Questions related to PTO Assignment DB: (Related to) Apple and Liquidmetal Technologies Extending IP Agreement Until 2014

Liquidmetal Technologies announced that it has extended its agreement with Apple to effectively license its ongoing intellectual property development for an additional two years.

"...Under the Amendment, the parties agreed to amend the MTA to extend the February 5, 2012 date to February 5, 2014." - http://goo.gl/g5ltj

The agreement, which is funneled through a subsidiary known as Crucible Intellectual Property, LLC, provides Apple with a full license to all of Liquidmetal's intellectual property for commercialization in consumer electronics.

But in the USPTO assignment database, the patents are reassigned back to Crucible Intellectual Property, LLC (not to Apple).

Sample patents: 6010580, 6021840, 4608319, 4888758, 5482580, 5567251... The entire list of 48 patents are listed here - http://goo.gl/Ig1Ed

Questions related to USPTO assignment database:

1. This change appeared in USPTO assignments database only last week and the recordation date is 08/06/2010 – is this something automated in the back end as, as soon as the contract ends it automatically appears in the DB with old date?
2. Why is there is broken assignment?
a. For example in 6010580 (http://goo.gl/S6ZBT), the fourth assignment was change in name from AMORPHOUS TECHNOLOGIES INTERNATIONAL to LIQUIDMETAL TECHNOLOGIES and the very next assignment was from CRUCIBLE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, LLC to Apple and no record of Liquidmetal to Crucible. Any reason why?
Any explanation w.r.t. assignment database related questions are very much appreciated.