The Cult of the Cool Mac: Made with 100% USDA real meat!

Today, Apple announced that it has acquired Emagic, makers of the insanely great Logic audio applications. Emagic's Windows versions will be discontinued as of September 30th, 2002.

Last week, Apple acquired Prismo Graphics, a company noted for its India Titler Pro software which creates spectacular titling effects.

Earlier this year, Apple purchased Silicon Grail, with its RAYZ and Chalice compositing products, and in February, Apple purchased Nothing Real and its popular compositing software, Shake.

Apple's intention to discontinue development of Windows versions of each of these applications has been made clear. It is obvious that Apple wants to corner the market in top-of-the-line multimedia software -- and that Apple wants to block Windows users from accessing these valuable resources for broadcast and movie production.

Nobody involved in multimedia production should be complacent about these acquisitions. Apple has not demonstrated any ability to manage or support such a variety of sotware, and high-end multimedia software has not proven itself under OS X, where a lack of developers and third-party support, issues of shared cpu time, and general instability continue to slow adoption of the platform. If OS X doesn't create a sufficient demand, will Linux and IRIX be large enough markets to sustain these products, or will Apple simply write off these companies rather than porting their products to Windows?