Say, is it just us being way out of touch again, or has it really been a while since Apple whipped out the checkbook and bought up a small company or three? For a while, there, the acquisitions seemed to be coming fast and furious (Raycer, PowerSchool, Spruce, Nothing Real, Emagic, etc.), but we can't recall any mad shopping sprees of late. No wonder Apple's got $6.45 billion in cash piled up in huge wads in a secret underground chamber somewhere: it's gotten stingy with the buyouts lately! A multibillion-dollar company that isn't chewing up smaller entities like some crazed mutant shark with a bad case of the munchies, digesting the choice bits, and spitting out the remains? That's practically unpatriotic or something.

But that's not to say that Apple isn't shopping around-- or even that it hasn't completed an acquisition or two on the sly. MacRumors passes along an unconfirmed rumor that Apple "may have acquired Vancouver, BC-based SchemaSoft," a singularly boring company whose web site is soaking in 180-proof buzzword sauce. "Software components that facilitate the workflow of digital information"? "Repurpose content and prepare content for multi-targeted publishing systems"? "Maximize its reuse value"? Way to think outside the box to get proactive with the synergy of the paradigm, there. But at least the company cranks out some code that can read and write Microsoft Office data formats; assuming Apple did buy SchemaSoft (the only link we can turn up is that the company lists Apple as a client), here's hoping that iWork gains better and more transparent Office file compatibility-- and that Apple's own web site doesn't get overrun by an impenetrable wall of muffinheaded BizSpeak jargon. We hear that stuff can be contagious.

Meanwhile, SchemaSoft isn't the only company allegedly on Apple's shopping list: faithful viewer baldprof notes that, as reported by Think Secret, Apple is apparently also "currently in talks" to buy a startup called HipSolve Media, which has been flogging tech that "offers music labels and publishers the ability to distribute their music directly to customers, complete with digital rights management," thereby completely bypassing those pesky money-grubbing third-party services like, oh, say, the iTunes Music Store. So is Apple looking to rebrand HipSolve's "iHoopla" technology and turn it into a new splinter of the iTunes digital music commerce platform? Or is the company simply nervous that iHoopla could render the iTMS obsolete, so it's buying HipSolve to kill it? Only time will tell. Our own personal guess is that Steve and the gang just want the rights to the name "iHoopla," because, well, who wouldn't?

So this is all we've got on the acquisition front? Rumors (and unconfirmed ones, at that) that Apple's looking to buy one company that makes Office format translation filters and another that provides artist-to-customer downloadable music technology? Wow, that's... pretty underwhelming. After all, Apple's got some serious buying power with nearly $6.5 billion in its wallet, so what's with the alleged offer to buy up HipSolve for a measly $3.6 million? Here's hoping that the next buyout rumors are a little juicier; a half-billion cash purchase of Krispy Kreme, anyone? After all, the one big shortcoming of the iPod product line is that you can't buy them glazed.