Steve Jobs named his company Apple because he had just returned from an apple orchard and thought the word sounded “fun, spirited, and not intimidating.” As he told his biographer Walter Isaacson, he was following one of his fruitarian diets at the time, and the name stuck because it felt approachable in an industry full of cold, technical-sounding companies.
The Orchard Visit That Started It All
In 1976, Jobs and Steve Wozniak needed a name for their new computer company. Jobs had been spending time at a commune and farm that included a large apple orchard. When he returned from a visit there, he pitched the name to Wozniak. The two had been trying to come up with something, but nothing better surfaced, so Apple it was.
Jobs explained the reasoning plainly in Isaacson’s biography: “I was on one of my fruitarian diets. I had just come back from the apple farm. It sounded fun, spirited, and not intimidating. Apple took the edge off the word ‘computer.’ Plus, it would get us ahead of Atari in the phone book.”
Why the Name Was a Smart Business Move
The choice wasn’t purely whimsical. Jobs and Wozniak had two practical goals. First, they wanted their company listed before Atari in the phone book, which was still a primary way businesses got discovered in the 1970s. “Apple” accomplished that alphabetically. Second, they wanted to stand apart from the intimidating, acronym-heavy names that dominated computing at the time. Companies like IBM, Digital Equipment, and Cincom projected a serious, technical image. A fruit name signaled something different: a computer company that felt accessible to ordinary people.
That instinct proved prescient. Apple’s friendly, simple branding became a core part of its identity for decades, helping position its products as tools for creative, everyday users rather than just engineers and businesses.
The Beatles Lawsuit Over the Name
Choosing “Apple” did come with a significant complication. The Beatles had already started a record label and holding company called Apple Corps. When Apple Computer launched, the Beatles sued for trademark violation. The two companies settled, with Apple Computer agreeing to stay out of the music business and not put the Apple name on equipment “specifically adapted for use in the recording or reproduction of music.”
That agreement held until Apple Computer started introducing music-related technology, including MIDI hardware and software that let computers receive and manipulate signals from live instruments. The Beatles sued again, arguing Apple Computer had violated the deal. The two sides reached another settlement. In a bit of corporate humor, Apple’s 1991 operating software included a hidden sound file called “Sosumi,” a phonetic spelling of “so sue me.”
The Logo Isn’t a Tribute to Anyone
A popular myth holds that Apple’s bitten-apple logo is a tribute to Alan Turing, the computer science pioneer who died after biting into a cyanide-laced apple. Another theory connects it to Isaac Newton and the falling apple. Neither is true. Rob Janoff, the designer who created the logo, addressed both stories directly in a 2009 interview. “I’m afraid it didn’t have a thing to do with it,” he said of the Turing connection. “It’s a wonderful urban legend.”
Janoff said he received no specific brief from Jobs, and the bite in the apple had a purely practical purpose: it provided scale so that a small version of the logo would still look like an apple and not a cherry. Supporters of the Newton theory sometimes point to Apple’s handheld device called the Newton, but that product launched more than a decade after the logo was designed.
The real story is simpler and, in a way, more fitting. Jobs picked a name that felt human and approachable because he had just walked through an orchard and liked the way it sounded. The rest was good instinct meeting good timing.