Apple squeezes iPodder Lemon
p2p news / p2pnet: Apple Computer has been throwing its weight around again. This time, it’s squeezed the juice out of iPodder Lemon, a free General Public License podcast receiver that lets users capture and play podcasts anytime, anywhere.
Here’s how the site, hosted on sourceforge, describes the application:
- It’s free
- It supports more than 15 languages
- It supports multiple media players
- It has a built-in directory "with thousands of listed podcast feeds"
- It has cleanup, authentication, centralized feed management, "and much more"
- It’s accessible for blind and visually impaired users
But Apple didn’t like it because, "it suggested a connection to the company’s flagship iPod device," says CNET News.
So the the name was changed to Juice.
"Scott Grayban, a Juice developer who also works on a similar product called CastPodder, denied Apple’s claim that iPodder’s name would confuse consumers," says the story. "It’s disappointing to see a large company such as Apple go after a small open-source project, and just shortly after we had over 1 million downloads.
"In fact, if anything we helped their sales of iPod because that was one of the MP3 players iPodder could sync to."
On his blog, developer Garth T. Kidd says, "I’d rather not waste energy lambasting Apple’s lawyers for correctly pointing out that the first four letters of iPodder happened to exactly match one of their registered trademarks. As I mentioned at the time, it’s not like Apple could safely ignore us. Unlike satire or criticism sites, we’d created a product. It handles music. It puts things on iPods. On the Mac, it even looks shiny like iTunes.
"I don’t think we’d have lasted a day in court if we’d tried to fight."
See:-
CNET News – Apple threat prompted name change, coders say, November 15, 2005
blog – Juice, the cross-platform podcast receiver, November 14, 2005
November 16th, 2005 at 10:05 pm
Another desperate attempt by Apple to remain “relevant” and “hip”….LOL
These jokers never learn do they?!!
November 17th, 2005 at 9:52 am
1.Ipod is DRM crap.
2.Looks like sour grapes and not a lemon for Apple.
Thank got Ipod didn’t start with some four letters like
‘post’ or they’d be taking everyone to court including
posts, posters, postulators and post-mortems.
It’s a shame that the courts would allow the big industry
to just bury the common man.
November 17th, 2005 at 9:59 am
P/E ratios are WAY overvalued by 4 folds. And that’s assuming they’ll continue with their sales — but that’s unlikely since they sold too many so far (and defective ones at that). The saturation rate in the USA is way too high, and only the REALLY RICH &/OR STUPID will buy another. And the content is TOO LIMITED for the Video ipod…
SO tough luck for Apple. If you own stock, I suggest you SELL, SELL, SELL.
That’s some advice for the dumb at heart!
November 18th, 2005 at 9:11 am
It seems ironic that the Lemon was chosen as the main emblem for the iPodder logo considering all of the problems that have occured with the batteries and the LCD screen in various iPod models. Perhaps that is what Apple REALLY objected to, but they just were not going to admit it.
–TurboGeek
May 9th, 2006 at 7:34 pm