In 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer. Eight years earlier, in 1968, The Beatles had already created Apple Corps — their multimedia company and record label. The name was inspired by Eastern philosophy: “apple” symbolized knowledge and spirituality, while “Corps” (French for “body”) represented the material world. They registered the Apple trademark and a green apple logo — but only for music, entertainment, and media.
For the first few years the two Apples coexisted peacefully. One made records; the other made personal computers. No one cared.
Round 1 — 1981: The First Lawsuit
Trouble started when Apple Computer began adding basic sound capabilities to its machines. The Beatles’ lawyers noticed and sued, claiming the name and logo infringed on their music-related trademark.
Apple Computer settled quickly: they paid a modest sum and signed an agreement promising never to enter the music business. The Beatles went home satisfied.
Round 2 — Late 1980s: Computers Start to Sing
By the late 1980s Macintosh computers could play simple melodies, chimes, and alert sounds. The Beatles’ lawyers returned with a new claim: “This is music now.”
This time Apple Computer (already a much larger company) decided to fight.
The legal battle dragged on for years. Lawyers dissected every word of the 1981 agreement:
- What counts as “music”?;
- Are alert beeps and system sounds “musical works”?;
- Where exactly is the line between “computer sound” and “music”?.
During the discovery process, Apple’s legal team gave very clear instructions to the engineering and sound design teams:
> “Do not use words like melody, chime, music, song, tune, composition, or anything that could possibly be interpreted as musical in the internal names or documentation of system sounds. Call them anything else.”
The sound designers obeyed… and then went full troll mode.
The Birth of “Sosumi”
In System 7 (1991), Apple introduced a new short notification sound — a distinctive four-note descending phrase. Internally, the engineers named it Sosumi.
Officially they claimed it was a Japanese word (a plausible-sounding lie).
In reality, it was “So sue me” — a deliberate middle finger to the ongoing Beatles litigation.
The name was never exposed to the public (it was purely an internal resource name), but the story leaked among Apple employees and became legendary in Silicon Valley engineering culture.
A Tradition of Weird Sound Names
The “never call it music” rule created a long-lasting tradition of bizarre, deliberately non-musical names for every system sound and ringtone on macOS and iOS:
- Glass;
- Basso;
- Frog;
- Popcorn;
- Sosumi;
- Tink;
- Submarine;
- Bottle;
- Purr;
- Gong.
Even today, when you go to System Settings → Sound → Alert volume, you can still choose from a list that sounds more like a surrealist art project than a sound library.
Sosumi itself survived for many years but was eventually removed from modern macOS versions — though the legend lives on.
Round 3 — 2007: The Final Settlement
The war ended not in court, but in business.
In 2007 Apple launched iTunes (and soon the iPhone + iTunes Store), openly entering the music industry. The Beatles’ Apple Corps realized they could no longer realistically fight the much larger, faster-moving company.
In a 2007 settlement, Apple Corps sold all rights to the Apple name and related trademarks in the music field to Apple Inc. for a reported $500 million — a huge sum for the Beatles’ company, but pocket change for Jobs’ empire.
The agreement finally put an end to decades of trademark tension.
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The Last Laugh
In the end, the little four-note sound called Sosumi became one of the greatest examples of passive-aggressive engineering humor in tech history.
While lawyers argued over the definition of music, Apple engineers quietly renamed their beeps to “So sue me” — and kept shipping them to millions of Macs.
Years later, when Apple legally bought the right to use “Apple” in music, that cheeky little sound had already become part of the folklore.
Sosumi may be gone from the menu, but it will forever remain one of the most legendary middle fingers ever hidden inside a system sound file.
