It's possible that both this report and the "double digit millions" report are true. $2M divided among 20 engineers isn't enough to convince each engineer to stick around at Apple for a few years vs. look for another job immediately. Usually in this case, there are separate retention bonuses for each employee that the acquiring company wants to ensure they keep. Sometimes these retention bonuses are included in the reported price of an acquisition to make everyone feel better, but the investors don't see any of that. So it's possible that from the investors' perspectives, it's a trivial $2M deal, but from Apple and the acquired employees' perspective, it's significantly bigger.

I have no information about Color so I'm not saying that necessarily happened, just that it's a way of reconciling all the conflicting stories. The submitted story on its own doesn't quite add up either ($2M for 20 employees is too low).