iSpeak Dashboard widget mistaken for perverted pedophile?

When Pieter Hartzenberg started making widgets, he never imagined one of his widgets would be mistaken for a perverted hacker that had maliciously infiltrated a young boy's Mac. But Pieter's innocent iSpeak widget recently caused at least one concerned parent to fear the worst.

Pieter emailed us the details and also posted them on his blog today. Here's a copy of the note he received from the helpful Apple Retail employee who encountered the above-mentioned parent:

My name is Derek Rose, and I work at an Apple Retail store in Nashville, TN. Just wanted to let you know that I just had a customer come in to the Genius Bar with fears that they had been "Hacked" by your widget. I know that sounds silly, but the reason she thought that is because her young son downloaded the widget, and then when the widget said "Hey sexy, What would you like me to say?" she thought that some internet pervert hacker was talking to her son through the widget.

I just wanted to notify you of that issue, and maybe suggest you change the default text to something else, just because it will invariably be used by other kids, and other parents may find it inappropriate as well. I was able to change the default text in the JS file for this customer, but just wanted to let you know about that interesting visit from the customer. :)

In spite of - or perhaps because of (?) - the potential for confusion surrounding this widget, it's been on Apple's own Top 50 Downloads list for 2 weeks, in the top 10 for most of that time, and currently appears on the Staff Favorites list on Apple's Dashboard homepage. The word "sexy" is no longer spoken unless you type it in yourself.

Thanks for the Sunday morning laugh, Pieter!

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When Pieter Hartzenberg started making widgets, he never imagined one of his widgets would be mistaken for a perverted hacker that had...

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heipei

this widget is probably one of the most useless widget ive seen so far. i mean, whats the point in loading a widget which takes up memory just to invoke a simple commmand call 'say "foobar"'. wow ;) terminal anyone?

August 30 2005 at 4:18 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Bo Link

It figures someone from Nashville would absolutely assume the worst about this. I'm sure she didn't even ask her kid what this widget was. She probably just snatched it right out of his or her hands and took it straight to the Apple Store. Sometimes it sucks living in the Bible Belt.

August 29 2005 at 12:40 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

lach mullen

I think the real story here is the amazing customer service at the Apple Store. Derek Rose is the reason I will continue to buy Macs only when it's time for a decision to buy a new computer. See if a Dell employee will crack open an aplication file and change code around to make a customer happy. I can imagine the response they would have gotten anywhere else, "We're sorry, but we don't support that applciation, you'll have to contact the person who wrote the code for that app."

August 29 2005 at 12:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Schmeid

It looks like Marvin the paranoid/depressed robot from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

August 28 2005 at 3:28 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

wheels

Man, I was at this cookout yesterday and would've given anything to have this one woman, who was there, say that to me! Actually that's pretty funny, but I don't know if I would've freaked out at hearing "Hey sexy" come out of my computer if my kid was at it. If things got more graphic, I would've cuffed the kid upside the head because I would've known that he was orchestrating the whole thing!

August 28 2005 at 12:02 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply