Apple boss Steve Jobs' insistence that a company which makes applications for his iPhones and iPods change its name could result in the outfit having to shut its doors.

Sydney based Mathew Peterson's company has been making cash with his "iPodRip", which allows people to back up their music collections from their iPods on to their computers. Peterson's, The Little App Factory, employs eight staff members, makes two other Apple-related software tools and claims to have approximately 6 million customers.

After selling well for six years iPodRip has received a cease and desist letter from Apple's lawyers, Baker & McKenzie. It asked him to stop using "iPod" in his software's name, remove any Apple-related logos from his product and relinquish control of his domain name, ipodrip.com. While Peterson's lawyers advised him he could challenge Apple in court the software developer does not think he has the money to tough it out against the huge mountains of cash that Apple fan boys have given Apple for PCs with high price margins. He has changed the software's name to "iRip" but Peterson is worried he will no longer be able to earn the revenue to support his staff. He thinks that the word-of-mouth marketing that drives his success would become worthless.

Apple has not even let him say on his website that the app was previously called iPodRip and will even be unable to send an email to customers informing them that he has had to change the app's name. This month Peterson's US-based business partner, John Devor, this month sent an email directly to Jobs, pleading for him to intervene.

Jobs's reply was dismissive: "Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal." We are sure that Jobs would change the name of Apple in the blink of an eye.