[ort888]

http://cbs5.com/investigates/local_story_103023852.html

[Spliffdaddy]

OMG.

Steve Jobs is such an arrogant prick.

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

The girl's mom and CBS5 haven't a braincell between them.

It's standard practise for a company to send a letter like that when people send unsolicited ideas to protect them from being sued if their future products contain ideas sent in like that. They have no way of predicting if people will sue them or not because the world is full of time wasting moocher opportunists.

Just look at what a time wasting opportunity to get on tv this is.

Originally Posted by ort888

http://cbs5.com/investigates/local_story_103023852.html

Their policy makes sense, although maybe they want to have a more friendly worded letter when children write to them.

Imagine if they said "Thank you for your ideas". And then implemented the suggestion, whether the girl was the first to suggest it or not.

Mom could then try to sue Apple for a cut of the profits since it was "her daughter's idea." This is why Apple has that policy.

[stevesnj]

at least Apple apologized..I say give her a new iMac..hers is so 2002

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Spliffdaddy

OMG.

Steve Jobs is such an arrogant prick.

To be fair, it probably never made it to Steve. His secretary probably filtered it out as a feature request letter, then the standard response was sent back.

Not to be mean, but she sent out a business letter, she got a business letter back. Sure, it's a bit insensitive for a 3rd grader, but if Apple acknowledges they read the letter, and then implements the feature, they could be sued for stealing the feature from the little girl.

Ironically lyrics support is already in the nano.

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

Let's send ideas to CBS5 to improve the quality of their news and see what response we get back.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by goMac

Ironically lyrics support is already in the nano.

OMG she should sue them!

[goMac]

I also ran into this article last night which I thought reminded me of this:

http://archive.salon.com/mwt/feature...ule/index.html

[slugslugslug]

Would this have even made the news if it'd been a slightly-lower-profile company?

[Chuckit]

Yes. Local TV news routinely scrapes holes in the bottom of the barrel.

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

Corkers, someone on this thread threatened to sue several MacNNers over a period of a few months for not agreeing with his lame opinions. Wish he would shut up now.

[waxcrash]

Sterilize that family. They should never be allowed to reproduce.

[ThinkInsane]

Originally Posted by hayesk

Their policy makes sense, although maybe they want to have a more friendly worded letter when children write to them.

Which, according to the news monkeys, is the new corporate policy at Apple. The kid should be proud of herself, she got a major corporation to change a policy. Most of us couldn't make that happen.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Obi Wan's Ghost

Corkers, someone on this thread threatened to sue several MacNNers over a period of a few months for not agreeing with his lame opinions.

Who's that?

[Obi Wan's Ghost]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Who's that?

I can't be bothered to be on fat boy's list of money making opportunities.

[Chuckit]

Fair enough.

[epluth]

Originally Posted by Obi Wan's Ghost

The girl's mom and CBS5 haven't a braincell between them...Just look at what a time wasting opportunity to get on tv this is.

I fail to see any logic there.

Anyway, I have sent a similar letter to Apple in the past, with a similar response, and I agree with the person who said Steve probably never got it. It is probably a good thing for Apple to cover their ass, but to a 3rd grader, maybe a bit over the top.

[andreas_g4]

OMG! The poor gils's life is WASTED! Come on, the mother was probably just glad they made it on TV. Nothing to care about.

[macaddict0001]

that was worth half a chuckle.

[Rumor]

Originally Posted by goMac

I also ran into this article last night which I thought reminded me of this:

http://archive.salon.com/mwt/feature...ule/index.html

I'm going to sue because my kid is stupid!

[CharlesS]

When I saw the topic, I was expecting it to be about Apple sending some kid a cease and desist letter or some other threat of legal action. So yeah, I'd have to say I am decidedly non-appalled by this.

[Big Mac]

Same here

[ort888]

Yeah, it's stupid. I mean, OK, maybe Apple could have used more tact, but is this really a big deal at all? These parents are blowing it way out of proportion. They probably know someone at the station or something, because this had to have run on the slowest news day of the century.

[euchomai]

The end cracked me up. That news anchor really thinks that Steve Jobs is watching them and feeling bad about this incident? What a goof.

[Nexus5]

Originally Posted by waxcrash

Sterilize that family. They should never be allowed to reproduce.

Yea. But what was wrong with your mom? She missed her date with the doctor. Not enough money to pay the bus?

nexus5.

[Gamoe]

Apple could have said the same thing in a more friendly way. In fact, maybe they should, for everyone- not just kids. At least they apologized and have changed their policy. I wonder how they've changed it, though.

[waxcrash]

Originally Posted by Gabriel Morales

Apple could have said the same thing in a more friendly way. In fact, maybe they should, for everyone- not just kids. At least they apologized and have changed their policy. I wonder how they've changed it, though.

The letter is the same. It's just hand written with crayon.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by waxcrash

The letter is the same. It's just hand written with crayon.

Handwritten by Steve's kids

-t

[11011001]

Little Girl - "So they could have the words on the screen so they could sing along and stuff"
Little Girl - "It's kinda like we don't want your idea, it's not good or something."


Bingo!! Ding ding ding!

Ahahaha, she got pwnzord!1!!!11

Seriously though, why the heck is this news? Furthermore why would she send them a hand written letter? In all likelihood it was typed. I hate children, and yes, I hated myself as a child.

[macaddict0001]

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...7/fb82cd41.png wow apple must have gone back in time and added the little girls feature. they should sue.

[rozwado1]

One word: suicide.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Gabriel Morales

Apple could have said the same thing in a more friendly way. In fact, maybe they should, for everyone- not just kids. At least they apologized and have changed their policy. I wonder how they've changed it, though.

Now they point and laugh, to make the schoolchildren feel more in their element.

[OwlBoy]

Anyone notice, um, she has an iPod Mini. And everyone keeps calling it a nano.

Also, I agree, this is normal, no matter how old the person is. Due to the fact the letter was a list of ideas. Also, STEVE ain't the jerk, the person who reads his mail for him and routed this one away from him to legal is prolly the one to blame.

-Owl

[OwlBoy]

On another note, the way the news video is integrated into the site with flash video is pretty nice.

-Owl

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by OwlBoy

Anyone notice, um, she has an iPod Mini. And everyone keeps calling it a nano.

Who called it a Nano?

[cybergoober]

Originally Posted by OwlBoy

Anyone notice, um, she has an iPod Mini. And everyone keeps calling it a nano.
-Owl

It was a white nano in a green iSkin-like case. Looked like it had a color display and the headphone port was on the bottom.

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Who called it a Nano?

The reporter called it a nano in the story.

[euchomai]

I heard them say nano a few times and also noticed that it was a nano, with a skin over the top. Hooray for my super-slueth skills!

[macaddict0001]

anyone know who alboggs33 is?

[spindler]

The mother should have said something nice to console her daughter instead of turning the whole thing into a huge drama. She should have told her that her note must have fallen into the wrong pile or something. Instead the girl is gonna have a complex.

[11011001]

Originally Posted by rozwado1

One word: suicide.

Let's be friends.

[OwlBoy]

Oh I see, Looked just like a Green Mini to me

-Owl

[Salty]

This was pretty pathetic...

[SpaceMonkey]

Jeez, the kid's really got the volume turned up on her Nano when they show her listening to it on her bed. I predict deafness by age 18.

[loki74]

Uhh... Apple's policy and response seems perfectly sensible. I mean come on. I've only skimmed this thread, so I apologize if someone has already said this stuff.

1)why do we care what grade she is in? Unsolicited advice is unsolicited advice regardless of who it comes from, and should recieve the same response: being shut down.

2) That letter hardly seemed to me like a "harsh response."

3) From a business perspective its foolish to accept unsolicited advice. If you use it, and someone says "hey I thought of that!" (correct me if I'm wrong) but doesnt that give them the opportunity to sue you for stealing the idea? If you're under contract, you cant do that, and that's why the advice is solicited.

There is nothing to see here. And the "I'm sure Steve will feel very foolish after watching this program" was entirely inappropriate.

And for the record, I am not a "zealot." This is just business, plain and simple. If MS did the same thing, I would have the same response.

[Gamoe]

Originally Posted by loki74

1)why do we care what grade she is in?

That statement undermines a whole series of important and valid arguments against exposing kids to certain content and experiences. We should care what grade she is in, or rather, whether she is a child or not, because a child's emotional maturity and understanding is not like that of an adult.

Any one of us might be a little dismayed if we got the same response, but we wouldn't get so sad or upset about it because we're on a different emotional and maturity level. That said, Apple should have knon better than to reply in such an inappropriate manner to a pencil-written letter by a little girl. Like I said, Apple could have said the same thing in a much more kid-friendly way.

Now, maybe the mother shouldn't have made such a big fuss about it, but in the end, there was a good result, and now maybe Apple will deal with a future situation more appropriately because of it. Unfortunately, it seems you've got to push and shove for things to change sometimes.

In any case, this may be an inadvertent lesson to this little girl, which she will have to learn eventually, not to put her trust or emotional investment in a company, even Apple. I have learned this just in the last few years myself.

[Cody Dawg]

How ridiculous.

MARK AAKER - APPLE SENIOR LEGAL COUNSEL - YOU ARE A DICK.



They HAD to know when they saw that handwritten letter in child's writing that a CHILD wrote it.

Unbelievable.

I honestly think that I might just chuck all of our Apple products and never buy another one. Seriously.

And then I'll write Jean Toulouse a letter and tell her why.

That's disgusting.

[Oisín]

Cody, firstly, your reaction is more ridiculous than the story itself. Not even the girl who got the chuffing letter seems to have any problems continuing to use her Apple products. Even she and her mother seem to realise that this is not so a question anyone “[being] a dick”, but of a standardised letter (that Mark Aaker most likely did not even have a hand in writing in the first place) that comes off overly harsh, especially to a child, a question of “writing to the audience” (or whatever the phrase they used in the clip was).

Besides, as has been pointed out already in this thread, the letter did not even seem all that harshly worded, from the snippets we were shown in the clip. Just a standard legalese rejection letter. There was even a, “Thank you for your interest [...]” in there.

Secondly, did you watch the video to the end? Or read the thread? They have actually changed their policy regarding such letters from children, and have most likely come up with a less harshly and legalesely worded reply to send to children.

As Gabriel pointed out, though, the goal for Apple here should not be to change their practice regarding such letters to/from children, but to change their standard reply into something that doesn’t have the ability to come off as harsh as this does.

And no, the fact that the letter is handwritten does not mean a child wrote it. There are plenty of adults whose handwriting looks as childlike as that girl’s, and plenty of them would write such a letter by hand.

[Cody Dawg]

Oh, come on. You're just as bad as Mark Aaker. If someone was paying attention - she SAYS in the letter that she is a THIRD GRADER - then they obviously knew it was from a LITTLE GIRL.



Besides, what IS the point of Apple sending out those kinds of letters anyway?

Apple is a bully, plain and simple, they've done it countless times - even after they STEAL other peoples' work.

Like Watson

...and more...

...even from Microsoft.



Then they bully people with their letters - including a little girl?

What an asshole company.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by Cody Dawg

Oh, come on. You're just as bad as Mark Aaker. If someone was paying attention - she SAYS in the letter that she is a THIRD GRADER - then they obviously knew it was from a LITTLE GIRL.

Does she? Okay, I couldn’t read the letter well enough to see very much of it. If she does say in the letter she’s a third-grader, then obviously they also knew it at Apple. That wasn’t what you said, though; you simply said that they’d know it by the handwriting alone, which is far from true.

Besides, what IS the point of Apple sending out those kinds of letters anyway?

Okay, so now I know you haven’t read the thread. They have three options, basically, for how to respond to these (unsolicited) suggestion letters:

1. Do nothing. Ignore the letters completely.

2. Send a letter back with a, “Thank you for your interest and for your ideas, blablabla”.

3. Send a letter back with a, “Thank you for your interest, but unfortunately we cannot, for legal reasons, take any of your suggestions into account, blablabla”.

It should be fairly obvious why they don’t go for option number one. Doesn’t create a very good image of them.

The reason they don’t go for option number two is, as has been stated several times already, that by doing that, they make themselves liable to a helluvalotta lawsuits later on if they implement a feature that someone happened to have suggested in such a letter, even if they didn’t actually give the letter a second glance and didn’t use it at all. “Hey, I suggested they should do that, and now they’ve done it—I want royalties, dammit!”.

So, basically, they do the only thing that makes sense: they send a letter back that makes it clear that they’re glad the writer of the original letter likes their products enough to send suggestions, but that, in order to prevent such a scenario as described above, they can’t use any of them for anything, however good they may be.

Apple is a bully, plain and simple, they've done it countless times - even after they STEAL other peoples' work.

Then they bully people with their letters - including a little girl?

What an asshole company.

Neither you nor I know the precise contents of the letter sent by Apple. It is, with 99.999 per cent certainty, a completely standardised letter that some secretary prints out, gets some senior attorney or somesuch to sign, and then sends off in the mail. There’s nothing bullying or assholish about it, it’s what every major company on the planet does*, and it’s the only legally sound and reasonable thing to do.

How they word this letter is of course a completely different matter, and this is where the bullying aspect might come in. Obviously, they should word it in a way so it doesn’t come off as intimidating legalese, but is immediately understandable (and makes the point immediately understandable) to anyone who reads it. A few “unfortunately”s wouldn’t hurt either, whether they mean them or not. But as I said, neither you nor I know the precise wording or contents of the letter, so it might already be like that. If it’s not, they should rewrite it so that it is.

* No, I don’t mean that literally—you may well be able to dig up a company or two that don’t do it; that doesn’t invalidate the point.