Tim Cook welcomes Beats to the Apple family

It was just back in late May that Apple announced it was buying Beats Electronics and Beats Music, but on Friday, Apple CEO Tim Cook officially welcomed the company to the Apple family.

Cook posted a welcome message on Twitter and linked to a new splash page on Apple’s site that welcomes Beats into the fold:

Today we are excited to officially welcome Beats Music and Beats Electronics to the Apple family. Music has always held a special place in our hearts, and we’re thrilled to join forces with a group of people who love it as much as we do. Beats cofounders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre have created beautiful products that have helped millions of people deepen their connection to music. We’re delighted to be working with the team to elevate that experience even further.

And we can’t wait to hear what’s next.

A similar page on Beats’s site lauds Apple’s long history in music making, including the Mac’s history in digital recording, as well as the impact of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

The additions come just a couple of days after the Apple-Beats deal was approved by European Union regulators, who deemed there to be no threats to competition.

However, all may not be sunny in Cupertino: Re/code reported earlier this week that Apple will lay off around 200 of Beats’s 700 employees; an Apple spokesperson also told the site that the company will “work hard during this time to find as many of these Beats employees as we can another permanent job within Apple.”

Additionally, Beats (and, by extension, Apple) has also found itself in legal crosshairs over a patent suit launched by audio company Bose, which alleges that some models of Beats’s headphones infringe on Bose’s noise-cancelling patents.

Beats’s Iovine and Dr. Dre are set to report to Apple senior vice president of software and services, Eddy Cue, but the company has said little in the way of details about how the two companies and their product lines will mesh after the acquisition. Though, given Apple’s penchant for making music-related announcements in the fall, we could hear more about that in just a few months.