Sosumi is an alert sound introduced by Jim Reekes in

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

System 7 System 7, codenamed "Big Bang", and also known as Mac OS 7, is a graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers and is part of the classic Mac OS series of operating systems. It was introduced on May 13, 1991, by Apple C ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

in 1991. The name is derived from the phrase "so, sue me!" because of a long running court battle with

Apple Corps Apple Corps Limited (informally known as Apple) is a multi-armed multimedia corporation founded in London in January 1968 by the members of the Beatles to replace their earlier company (Beatles Ltd.) and to form a conglomerate. Its name (pron ...

, the similarly named music company, regarding the use of music in Apple Inc.'s computer products.

History

Sosumi is a short

xylophone The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel (which uses metal bars), the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in ...

sample, which gained notoriety in computer folklore as a defiant pun name, in response to a long-running '' Apple Corps v. Apple Computer'' trademark conflict. The sound has been included in all subsequent versions of Mac OS. During the development of

, the two companies concluded a settlement agreement from an earlier dispute when Apple added a sound synthesis chip to its

Apple IIGS The Apple IIGS (styled as II), the fifth and most powerful of the Apple II family, is a 16-bit personal computer produced by Apple Computer. While featuring the Macintosh look and feel, and resolution and color similar to the Amiga and Atari ST ...

machine. As a result, Apple Computer was prohibited from using its trademark on "creative works whose principal content is music". When new sounds for System 7 were created, the sounds were reviewed by Apple's Legal Department who objected that the new sound alert "chime" had a name that was "too musical", under the recent settlement. Jim Reekes, the creator of the new sound alerts for System 7, had grown frustrated with the legal scrutiny and first quipped it should be named "Let It Beep", a pun on " Let It Be". When someone remarked that that would not pass the Legal Department's approval, he remarked, "so sue me". After a brief reflection, he resubmitted the sound's name as ''sosumi'' (a

homophone A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (p ...

of "so sue me"). Careful to submit it in written form rather than spoken form to avoid pronunciation, he told the Legal Department that the name was

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

and had nothing to do with music. In

macOS Big Sur macOS Big Sur (version 11) is the seventeenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s operating system for Macintosh computers. It was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 22, 2020, and was released to the publi ...

, the original chime was replaced with a different sample, due to be named "Sonumi" (presumably a

of "so new me", due to the change to macOS 11). However, the original name was retained in the first public version of the OS, and was later changed to "Sonumi" as it appears in the System Preferences. The sound file itself in /System/Library/Sounds/ is still named Sosumi.aiff.

In popular culture

The term is in the poem "A Short Address to the Academy of Silence" by

Jay Parini Jay Parini (born April 2, 1948) is an American writer and academic. He is known for novels, poetry, biography, screenplays and criticism. He has published novels about Leo Tolstoy, Walter Benjamin, Paul the Apostle, and Herman Melville. Early ...

Jon Lech Johansen Jon Lech Johansen (born November 18, 1983 in Harstad, Norway), also known as DVD Jon, is a Norwegian programmer who has worked on reverse engineering data formats. He wrote the DeCSS software, which decodes the Content Scramble System used fo ...

's weblog "So Sue Me" is commonly mistakenly believed to be a reference to the Apple sound. Apple used the CSS class name "sosumi" for formatting legal fine print on Apple product web pages. In 2006,

Geek Squad Geek Squad Inc. is a subsidiary of American and Canadian multinational consumer electronics corporation Best Buy, headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. The subsidiary was originally an independent company founded by "Chief Inspector" Robert Step ...

used this sound in their commercial "Jet Pack", in which a woman was frustrated over her computer.Archived a
Ghostarchive
and th
Wayback Machine

References

{{Mac OS Macintosh operating systems user interface Digital audio Apple Corps

History

In popular culture

See also

References