Contemporary Fairy Tales
THE APPLE OF NEWTON AND ALAN
When Steve uttered the name ‘Apple’, Ronald laughed and said,
“It’s a computer company, not a fruit store.”
“But I like apples and love to eat them..”
So the name was created for the computer company. Apple was the idea of bringing simplicity to the people, in the most sophisticated way and nothing else. But what about their logo?
Steve always admired Sir Isaac Newton, the great English physicist and mathematician. During his studies he was fascinated by his book Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, first published in 1687. So Steve really want to incorporated Newton in his company. The designer Ronald Wayne agreed and the first logo showed Sir Isaac Newton, sitting beneath the very tree from which an apple had fallen to his head and he revolutionised the laws of gravity. If you look carefully, the phrase on the outside border reads,
After 22 years it was time for some change, a modern change. Steve hired Rob Janoff with the task to designer a new logo. Little did he know that the logo he planned to design would become the most iconic logo in corporate history. It was inspired by the death of Alan Turing, the ground-breaking mathematician and computer scientist, who committed suicide by eating a cyanide-laced apple in 1954. When his body was discovered, an apple lay half-eaten beside his bed, and the apple was tested for cyanide. He committed suicide because he couldn’t live any longer as a gay man in that time, which were punishable up to 1967 in England for men. Steve could related to Alan and therefor the iconic logo was created, the logo in a form of a Apple with a bit out of it, and again with a personal touch as a underlying thought. But that was a secret.
When Steve was asked why he named the company ‘Apple’, his answer was simply..