Closer Creative Enterprise

Last week, Apple bought Proximity - a company known for its artbox asset management system. At first, I thought it was a little odd... I figured Apple would either be developing something in house or buy one of the obscure little applications like iDive. Artbox, you see, is java based and well, kinda ugly. Strange choice for an acquisition.

Then I read this on AppleInsider: Proximity "caters to client base of over 150 broadcasters... including CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, ESPN, BBC and KBS".

I don't think Apple is buying the software solely for the IP or the engineers, as they did with the Combustion Team (which they hired for Motion), Silicon Colour (Final Touch), Astarte and Spruce (DVD Studio Pro)... & so on...

I suspect Apple bought Proximity to kick open the door to the "creative enterprise" market. Why else go for a workgroup tool?

From what I understand*, Broadcasters have switched to FCP in some areas - mainly offline - but Quantel rules online workgroup post-production. Mainly cause no-one else bothers.

Apple may now be in the position to offer an xml-driven integrated asset management solution for an entire workflow... from Editorial to Finishing. Hopefully, this will improve their positioning within broadcast & VFX (which is moving towards integrated solutions like FilmLight and Nucoda). The prestige of that foothold will also help them shift a lot more units in the Long Tail of the Market. ie the logic is "If Artbox can scale to 100 editors working concurrently then it should work for our shop of 5!".

Of course, to make it truly Killer™ Apple need to make opening and saving with Artbox as easily as working with a filesystem Just seamless. Thats the way they can compete with everyone else...


* Remember I work in feature VFX not broadcast, so this is based on hearsay & beer conversations with friends & some training I did for SBS a few years back.