Daily Find · October 23, 2026

So Sue Me

Apple Music's new logo is the Apple symbol next to the word "music." For most of its history, Apple had signed papers promising never to do exactly that.

Apple Music changed its logo this week. The new wordmark is the Apple symbol next to the word "music," lowercase and heavy, in a customised cut of Apple's own SF Pro. The shapes were made by playing notes from a Fred again.. and NEST Acoustics composition through a transducer under a shallow tray of mineral oil and filming the ripples (Wallpaper has the process). It rolls out with iOS 27.2. The same mark already hangs over Apple Music Hall, the 600-seat venue Apple opened inside Battersea Power Station last month, where Apple Music's Oliver Schusser said "Apple's deep love for music dates all the way back to the very beginning."

It does. In the beginning it was a lawsuit. Apple Corps, the Beatles' company, sued Apple Computer over the name in 1978. The 1981 settlement: Apple Computer paid $80,000 and agreed to stay out of the music business, and Apple Corps agreed to stay out of computers. Then Macs learned MIDI and started recording sound, Apple Corps sued again in 1989, and the 1991 settlement cost Apple Computer about $26.5 million. Apple Corps kept the name for "creative works whose principal content is music." Apple Computer could put its name on the machines that played music, not on the music.

The brick facade of 3 Savile Row in London, with a blue plaque between the first-floor windows — 3 Savile Row, Apple Corps' office from 1968. The Beatles played their last show on the roof. Photo: MatthewHoobin, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

That same year System 7 shipped, and every new system sound went past Apple's legal department first. Jim Reekes had one called Chimes. The lawyers thought that was too musical. As Reekes tells it, he resubmitted it in writing as "sosumi," told them it was Japanese, and nobody read it out loud.

The iTunes Music Store opened in 2003 with the Apple logo on it, and Apple Corps sued a third time. A London judge ruled for Apple Computer in May 2006. In February 2007 Apple bought all the "Apple" trademarks outright and licensed some back to the Beatles, for a figure the papers put at $500 million. The Beatles arrived on iTunes in November 2010.

Battersea Power Station across the Thames, with its four white chimneys, home of Apple Music Hall — Battersea Power Station, home of Apple Music Hall. Photo: Apple.

Sosumi still ships. It's in the system sounds folder on the Mac I'm writing this on. The legal fine print at the bottom of Apple Music's own page sits in a block of code with the class name ac-gf-sosumi.

Let It Be on Apple Records, 50th anniversary LP — A$62

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