“The startup world is filled with all manner of intentionally misspelled nonwords and incomprehensible baby talk,” Evan Dashevsky reports for TechHive. “It’s enough makes one nostalgic for an earlier time when tech names actually meant something.”
“The stories of how some of the world’s biggest brands and technologies came up with their names open a window to a different era—a simpler time before Web squatters took all the normal names and corporations focus-grouped language to death,” Dashevsky reports. “A better time. Here we present the hidden—and occasionally accidental—histories behind some of the biggest names in tech.”
Dashevsky reports, “According to Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, the largest electronics firm in the world picked up its name in the most casual of ways. As Jobs and Wozniak were mulling over a name for their nascent company, Jobs had just returned from a visit to a communal apple farm. Off the cuff, he proposed the name ‘Apple Computer.’ The term, he explained to Isaacson ‘sounded fun, spirited, and not intimidating. Apple took the edge off the word ‘computer.’ Plus, it would get us ahead of Atari in the phonebook.'”
Read more in the full article here.