How did Apple get its name?
From the Apple IIe User's Guide:
Interesting - considering the original logo I always thought it was a reference to Sir Issac Newton.The name Apple Computer was chosen late one afternoon as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Apple's founders, faced the deadline for filing a Fictitious Name Statement, part of the business licensing procedures. After volleying names back and forth with Wozniak for hours, Jobs looked at the apple he was eating and decided that, unless he or Woz arrived at something better by five o'clock, they would call the company Apple. Five o'clock came and went; Apple was the new company's name.
Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two...
Some have suggested that the logo is a tribute to Alan Turing, brilliant person, it's also been said he was father of computing, Worked at Bletchley Park in the UK during WW2, helped break the Enigma code, persecuted after the War as he was openly gay, committed suicide by taking a bite out of a cyanide laced Apple.
There are some good clips on YouTube re Turing, have a look.
I thought it had something to do with the fact that Jobs and Woz spent a lot of their time hanging out in apple orchards with some other geeks when they were young. And apparently these orchards grew McIntosh apples.
It's one thing to nod, it's another to know.
You hear quite a few stories on the name's origins and probably more than one is correct. I think Jobs worked on an organic apple orchard for a summer and he's also a big Beatles fan (their label is also called Apple, which landed Apple Computer in the court room a bit later on).
The logo's designer, Rob Janoff, has debunked that theory. He rather more prosaically said that the stripes in the logo made it "friendly" and the bite gave it "scale".Originally Posted by BeePee
Although the Turing link is a very clever one (if wrong).
When 8 bits are enough
Hey people.
One reason for the striped design was to emphasize the Apple II's color graphics capability, which in 1977 wasn't yet a widespread feature of personal computers. The rainbow said, effectively, "This baby does color."
Some of the immediately subsequent computers -- like the first Ataris (the 400 & 800), the Commodore 64, the ZX Spectrum -- took their cue from Apple (perhaps) and also had rainbow stripes all over the place: on the case, in the sales brochures, in the manuals. The rainbow fad finally seemed to die off by about 1985, when color graphics wasn't a novelty anymore, and so wasn't anything you could crow about.
What did the logo look like for the Apple 1?
Also, they must have experimented with apples in various stages of the eating process. Witness for example the fully picked off apple core as stylised in the Apple ][ label…
Cheers
Steffen.
It's Unix, Jim, but not as we know it...
Awww, cute.
At first I thought Newton was using an iPad but then I saw the stylus…
Cheers
Steffen.
It's Unix, Jim, but not as we know it...
When 8 bits are enough
I guess Newton used a Newton. (Ha!)
Balthazar already posted the first Apple logo, but here's a page on the IIe which includes more excerpts from the Owner's Manual mentioned by the OP.
It's all to do with Steve's Pack with the devil. The name is reference to the story of Adam and eve and the forbidden fruit. With the bit taken out of the apple is a reminder to Steve of the agreement.
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