Does Steve Jobs need a heart transplant, too?

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 25 November 2009 13:40

Opinion and Analysis

Has iPodRip iRipped itself a Jobsian marketing coup by publicising a seemingly heartless response from Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, or does Steve Jobs need to have a heart?

With Apple clamping down on just about any company worldwide with the word “ipod” anywhere in its title, news of iPodRip having to change its name to iRip following a legal letter from Apple’s lawyers is surprising.

Surprising because iPodRip has been around for 6 years and reportedly has 6 million customers, with parent company Little App Factory sustaining several employees and generally being quite successful.

So, when a legal letter turns up, some will choose to fight, but Little App Factory decided against testing the legal and financial might of Apple and doing a deal instead to relinquish the iPodRip product and domain name and any future reference to iPodRip.

AppleInsider shows the hopeful email sent by Little App Factory co-founder, John Devore, to Steve Jobs, in the hope that the iPodRip name could be saved.

Jobs’ reported reply is simply:

“Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal.

Steve

Sent from my iPhone”

As is well known, Apple has had its own naming battles with Apple Corps of Beatles fame, more recently fighting with Cisco over the iPhone brand name before settling with each other, so changing names certainly can be a pretty big deal, depending on the situation. 

But Little App Factory was seemingly given six years to build a business with millions of iPodRip customers, which is a pretty amazing run, and any lost publicity due to having to relinquish the iPodRip name has seen a massive reversal thanks to the initial publication of the email exchange and especially due to what Steve Jobs said.

Millions around the world now know of the change and its free publicity that money simply can’t buy.

Some might say that Steve Jobs is heartless and does need that heart transplant after all, lacking the heart to exempt an app even recommended by some Apple employees, but I think that Jobs clearly has demonstrated the ticker to set the rules and stick to them until he eventually decides to change them, such as when the iPhone could only run web apps, even though hackers had created unauthorised third-party apps - something that changed with iPhone OS 2.0 and official third party apps were allowed.

So no new heart is needed, the current one seems to be working just fine.

Was it a terse response - or a brilliant marketing move that Jobs knew would be reported to the press, getting Apple massive free publicity in the news yet again, promoting the all-important Apple brand, the iPod and by side-effect, the renamed iRip software, right in the middle of the most important sales season of the year?