcing us to move to a Mac or to find some other software, and in some cases, all the other software is a few generations behind.

I may not mind getting a Mac, but please don't force me into it.

-Tim

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-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?

Re:Good news. by Phil+John · 2002-07-01 02:15 · Score: 2, Informative

but can they improve upon this product to the degree that it will cause the Windows users to switch?

I work in the music industry and have used a fair few different studios. The theme that runs throughout with engineers and producers is that they stick to what they started with normally. I.e. someone who started with logic loathes moving to cubase and distrusts anyone who uses it. Same goes for the other way round. I'm sure in the bigger set-ups where money is no object systems will be changed to mac (if they aren't already). Anyway, a lot of these places use pro-tools as well, which works much better on the mac (the pc version is the most ugly unusable piece of cr*p I've ever had the misfortune to play with, then again so's the mac version, just slightly less so...give me a soundscape red system anyday!!!)

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I am NaN

Re:Audio iMovie over Final Cut Pro by Andy_R · 2002-07-01 02:20 · Score: 4, Informative

Emagic already have a free version of Logic, called Logic Fun, that roughly fits the bill.

It's only got 4 tracks, and no CD-burning built in, but it's free, and comes in Mac and PC flavours (for now)

You can download it from http://www.emagic.de/german/education/download.htm l (this page is in German, but the application is English language)

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A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a

adding more info by kootch · 2002-07-01 02:23 · Score: 2, Informative

http://biz.yahoo.com/p/a/aapl.html

cash: $12.17/share

shares outstanding: 355.7 million

total cash on hand: $4,328,869,000

Apple has all kinds of $ by daveschroeder · 2002-07-01 02:26 · Score: 2, Informative

As of their most recent earnings statement (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2002/apr/17earnin gs.html), Apple says they have $4.3 billion in cash on hand. I don't think where the money comes from is a problem for them right now...

Sensible Plan... by ablair · 2002-07-01 15:32 · Score: 3, Informative

There's currently a discussion on this very topic on MacSlash, but a few /. people may be interested in some Apple ramblings too:

Strategy: Buy Low, Sell High.
How low can the stock values of companies go? Since last fall, many in the tech sector have certainly been trying to find out. This is a great time to buy companies or technologies and lately Apple has been wisely acting when opportunities arise. Even if Emagic GmbH, Spruce Technologies, Nothing Real, and Zayante in the last year had all been privately held, they would have still been sold at a favourable price compared to buying them before the .bomb bubble burst.

Strategy: Niche Market Growth.
It's clear that Apple wants to defend the Macintosh strength as a music & audio creation tool in the long term. Since pro audio software has been lagging on the march to MacOS X, Apple is at least applying heat to developers if not exactly lighting a fire under them. Logic and associated software & hardware on the Mac will mean that Digidesign, Twelve Tone Systems(Cakewalk), MOTU and Steinberg will have to take the market segment more seriously (although MOTU & Digidesign have historically been great friends of the Mac already). The way it's looking is that a larger majority of pro audio will be done on the Mac. Can Steinberg, Twelve Tone et al. risk being caught with their pants around their ankles if this happens?

Strategy: Technology Cross-Pollination.
Now that Apple has a substantial video-production, streaming, compression, audio & other technologies, they may consider adding many good features from one to another and developing truly feature-rich packages. It dosen't take a dreamer to see the possibilities, from unheard-of professional solutions to trickle-down pro capabilities in new iSoftware (eg. look how technologies purchased from Marcromedia were crafted into Final Cut Pro & iMovie). This is one area that users, down the road, can really cash out with if Apple encourages the flow of technologies between it's new divisions.

Strategy: Sorry, Mac-Only.
One thing that is a bit sad about this, ironically enough, is the immediate cancellation of the Windows versions of some software (notably Shake & Logic) with this strategy. While perhaps more upfront than an MS-style purchase and feature-deprivation in non-Windows versions, Apple still isn't making any friends (and perhaps losing potentially loyal customers & money) by doing this. Still, one cannot say that it's not what happened to Mac users through the late 1990s (even now - look at Bungie) but it would be better karma to be more merciful once the shoe is on the other foot. Apple would be smart to mitigate the anger of Windows users by offering discounts on upgrades to the next Mac version.

Next Strategy: More Vertical Markets.
The Macintosh still has a real chance at gaining significant market share if it can be a strong alternative in enough vertical market segments. Apple is rightly building on it's strenghts, but should diversify enough so that the Macintosh is not pegged as only good for those niches (remember what happened to the Amiga? Games machine!)

A Holy Grail almost as worthy as dominating the business market for Apple is the scientific & engineering markets, often with high software margins all around. A purchase or substantial investment in Autodesk à la the MS $150M in Apple would make Apple a huge player in the professional engineering, architecture, and manufacturing industries overnight. Considering Autodesk is not the most expensive stock right now, with a market cap of approximately USD$1.4B, Apple could conceivably purchase the entire operations in cash and still have about $2B in the bank. Autodesk's Design Segment develops AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor, Mechanical Desktop, Autodesk Architectural Desktop, Architectural Studio, Autodesk Map, Lightscape, and Autodesk Land Desktop, to name a few (most industry-standard in their fields) and the Discreet Segment develops 3D Studio MAX, Animator Studio, flame, inferno, smoke, combustion, cinestream, plasma, cleaner, MPEG supercharger, Topper, and many others.

With a stable of industry-dominating software products as great as this, such a purchase (or even investment ensuring MacOS X compatibility) would send massive shockwaves across the engineering & architectural markets, and ripples in the scientific & pro graphics markets who are by now used to this. No immediate cancellation of the Windows version would be posible here, rather a years-long strategy to ensure first Mac versions and then Mac feature-parity. A purchase like this too rich for Apple's blood? Try something smaller like privatley-held ESRI (makers of ArcINFO, ArcView, ArcGIS & associated imaging systems), or continue to add strength in the crucial areas of coming scientific importance such as biotech and bioinformatics, in which Macs already have a growing following as you can see.

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