Apple told The Little App Factory to change the name of their popular app iPodRip, as it had the word “iPod” in it. The CEO sent a passionate letter to Steve Jobs, and he got a response.
Here’s the letter he sent:
Dear Mr. Jobs,
My name is John Devor and I’m the co-owner of a small Mac shareware company named The Little App Factory and a long-term Apple customer and shareholder. I doubt you’re aware but we recently received a letter from a law firm working on Apple’s behalf instructing us that we had violated several of Apple’s trademarks in our application iPodRip and asking us to cease using the name and Apple trademarks in our icons.
We have been distributing iPodRip since 2003 with the aim of providing a method to recover music, movies and photos from iPods and iPhones in the event of a serious hardware failure on their Mac which leads to data loss. Our goal has been to provide the highest quality product coupled with the highest quality service in a bid to resolve some of the angst that is generated by such an ordeal; service befitting of an Apple product. In this department we think we have succeeded as we have approximately 6 million customers, many Apple employees, music artists and other notable people in society. In fact I’d argue that our customer service is the best of all competing applications in our niche as many of them are scams and frauds that leave Apple customers with a terrible taste in their collective mouths. We fear very much that tens of thousands of Apple customers looking to recover their own music and having heard of our product via word-of-mouth or otherwise, will instead find a product produced by one of our competitors, and will wind up the victim of a scam (one closely-named competitor charges a hidden monthly fee, for instance).
It is quite obvious that we mean Apple no harm with the use of the name iPodRip, or of the inclusion of trademarked items in our icons, and in fact I believe that we have been providing an excellent secondary service to Apple customers that has potentially caused you many repeat clients. In fact, we are quite aware that Apple support and store staff have recommended our software on numerous occasions as far back as 2004 so we have felt that we were doing something right!
With this in mind, we are in desperate need of some assistance and we beseech you to help us to protect our product and our shareware company, both of which we have put thousands upon thousands of hours of work into. Our company goal is to create Mac software of the highest quality with the best user experience possible. I myself dropped out of school recently to pursue a path in the Mac software industry, and you yourself have been a consistent inspiration for me.
If there is anything at all you can do with regards to this matter, we would be most grateful.
Best,
John Devor
And Steve replied:
Change your apps [sic]name. Not that big of a deal.
Steve
Sent from my iPhone
So they changed the name of their app to iRip. Fair enough! [CrunchGear]
Max
November 20, 2009 at 10:00 AM
He’s got a point.
Report Permalinkangus
November 20, 2009 at 10:04 AM
i felt that his letter was substantial, how has it taken apple 6yrs to finally come across this? if this company is working so hard to make apple a better company,then why is Steve jobs such a prick?
Report Permalinkalso John Devor actually put some time and effort into writing this letter, expressing how much his little app company does to enhance apple and Steve jobs just replies off his iphone? what a tool!
Seth
November 20, 2009 at 10:10 AM
Big email, tiny reply.
That reply could have been a sms.
Also: Stuff has been using the iPod[Thinger] since it came out. No one cares except money grubbing whores. (Read: Apple)
Report PermalinkBennish
November 20, 2009 at 11:07 AM
To: Steve Jobs
From: Cisco
Re: iPhone
Change your phones name. Not that big of a deal.
Cisco
Report Permalinkmatt
November 20, 2009 at 12:52 PM
To: Steve Jobs
From: Apple Records
Re: Apple logo
Change your log. Not that big of a deal.
Thanks,
Report PermalinkBeatles.
Bennish
November 20, 2009 at 1:15 PM
genius, matt
Report Permalinkmatt
November 20, 2009 at 11:09 AM
what a wanker, like we are meant to be amazed that THE GREAT STEVE responded at all! “and the lord said to John, its not that big a deal”
how the hell can you give your product a useful name if you can’t put the name of the device which its for in the title!? “sorry you can’t call your product kitchen cleaner, you’ll have to call it cleaner”
don’t no about iRip tho, will conflict with a future apple device when the naming guy runs out of ideas and decides to go literal: iRipoff.
Report PermalinkSimeon
November 20, 2009 at 11:28 AM
Just do what he says, change it to “iSCREWYOUSTEVEJOBSHOWABOUTTHISFORABIGDEALRip”
Report PermalinkJamie Carl
November 20, 2009 at 11:34 AM
Such a short reply. If he sent it from his iPhone it probably took him 10 minutes to type it too.
Steve is a prick. I have no sympathy of anyone that he is an inspiration to either, so sucked in to Mr John Devor. He should have seen this coming.
Report Permalinksteve
November 20, 2009 at 11:40 AM
to all the haters..
obviously, as SteveJ is busy man.. who gives a flying F@#k about this long winded email and kiss apples balls scenario..
just reminds me of the peasants lining up to praise the king.. and.. he got told..!
what else did you guys expect???
Report Permalinkdrew
November 20, 2009 at 1:00 PM
not an apple user, never have been. but as far as common decency goes, i think mr jobs is severely lacking in this instance.
this product seems to do nothing more than extend the life and usability of the iphone. and when you consider that apps are made fairly independently, word of mouth is very important.
i can understand the briefness of the reply, im surprised he got one at all, and not a reply from whichever legal representative.
though i think asking to change the name is a bit much, its important to protect your brand, but in this instance it is unnecessary.
Report Permalinkmiles
November 20, 2009 at 1:09 PM
i reckon everyone over the age of 50 regards any music listening device as an ipod..like barbie i would say ipod has entered the public lexicon
i would love to see this tested in court..and then i would love to be the one to tell steve!
Report PermalinkBennish
November 20, 2009 at 1:14 PM
To: Steve Jobs
From: Xerox
Re: user interface
Change your UI. Not that big of a deal.
Xerox
Report PermalinkBennish
November 20, 2009 at 1:17 PM
* Sent from my Palm Pre!
Report PermalinkPinballLes
November 20, 2009 at 1:57 PM
I assume that iPod is trademark, therefore Apple have every right to stop people to using their trademark in other non Apple endorsed or licensed products.
No doubt Steve Jobs was frustrated that some guy wrote a long letter begging Steve to let him use an Apple trademark in the name of his software. What a waste of time. Did he seriously expect Steve Jobs to respond with, “yeah sure use our trademark in your softwares name”.
The dude should be grateful that Apple gave him the chance to change the apps name without suing the pants off him.
Report Permalinkmatt
November 20, 2009 at 2:51 PM
Yeah, ‘bit over that “sent from my iphone” bit.
Like “Congratulations! have a Cookie!”
Or is that meant to be the justification for all the typos and lack of punctuation and courtesy in the preceding mail?
I mean I’m sure its automatic, but still…
Report PermalinkJames Golfis
November 20, 2009 at 4:42 PM
Everyone settle down. The response was appropriate, and suitable for a response. Better than a long response, which is all crapola.
Report PermalinkDox
November 20, 2009 at 7:13 PM
Frankly I don’t like the message that John Devor is putting out. Just because I don’t purchase his product via *word of mouth* does not mean I am going to fall victim to a scam. Absolute rubbish.
The world of ipod data recovery does not evolve around him.
Report PermalinkGood on Jobs for giving him a brief but frank response.
The Joker
November 20, 2009 at 7:19 PM
uFools
Report PermalinkKhuntza
November 20, 2009 at 7:36 PM
Steve Jobs is a total fag..
Sent from my PC
Report Permalinkonux
November 20, 2009 at 10:53 PM
Whats the product like?
Report PermalinkBen
November 21, 2009 at 6:06 PM
It’s really good, I use it all the time to give my friends my music.
Report Permalinkneo
November 26, 2009 at 1:09 PM
First do a thing which is popular but illegal. Then crib for using a copywrite name.
Then get into a deal, scilently, for changing the name.
Then go to news paper weeping that employees will loose job because those 6 employees do nothing but just support this only application. All other applications are developed and maintained by me and me only.
Com’on John, you “world of mouth” hungry developer turned to news paper for “word of news” publicity for yuor new iRip software. Probably with out this if your application even had died, no one could have noticed.
Report PermalinkNow, No one need to search for iRip, who ever search for iPodrip will eventually end up to one or another news article giving details of your new website.
Clever, i say.