Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) announced on September 23rd that it has acquired a Dutch-based company named Prss, which created a web app to help people with designing magazines for various magazine platforms including Apple’s Newsstand. As reported by iCulture, the co-founder of Prss, Michel Elings, has moved to the Bay Area recently.
Apple eying talent with acquisition
In a statement, Apple confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch, saying “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.” The amount for which Apple acquired the Dutch magazine platform is not known, and Apple has reportedly hired several former Prss employees.
A glance through the LinkedIn profiles of several former Prss employees indicates that they also have relocated to the Bay Area. This suggests that the acquisition took place in the summer months. Prss was planning on shutting down in July, and it had announced this in April. The company’s website is not available.
Prss offers ‘powerful’ but simple tool
While nothing can be definitively said about the Prss team’s role at Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), iCulture thinks that this acquisition could be for the talent and not for the product. iCulture notes that the publishing platform of Prss could be adopted by Apple, and it would enable the iPhone maker to publish iPad magazines in a simpler manner. Apple is expected to launch the new iPads in October, so, a Prss-powered magazine creation tool makes perfect sense.
The browser-based collaborative tool created by Prss helps in designing magazines and includes a simple drag-and-drop interface. It is possible for up to 30 people to collaborate on a project using this tool. A charge of five cents is imposed for a download of every single magazine for published content. The Next Web called Prss “a powerful new way to create professional-quality iPad magazines in your browser.”
Prss is better than other available magazine solutions because it does not create problems for customers/users by generating large image files for each magazine. Using this tool anyone can create and publish their own magazine on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s Newsstand even if they do not have any programming skills whatsoever.
