Checking the news this morning, the corporation which owns a 60’s group called The Beatles is suing to get money out of iPods. The comments at MacCentral have some funny titles: “Ringo Starr sued by Astronomical Association”, “What are The Beattles?”, “AppleCorps to sue farmer for growing Apple”, “The Power To Crush Other Fruit!(tm)” and more.
But some points did catch my eye as I was browsing
It’s trademark, not copyright
The original issue was that somehow people would confuse Apple Computers with Apple Records, hence the agreement that Apple Computers wouldn’t produce music. Now that Apple Corp is a dead entity and no longer produces anything (oh but they might in the future, yeah right) the issue is moot. Regardless, Apple Computers is not producing music any more than Best Buy or Tower records does. What’s even more ridiculous is the dispute over the iPod, which only plays music. Would a music producer want to sue a manufacturer of CD players, tape decks or record players?? This is just a plain stupid attempt to make some money. It’s a loser and I’m surprised they found a law firm to even file it for them.
Ahhh, the good ol’ days of the Apple Computer which came with the oh so cheeky “Sosumi” (So Sue Me, geddit?) sound when the shit hit the fan… Which it invariably did all to often, infact it was my time in high school screwing about with Apple Macintosh Classics II’s, the one with the inbuilt monochrome monitors that our high school used to show the wonder of mail merging on, that really soured my opinions of Apple and Mac’s…
But I digress, this seems to be a lot of hooha over nothing… Apple (Computers) aren’t making and producing music, merely buying and selling. Apple (Records) are just trying to make a quick buck by hoping Steve Jobs will settle out of court.
I, for one, am going to wait a few months before I finally purchase a 20GB or 40GB iPod and maybe even a badass 17″ iMac. Using one in Croydon has made me realise that Mac’s arent all that bad, I’ve even got an XP theme that makes it look like OSX (sad, I know). And now, as I look around the Apple store, I’m taking note of all the stuff I want and it’s depressing me as it’s so damn expensive.
Time to start saving…