Hmmm, turns out it’s much murkier than I remembered. Here’s an interview with Wozniak:
BYTE: Just to put four or five stories to rest, where did the name Apple Computer actually come from?
WOZNIAK: It came out of Steve Jobs’s head, and he’s a sort of private person, so I can’t say what led up to it. He came up with an inspiration. He was working from time to time in the orchards up in Oregon. I thought that it might be because there were apples in the orchard or maybe just its fructarian nature. Maybe the word just happened to occur to him. In any case, we both tried to come up with better names, but neither one of us could think of anything better after Apple was mentioned.
Other sugestions I’ve heard are that it was named after Apple records of the Beatles (with whom they’d later have copyright issues), or that it was fashioned to beat Atari in the phone book. Incidentally, here’s the first Apple logo, featuring Newton.
Hmmm, turns out it’s much murkier than I remembered. Here’s an interview with Wozniak:
Other sugestions I’ve heard are that it was named after Apple records of the Beatles (with whom they’d later have copyright issues), or that it was fashioned to beat Atari in the phone book. Incidentally, here’s the first Apple logo, featuring Newton.