I think of both the Beatles music company and the computer brand name of Apple as deeply disruptive, as in the Garden of Eden apple and the fall from grace.
Steve Jobs has never referred to this. What was revealed in 2011 is that it was named during one of his fruitarian diets, Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs says:
On the naming of Apple, he said he was “on one of my fruitarian diets.” He said he had just come back from an apple farm, and thought the name sounded “fun, spirited and not intimidating...
plus, it would get us ahead of Atari in the phone book."
There have been no associations with Eden and Apple Records either. Apple Records was named Apple Corp as in apple core - a pun. It replaced the earlier company Beatles Ltd. This is Paul McCartney's story of the Apple name:
In my garden at Cavendish Avenue, which was a 100-year-old house I’d bought, Robert was a frequent visitor. One day he got hold of a Magritte he thought I’d love. Being Robert, he would just get it and bring it. I was out in the garden with some friends. I think I was filming Mary Hopkin with a film crew, just getting her to sing live in the garden, with bees and flies buzzing around, high summer. We were in the long grass, very beautiful, very country-like. We were out in the garden and Robert didn’t want to interrupt, so when we went back in the big door from the garden to the living room, there on the table he’d just propped up this little Magritte. It was of a green apple. That became the basis of the Apple logo. Across the painting Magritte had written in that beautiful handwriting of his ‘Au revoir’. And Robert had split. I thought that was the coolest thing anyone’s ever done with me".
Apple Records came first, followed by Apple Computers. Two creation narratives for their stories. The significant legal wrangling that went on over the name seems like two snakes fighting over the apple. Was that before or after it was given to Adam and Eve?
Here's my Montana clematis. The background is the fantastic Tri-colour beech tree in the garden. It is brilliant pink. I've used the flexibly filter to turn it into a globe.
