Why Apple is Apple? History of its brand…
March 1, 1976 Because Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were going into business, they needed a name for their company. According to Wozniak, it was Jobs who thought up the name for their new computer company one afternoon as the two drove along Highway 85 between Palo Alto and Los Altos.
“Steve was still half involved with a group of friends who ran the commune-type All-One Farm in Oregon. And he would go up and work there for a few months before returning to the Bay Area. He had just come back from one of his trips and we were driving along and he said ‘I’ve got a great name: Apple Computer.’ Maybe he worked in apple trees. I didn’t even ask. Maybe it had some other meaning to him. Maybe the idea just occurred based upon Apple Records. He had been a musical person, like many technical people are. It might have sounded good partly because of that connotation. I thought instantly, ‘We’re going to have a lot of copyright problems.’ But we didn’t. Both of us tried to think of technical-sounding mixtures of words, like Executek and Matrix Electronics, but after 10 minutes of trying, we both realized we weren’t going to beat Apple Computer.”
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Loading ...Tags: Amazing Stories, Apple
19 Jan 2008 - 18:59
i always thought “apple” is called apple because an apples relation to Newton the famous man who discovered and measured gravity.
(isnt that why apple computer made the “Newton” back in the old days?)
and their first logo was a picture of Newton sitting under an apple tree. (not the rainbow apple with a bite out of it. although the drawing was quickly replaced with the rainbow apple)
anyways i thought there was way more thought and subliminal meaning behind the apple…
19 Jan 2008 - 19:12
The story behind the name is that steve jobs thought of the name from the story adam and eve. In the story there is a fruit tree (some people say it is the apple tree) and it was the tree of knowledge. So the bite out of the apple is to represent when adam and eve bit it, even when god said they shouldn’t. but yeah… so apple represents knowledge is the just of it.
heard from a friend may not be the real story but its a better explanation that what this guy had to say ^^^^^^^
19 Jan 2008 - 19:22
Interesting story; thank for sharing.
19 Jan 2008 - 19:23
And so the legend was born. Terrific name. Ingenious in its simplicity.
19 Jan 2008 - 20:09
dumb people, this is the correct story.
19 Jan 2008 - 20:24
I always thought that the bitten apple represented my decision to end it all with the cyanide-laced fruit while the rainbow represented my orientation.
I guess I was wrong.
19 Jan 2008 - 20:27
i always thought that it was the fruit of knowledge, and since they had taken the bite, they were now ultimately more intelligent…
19 Jan 2008 - 20:28
umm its well known he named it after apple records cause of the beatles. he’s said it many times in interviews.
19 Jan 2008 - 20:46
wonderful. maybe now the prices will drop to something reasonable. i always knew this would happen after the history of their name was revealed.
Taking Over The Net
19 Jan 2008 - 21:00
I always thought it was named after road apples, and the bite out of the apple logo represented a scat fetish.
19 Jan 2008 - 21:06
jobs invented the name, thats a fact (per Woz anyways, which is enough for me to be a fact).
jobs’ idea i think was from “forbidden fruit” which is usually portrayed as an apple. and thats why i think apple’s logo is how it is. you take a bite and there’s no way back. sure as heck how it happened for me. and i’m not even christian
peace!
19 Jan 2008 - 21:12
just to keep all informed, the tree was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; not to interrupt on your post, just wanted to keep all informed.
19 Jan 2008 - 21:26
lol @ death note reference at the picture.
apple still sucks so yeah.
19 Jan 2008 - 21:41
Also, he wanted some that would be at the beginning of the phonebook.
19 Jan 2008 - 22:56
wow, how uninteresting….
20 Jan 2008 - 0:17
An interesting story.
20 Jan 2008 - 1:14
Um, so this is new info, how?
20 Jan 2008 - 2:41
The “bite” isn’t actually a bite. It’s actually a dent from where it fell on Newton’s head. Honest to God, that’s what they taught me at training.
20 Jan 2008 - 3:27
When designing the logotype, the designer (Susan Kaye?) drew it with a bite in it to make it look like an apple, actually. Without the bite, it didn’t look like an apple that much, even with the leaf.
So there wasn’t any meaning to the bite.
20 Jan 2008 - 6:30
It should be obvious to anyone over the age of 30 that the apple logo represents the knowledge the human race received as a result of taking a bite out of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge referenced in Genesis. The fruit has historically throughout the ages been represented artistically by an apple fruit. You need more proof of the religious connection? The very first Apple computer listed for $666… look it up. I do not believe that Jobs and company are religious at all, quite the contrary, but I do believe they were co-opting the mythology to begin with. Rather an arrogant marketing stance, and very “Job”ish..
20 Jan 2008 - 7:53
The name Macintosh comes from a brand of apples Mcintosh, They made a mistake and some of the guys working at apple wrote it down as Macinstosh, they never changed it
20 Jan 2008 - 8:04
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20 Jan 2008 - 8:48
You all are wrong except Brandon.
It was to be sure the name would be first alphabetically in the phone book under computers.
Tai
20 Jan 2008 - 10:32
Read Woz’s bio, iWoz, He says the exact same story in there. it was because of all the apple trees around. They named it newton because the company was already named apple. they called them macintosh’s because that’s a kind of apple….pretty easy story to figure out.
20 Jan 2008 - 10:53
I’m going with a biblical reference since the original Apple computer was priced at $666.66 and the fact the logo has a bite (byte?) taken out of it.
20 Jan 2008 - 11:58
the apple was chosen because its simple by design. shiny and all
the bite i suspect is the “C” cut out for the “Computers”
forgive me if this was stated before
20 Jan 2008 - 14:08
Actually, Jobs invented apples and the word “apple.” Everyone else copied it.
20 Jan 2008 - 15:24
ever so often … there comes an article which tries to explain why apple is called apple … or someother company is called what they are called …
none of them is the same …
but everyone claims its the truth …
but this article sounds like it could be just … the truth …
hehe …
20 Jan 2008 - 16:37
am I the only person who noticed that this story doesnt actually explain where the name came from. Jobs went to work on a farm and came back with “apple”. So the apple trees may have gotting him thinking about apples but who knows why he actually picked the name.
20 Jan 2008 - 18:17
Well, there’s one obvious, glaring inaccuracy in this story…
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=palo+alto,+ca&ie=UTF8&ll=37.367429,-122.014847&spn=0.312151,0.746384&z=11&iwloc=addr&om=0
Highway 85 doesn’t run between Palo Alto and Los Altos. And the better part of it didn’t even open until the early 90s.
(On an opinion standpoint, I have to agree that alphabetical positioning was almost certainly a consideration).
21 Jan 2008 - 22:38
All:
This same story has been repeated many times over by Woz himself. I heard him in person recite the story almost verbatim at an Apple II user group meeting back in the 1980’s.
so:
@Tai Kahn: It wasn’t to be first alphabetically
@Keith, @CharlesL, et al: There is no connection to biblical reference. The logo in its current form is the *second* logo and came after the company was named in the first place
@CharlesL: The original Apple I sold for $666.666 because it was an exact markup of 20% over the cost of parts & labor. Look it up.
09 Feb 2008 - 12:14
okay, theres no way to know for sure. he could’ve been around apple trees and said “hmm.. apple. that sounds cool” that could be all there is to it. stop trying to prove everyone else wrong! TheDesignerGeek makes a good point though!
14 Feb 2008 - 21:01
i think we have way to much time on our hands
28 Feb 2008 - 17:18
Apple or no, he was pretty hot looking in his youth, judging from the picture. I’ll take a bite out of that apple any time….
macuser