The Sosumi Sound
This one starts with a lawsuit… Sound designer Jim Reekes, who worked for Apple in the ’80s was working on sounds for the Mac. He did a couple of beep sounds that led to the “Sosumi” beep.
Around that time Apple Records, the label founded by the Beatles, became very popular.
Now of course Steve Jobs got the right to use the name Apple when he started the brand. But he promised never to get involved with music.
But that wasn’t the case. The story goes that the Beatles lawyers started suing because of the sounds Apple was creating. The lawsuit forced Apple to rename a couple of sounds to eliminate all references to music.
One of the beep sounds Jim created now needed a new name. He now wanted to call it “Let it Beep”, just for fun.
But unfortunately, that wasn’t possible. He didn’t like that so he decided to call it “Sosumi”. He later explained that this basically means “So sue me”. He just spelled it different to make it a Japanese word meaning somehting like “Crude”.