[MineralMan]

"Instead of a polite response from Jobs, the girl received a cold, stern letter from Apple's legal counsel telling her that the company didn't accept unsolicited ideas and that she should not send any suggestions to the company.
"

Here's another sort of letter Apple could have sent:

---

Dear Shea:

Thank you for writing to us with your idea for the iPod Nano product. It's a good idea...so good that we've gotten the same idea from many people, including some of the best product designers working for Apple on new products.

Who knows? A future version of this product might include a display of song lyrics. It's something we have been thinking about for a long time.

We always enjoy hearing from our customers. As a token of our appreciation for your thinking about Apple, we hope you'll enjoy the coupon we've enclosed. It will let you download six new songs for your iPod. Just enter the code on the coupon on our download site.

Best wishes,


Steve Jobs and the whole iPod crew

[William Terrell]

I like your solution letter. A number of people would still go for the gold if convinced by the right lawyer, though. Your letter would probably cut that number down quite a bit.

Apple may need to fire some PR staff. . .

[TET1968]

That was a proper response.
Years ago, cough, cough, as part of a Biology project I created, I wrote that guy who hosted "Wild Kingdom." He was in the Himalayas hunting the abominable snowman. In my letter, I requested a complete report on his expedition...HA !!

A few weeks later I received this huge "Yeti" package, with maps, photos of the Hairy one's footprint which I immediately copied in a cast plaster mold to receive an grade "A" .
Someone took the time to do all that for me....And look how I turned out?