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Apple beefs up pro DVD know-how

Spruced up

Apple confirmed that it wants to acquire DVD specialist Spruce Technology, which the Creative Mac news site scooped yesterday.

Spruce sells high-end DVD software to studios and big corporates - although it recently added a low-end "personal" consumer version - and markets a couple of PCI encoder boards too.

What makes the proposed acquisition interesting is that Spruce only makes products for the Windows platform, and if a trawl through the website is giving us up to date information, the only mention of Apple is in the obligatory copyright and trademark sections.

Before you can say 'Yellow Box', someone somewhere will be drawing the conclusion that Apple is leaving its options open to pursue non-Mac platforms. After all, most of the WebObjects developer seats and deployments we know about are on Windows or Solaris. (Solaris is a server option but not a developer option).

More likely is Apple's desire to target the low-hanging fruit of SGI's business with its own hardware. That's where the tasty margins are to be found. With Mac OS X, Apple finally has an OS capable of SMP, and the high profile Jobs has given to SGI subsidiary Alias|Wavefront's port of Maya to OS X isn't accidental.®

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