Although everyone knows that Apple Computer was named after the namesake fruit, Steve Jobs has never talked about where the name came from — until now (AFAIK).
It was named during one of his fruitarian diets, Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Jobs reveals.
On the naming of Apple, he said he was “on one of my fruitarian diets.” He said he had just come back from an apple farm, and thought the name sounded “fun, spirited and not intimidating.”
AP: Jobs questioned authority all his life, book says
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
37 responses to “Steve Jobs Finally Reveals Where The Name “Apple” Came From”
So the bitten rainbow apple was not a reference to Alan Turing, genius who created logic engines that were precursors to modern computers and cracked a code during WWII and was later condemned to either imprisonment or forced castration due to his homosexuality so he committed suicide by taking a bite out of an apple laced with cyanide? I am beyond disappointed.
Good god, cult is right. Jobs did all for Jobs; he brought…or in actuality, helped to bring about…a lot of great technology. I will always remember him for his unnatural need to control…that and the huge screen of his image playing in the background of his too-human self talking down to the rest of us. Begin naming what he did for society in the name of others, and I’ll pay attention.
“The Macintosh project was begun in 1979 by Jef Raskin, an Apple employee who envisioned an easy-to-use, low-cost computer for the average consumer. He wanted to name the computer after his favorite type of apple, the McIntosh,[2] but the spelling was changed to “Macintosh” for legal reasons as the original was the same spelling as that used by McIntosh Laboratory, Inc., the audio equipment manufacturer.[3] Steve Jobs requested that McIntosh Laboratory give Apple a release for the name with its changed spelling so that Apple could use it, but the request was denied, forcing Apple to eventually buy the rights to use the name.[4] (A 1984 Byte Magazine article suggested Apple changed the spelling only after “early users” misspelled “McIntosh”.[5] However, Jef Raskin had adopted the Macintosh spelling by 1981,[6] when the Macintosh computer was still a single prototype machine in the lab. This explanation further clashes with the first explanation given above that the change was made for “legal reasons.”)”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh