Apple recently acquired the company Pixelmator, an unusual application acquisition for the technology giant. Although the intentions behind this purchase remain somewhat unclear, a review of Apple’s history of similar acquisitions suggests a positive outlook for Pixelmator’s customers.
Pixelmator has his whole life ahead of him
Our friend John Gruber took stock of Apple’s application acquisitions in recent years, in order to draw some lessons.
Generally, Apple tends to focus on user satisfaction after acquisition. Its objective is to:
- Keeping the application alive and healthy, like what happened with Logic.
- Integrate key features into the operating system, as seen with Dark Sky.
- Sometimes it’s a mix of both approaches, as in the case of Shazam.
Apple respects the art of creating great apps (…) Pixelmator in particular is just too good to pass up.
This contrasts with the most well-known scenario in the context of a takeover, namely excessive monetization, with a neglected clientele and the departure of the co-founders.
Reminder of Apple’s latest major acquisitions
To ensure that Apple has the best intentions in the world, let’s recall the Cupertino-based firm’s previous major acquisitions.
- Beats, acquired by Apple for $3 billion in 2014, remains the largest acquisition by price in Apple history, making Beats Music the basis of Apple Music.
- Speaking of music, iTunes started life as SoundJam MP, a third-party MP3 player for Mac. iTunes was more than just a rebranding – it was a complete overhaul of SoundJam – but it basically served the same purpose as SoundJam.
- Apple bought Final Cut from Macromedia in 1998. But it’s a strange acquisition, because Apple bought it and hired the team before it even shipped. This acquisition was not only the basis of Final Cut Pro as we know it today, but also of iMovie.
- TestFlight was an acquisition and, like Siri and Workflow (for Shortcuts), it’s the kind of concept that requires being a proprietary product to achieve its goals.
- In 2021, Apple purchased Primephonic and turned it into Apple Music Classical in 2023.
- Apple has made a series of small acquisitions that have all been channeled into improving Apple Maps or Weather. For example, Embark, which was a standalone app for transit information and seems to be the basis for Apple now having good transit features.
If you paid for Pixelmator or Photomator, on iOS or macOS, rest assured, Apple shouldn’t do anything crazy. We just hope that some of the features will be found in iOS 19 and macOS 16 next year.
