--- title: How an Apple Engineer Pranked Billion-Dollar Lawyers... description: Jim Reekes, a sound designer and engineer at Apple in the late 1980s, pulled off a 30-year prank hidden in macOS. Frustrated by Apple's legal team renaming API... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/how-an-apple-engineer-pranked-billion-dollar-lawyers-and-won--pvq5yczdr twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: How an Apple Engineer Pranked Billion-Dollar Lawyers (and Won) | daily.dev og:description: Jim Reekes, a sound designer and engineer at Apple in the late 1980s, pulled off a 30-year prank hidden in macOS. Frustrated by Apple's legal team renaming API... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-an-apple-engineer-pranked-billion-dollar-lawyers-and-won--pvq5yczdr og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/pvq5yCZDr.png og:image:alt: How an Apple Engineer Pranked Billion-Dollar Lawyers (and Won) og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How an Apple Engineer Pranked Billion-Dollar Lawyers (and Won) **[freeCodeCamp](https://daily.dev/sources/freecodecamp)** · 7 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Jim Reekes, a sound designer and engineer at Apple in the late 1980s, pulled off a 30-year prank hidden in macOS. Frustrated by Apple's legal team renaming API identifiers and sound files to avoid musical connotations during the Apple vs. Apple Corps (Beatles) lawsuit, he renamed a xylophone alert tone 'Sosumi' — phonetically 'so sue me' — by submitting it in writing and falsely claiming it was a Japanese word with no musical meaning. Legal approved it. The sound shipped in System 7 in 1991 and has remained in macOS ever since. Reekes also secretly recorded a new Mac startup chord inspired by a Beatles song and smuggled it into the boot ROM. The 'Sosumi' name even made it into Apple's production CSS as the class name for legal fine print, meaning the lawyers' own disclaimers are styled with the name of the prank used to mock them. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why is the Mac alert sound named 'Sumi'? 'Sumi' is a disguised respelling of 'so sue me,' a joke created by Apple sound engineer Jim Reekes during Apple's legal disputes with the Beatles' Apple Corps over musical trademark infringement. Legal required renaming anything that sounded musical, so Reekes submitted 'Sumi' in writing only, claiming it was a meaningless Japanese word, and it was approved without anyone hearing the pun. _daily.dev surfaces stories like this Mac sound history for developers who enjoy tech origin stories._ ### Where did the classic Mac startup chime sound come from? Apple engineer Jim Reekes recorded a new clean C major chord startup sound on a synthesizer in his living room, replacing an older tone associated with frequent Mac crashes. He drew inspiration from the ending chord of the Beatles song 'A Day in the Life,' and snuck the unauthorized sound into the boot ROM of the Mac Quadra late in development. _developers curious about product history like this can find similar deep dives through daily.dev._ ### Where does the iPhone camera shutter sound come from? The iPhone camera shutter click is a recording of engineer Jim Reekes's own 1970s Canon film camera, originally created for Mac sound design and later carried forward into iPhone software, still heard whenever a photo or screenshot is taken. _daily.dev helps engineers who enjoy these behind-the-scenes design stories find more like it._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Making a Keyboard Play Songs on macOS How I Turned My React Conf Swag into a Custom Soundboard](https://daily.dev/posts/making-a-keyboard-play-songs-on-macos-how-i-turned-my-react-conf-swag-into-a-custom-soundboard-bx0ydesv9) · The Miners · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [iOS 26 leak co-defendant says Jon Prosser paid him $650](https://daily.dev/posts/ios-26-leak-co-defendant-says-jon-prosser-paid-him-650-slp50jnol) · The Verge · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [“Our programs are fun to use.” – Unsung](https://daily.dev/posts/our-programs-are-fun-to-use-unsung-xazi0beea) · Two Stop Bits · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#apple](https://daily.dev/tags/apple), [#architecture](https://daily.dev/tags/architecture), [#mac](https://daily.dev/tags/mac) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-an-apple-engineer-pranked-billion-dollar-lawyers-and-won--pvq5yczdr) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"How an Apple Engineer Pranked Billion-Dollar Lawyers (and Won)","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-an-apple-engineer-pranked-billion-dollar-lawyers-and-won--pvq5yczdr","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-an-apple-engineer-pranked-billion-dollar-lawyers-and-won--pvq5yczdr"},"datePublished":"2026-07-17T10:26:30.114Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T08:02:39.760Z","description":"Jim Reekes, a sound designer and engineer at Apple in the late 1980s, pulled off a 30-year prank hidden in macOS. 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