Apple is already pretty tight with the film production industry. Final Cut Pro has a big chunk of the high-end editing business, and Apple continues innovating to keep their spot secure. A 2007 survey showed that Final Cut Pro had 49 percent of the professional editing market.
A new patent granted to Apple, number 7,827,489, describes a system to make it easier for filmmakers to edit to tape. Most editing today is non-linear, with the video and audio on a hard disk that allows random access. Apple proposes that the media clips get transferred to a sequential medium (tape) for storage. Apple seems to see this as both an easy distribution method and a way to keep a secure permanent record of all the edit clips and have this