// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did Sosumi say to its date? "You sumi up my world
Sosumi /ˌsoʊˈsjuːˈmi/ is an alert sound introduced by Apple sound designer Jim Reekes in Apple Computer's Macintosh System 7 operating system in 1991. The name is derived from the phrase "so sue me" because of a long running court battle with Apple Corps, the similarly named music company affiliated with the Beatles, regarding the use of music in Apple Inc.'s computer products.
History
[edit]Sosumi is a short alert sound created at Apple Computer in 1989 for the System 7 operating system.[1] The new OS introduced custom system beeps, prompting an Apple engineer to create a sound initially called "Xylophone", described as a "staccato E-flat diminished triad".[1] However, this short beep presented a potential legal problem. During the development of System 7, Apple Computer had reached a settlement with the Beatles' record label, Apple Corps, following an earlier dispute over the inclusion of a sound synthesis chip in the Apple IIGS computer.[2] Under this agreement, Apple Computer was prohibited from using its trademark on "creative works whose principal content is music".
All new System 7 sounds were reviewed by Apple's Legal Department. Lawyers objected that the new beep, which had since been renamed to "chime", was "too musical" under the terms of the 1991 settlement. Jim Reekes, the engineer managing new sounds for the OS,[1] grew frustrated with the intense legal scrutiny. He joked that the sound should be named "Let It Beep", a pun on the Beatles' song "Let It Be". When a colleague pointed out that Legal would never approve it, Reekes quipped, "so sue me". After a brief reflection, he resubmitted the sound as sosumi (a homophone for "so sue me"). Careful to submit it in writing to obscure its pronunciation, Reekes falsely informed the Legal Department that the word was Japanese and had nothing to do with music.[3][4][5]
The sound and its defiant, punning name quickly gained notoriety in computer folklore as a humorous chapter in the long-running Apple Corps v Apple Computer trademark conflict.[6][7][8][9]
Sosumi remained a staple in subsequent Apple operating systems for decades. However, the original chime was finally replaced with a new audio sample in the 2020 release of macOS Big Sur. While the new sound was initially labeled "Sosumi" in early public betas, it was eventually renamed to Sonumi in the System Preferences menu. Despite the UI change, the underlying sound file in /System/Library/Sounds/ remains named Sosumi.aiff. This matches Apple's approach to other updated alert sounds in Big Sur (such as "Breeze" and "Crystal"), which also retained their legacy macOS file names (Blow.aiff and Glass.aiff, respectively).
In popular culture
[edit]The term is in the poem "A Short Address to the Academy of Silence" by Jay Parini.[10]
Apple uses the CSS class name "sosumi" for formatting legal fine print on Apple product web pages.[11][12]
The 2002 Disney animated action-adventure film Treasure Planet, Jim Hawkins sees the skeleton of Captain Flint, holding B.E.N.'s missing memory chip in its hand, then he re-inserts the part into B.E.N.'s memory chip, making the Macintosh's Sosumi sound effect, and the planet starts collapsing.[13]
In 2006, Geek Squad used this sound in their commercial "Jet Pack", in which a woman was frustrated over her computer.[14]
See also
[edit]- Apple libel dispute with Carl Sagan for a similar revenge-by-pun anecdote
References
[edit]- 1 2 3 Linzmayer, Owen W. (2004). Apple Confidential 2.0. No Starch Press. p. 283. ISBN 9781593270100. Retrieved October 8, 2013.
- ↑ Royal Courts of Justice (2004). "Judgment in Apple Corps Limited vs Apple Computer, Inc. - EWHC 768 (Ch) in Case No: HC-2003-C02428". courtservice.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 2005-03-15. Retrieved October 8, 2013.
- ↑ "Jim Reekes describing the origins of the sosumi name (Vimeo)". Archived from the original on 2010-03-01. Retrieved 2010-02-27.
- ↑ Xeni Jardin (24 March 2005). "Early Apple sound designer Jim Reekes corrects Sosumi myth". Boing Boing. Archived from the original on 2005-06-01. Retrieved October 8, 2013.
- ↑ Luke Dormehl (2012). The Apple Revolution. Random House. pp. 297–298. ISBN 9781448131365. Retrieved October 8, 2013.
- ↑ Jennifer Lee (August 19, 1999). "The Sound and the Fury: Beating Back the Beep". New York Times. Retrieved July 23, 2020.
- ↑ Greg Mancina (May 14, 2001), "Ding, dong, now I've got your attention", Saginaw News, MI
- ↑ Amy-Mae Elliott (October 18, 2010). "8 Classic Tech Sounds that Defined Our Digital World". Mashable.com. Retrieved October 8, 2013.
- ↑ S. Derrickson Moore (April 2, 2006), "Sometimes all those bells and whistles just give us a headache", Las Cruces Sun-News, NM,
Sosumi" is such a strange word that I Googled it, searching for a definition, and got all sorts of references to lawsuits and defense attorneys. Really. I would have probed further but I don't like the sound anyway. So sue me.
- ↑ "A Short Address to the Academy of Silence" Jay Parini, The Sewanee Review, Vol. 112, No. 3 (Summer, 2004), pp. 344-345
- ↑ "The story behind "Sosumi" the Mac's startup sound". macamour.com. November 11, 2010. Archived from the original on 2010-11-25. Retrieved October 21, 2016.
- ↑ "apple_legal_text_css.png". robertclarke.com. Archived from the original on 2014-03-02. Retrieved February 27, 2014."Apple main CSS file". apple.com. Archived from the original on 7 March 2026. Retrieved 7 March 2026.
- ↑ Treasure Planet at timestamp 1:15:05
- ↑ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: "GeekSquad "Jet Pack" Commercial". YouTube. 2006-06-19. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
