Apple and Apple Make Nice

Well, if you're still one of the hold-outs that primarily associates the name Apple with the Beatles record label, you need to give it up. Today Apple (Inc., that is) and Apple (Corps Ltd., that is) cast aside a legal dispute they were having over rights to the Apple name and came to an agreement.

The new agreement gives Apple Inc. (the iPod folks) ownership over the Apple name. Apple will in turn license the name back to the Beatles folks for use on who knows what (certainly not Apple Electronics, which was an actual 1960s consumer electronics venture by the band's company).

Everyone seems to be happy about it, including Neil Aspinall of Apple Corps, who said: "It's great to put this dispute behind us and move on. The years ahead are going to be very exciting times for us..." Presumably, this means that the Beatles' company will finally get a share of the digital music pie it's been missing out on (so far, the Beatles catalog is still not available for sale online). When? Probably soon, as Steve Jobs hinted when he played "Lovely Rita" on the iPhone back in January. This suit was one of those things holding both companies back, and now it's settled. Now if Apple can just figure out its beef with Linksys over the iPhone name, which looks as if it might happen, it'll be full steam ahead for the company. In the meantime, I'm going to play my DVD-audio 5.1 mix of the Beatles Love for my futuristic fab four fix.