Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!usc!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!concertina!fiddler From: fiddler@concertina.Sun.COM (Steve Hix) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: naming Apple Keywords: Jobs & Lennon Message-ID: <138728@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 11 Jul 90 17:30:18 GMT References: <22871@megaron.cs.arizona.edu> <44704@brunix.UUCP> Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM Lines: 32 In article <44704@brunix.UUCP>, man@eilat.cs.brown.edu (Mark H. Nodine) writes: > In article <22871@megaron.cs.arizona.edu>, schatz@cs.arizona.edu (Bruce > Schatz) writes: > |>One thing I've always wondered about is the genesis of the company name for > |>Apple Computer. The books I've read about the computer all say that Steven > |>Jobs had fond memories of working in an orchard one summer and thought that > |>Apple would be a friendly sounding name.... Anyone know the "true" story? > > The story I heard (which is no more guaranteed to be the true one) is > that Steven Jobs thought that microcomputers should be so reliable that > you should be able to unpack them from the box, plug them in, and be off > and running, just as you would with a toaster or any other APPLiance. > Recall that those were the days of S-100 buses and buying a whole bunch > of cards and hoping that they would be compatible with one another on > the bus. So "Apple" was a shortened version of "appliance". Jobs' views on the "applianceness" of personal computers developed somewhat after the company name was chosen. Probably well into the original development of the first Mac concepts by Jef Raskin's team. He wasn't a lonely voice crying in the wilderness, either, there being a number of proposals for Apple//-family machines that could be expanded without opening the CPU at all, and that meant no DB- connectors, either, except for those required by printers. The first guess is probably closer to what happened. There were stories floating around Apple for a while that Jobs was, for a while, a fruitarian in his diet and influenced from that angle. ------------ The only drawback with morning is that it comes at such an inconvenient time of day. ------------