April 1, 1976 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple. Today, 41 years later, it is difficult to find a person who has not heard of her. The company that gave the world the mouse, trackpad, and graphical user interface has never fully revealed the origins of its bitten apple logo.
The Apple logo helped make the brand what it is today. The modern user knows what the brand name of the company looks like, and some even remember the rainbow-colored apple that adorns the gray Macintosh. But when it comes to why Apple has a bitten apple - their logo, many have to admit that they don't know the right answer to this question.
What's with the apple?
It seems that even now no one fully understands why the company was named Apple. It is unlikely that anyone associates computers with an apple. The history of the appearance of such an unusual brand symbol is overgrown with myths and legends. Because in the summer of 1975, Steve Jobs worked on an apple farm? Or is it all about his love for the Beatles (their record label was called Apple Records)? Or he just liked applesMackintosh varieties.
How the history of the logo began
Few people know, but in 1976 Apple had a different logo. It depicted Newton resting under an apple tree. Such a brand name did not look stylish at all and was not suitable for use in small sizes. If you look at the instructions for Apple I (the company's very first computer), you can see exactly this complex logo.
So why does Apple have a bitten apple as their logo? The answer to the question goes back to 1976, when the brand was just born. Anyone with even the slightest interest in modern technology knows that Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. In fact, the company had three, and not two, as is commonly believed, founders - Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and the lesser known Ron Wayne. The latter relinquished his stake in the company less than two weeks after its inception. Now Ron admits that even then he saw a successful future for the young company, but he does not regret his choice. And if he had the opportunity to change his mind, he would have done the same.
The reason for the rejection of a 10% share in a promising company lies in Ron's negative past experience and his unwillingness to take risks. At the very beginning of the journey, Apple received an order for 50 computers. In order to collect them, it was necessary to borrow $15,000. Wayne had heard that the client company was notorious for having trouble paying suppliers. Being already elderly (43 years old), Ron did not want to take risks,getting involved in transactions with the possibility of losing all their property. Unlike both Steves, he had his own house and car.
It was Ron Wayne who, at the beginning of the founding of the company, drew the first brand name - the image of the genius Isaac Newton reading a book under an apple tree.
The appearance of the famous logo
The logo appeared shortly before the release of the Apple II. Its history began in April 1977. Steve Jobs turned to Rob Yanov, a middle-aged designer at Regis McKenna Advertising. Then, many predicted the company would fail if they left the old logo. He was too intellectual and not suitable for portraying him in small sizes. According to Michael Morritz, author of The Little Kingdom: A Private History of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs did think that the logo could be one of the reasons for the Apple I's poor sales.. As a result, the designer came to the conclusion that simplicity is the key to success, and drew a logo in the form of a monochrome bitten apple.
Rainbow Apple
Jobs liked the idea, but insisted on having the logo in color despite the advertising executive's attempts to dissuade him because of the excessive printing costs. By the way, all the attacks of the company's ill-wishers, who claim that Yanov borrowed the idea of a color logo from the notoriousrainbow flag, have no basis - the symbol of sexual minorities began to be used by the community only in 1979. However, it is believed that it was the similarity of the flags that caused the change in the color of the logo in 1998. The bitten apple has become what it was originally intended to be - monochrome.
"There was also a practical reason for the colorful stripes on the first logo: the Apple II was the first personal computer that could display color images on a monitor," Yanov explained.
Most expensive logo
Steve Jobs was responsible for most of the work in creating the logo. The challenge was to print it in multiple colors next to each other. The four color printing technologies known at that time in several stages left the risk that the layers could be displaced and overlap each other. Yanov proposed to separate the layers with thin black lines. This would solve the problem and make printing cheaper. However, Steve Jobs firmly decided - the logo should be without stripes. For this reason, Apple's Michael M. Scott called it "the most damn expensive logo ever made."
It is noteworthy that Rob Yanov did not receive a penny for his legendary work. “They didn’t even send postcards,” he said in an interview. Steve Jobs had a great relationship with Silicon Valley's chief marketer, and he let the growing company use his people for free.
Bitten Apple Apple
According to Linzmeyer, Rob Janov started with a silhouetteblack apple on a white background, but felt that something was missing. A play on words that Apple had previously used in Apple I ads prompted Yanov to take a bite of an apple (“bite” is translated as “bite” in English and pronounced like a computer “byte”).
"A bitten apple means the logo no longer resembles a tomato, cherry or any other fruit," Yanov said.
Bill Kelly, also of Regis McKenna Advertising, remembers a different story. He says that a bitten apple is a symbol of temptation and the acquisition of knowledge (a reference to the biblical tree of knowledge). A hint at how modern technology helps humanity learn and develop faster, but at the same time making it more and more dependent on them.
Alan Turing inspired Apple?
In 1954, computer scientist and brilliant mathematician Alan Turing died after biting into a cyanide apple. It has long been speculated that it was suicide, possibly due to the chemical castration that the British government imposed on him after confessing to having sexual relations with a man. Although it is now assumed that Turing's suicide was not intentional. He was often careless about his experiments and could very well accidentally inhale cyanide or put an apple in a puddle of cyanide.
Whatever happened, a bitten apple was found by Turing's bedside. Two decades later, two guys started making computers in their garage. They knew about Turing's contribution to programming and computer science and decided to honor himmemory. And the world received an iconic logo.
According to logo designer Rob Yanov, this beautiful story is not true. "It's just a wonderful urban legend," he said in 2009. Other theories - a reference to the first woman, Eve, who bit the forbidden fruit or Newton's discovery of gravity - are also wrong.
However, when actor Stephen Fry once asked his good friend Steve Jobs if the famous logo had anything to do with the Turing apple, Jobs replied, "God, we wish it was."
What does a bitten apple mean at Apple?
The true reason for the birth of such an unusual brand name remains a mystery even to Apple employees. On the other hand, such an abundance of legends around this gives a special mystery to the history of the logo, allowing each user to interpret it in their own way.
According to Apple employee Jean-Louis Gassier, this is precisely its magnificence: “Our logo reflects both passion and confusion, reason and hope. We couldn't have dreamed of anything better. Today, no one dares to deny that the icon, memorable and simple at first glance, played a crucial role in the development of the brand.
