There are many rumours as to how Apple’s original iconic logo was created. And while the technicolour apple has lost its stripes, its shape – along with the bite in the side – has remained unchanged since the company’s conception in 1976.
As the story goes, the logo is a tribute to the late, great Alan Turing. The father of computer science committed suicide, and he’s rumoured to have carried out the act using a cyanide-laced apple. This would be a fitting gesture, from the company that dreamed of putting a desktop in every home in the world, to the man who first made it all possible. It would be, that is, if it were true.
The truth is far less grand. The company is called Apple purely because Steve Jobs thought it sounded like a nice word, and because Jobs was in the middle of an all-fruit diet when he thought of it. As for the logo itself, its creator Rob Janoff has repeatedly stated it had nothing to do with Turing. Why does the Apple have a bite in the side? According to Janoff, that’s because people wouldn’t mistake it for a cherry.