“Earlier in December, conservative commentator Glenn Beck raised eyebrows when he managed to link Apple’s famous logo to, among other things, Nazis, homosexuality and Benedict Cumberbatch,” Robert Klara reports for Adweek. “Beck had been sent a review copy of the film The Imitation Game, which prompted him to disclose a secret that “nobody knows”—specifically, that Apple’s apple was actually a furtive nod to Enigma code breaker Alan Turing, a brilliant and closeted mathematician who, uncovered by Britain’s moral police in 1954, killed himself by biting into an apple he’d laced with cyanide.”
“The truth is that Apple’s famous apple is not a complex talisman freighted with hidden meaning, but a clear, uncomplicated design that’s been carefully tweaked over time, though never at the expense of its intuitive simplicity,” Klara reports. “Apple boasts one of the most recognizable logos of our time, so it’s no surprise that it’s been sliced and diced, examined and interpreted—usually in error. There’s the story about Turning (false); there’s the rumor that the logo’s rainbow color bands were a nod to gay liberation (false); and there’s the theory that the apple represents the sin of knowledge ravished by a carnal bite (never mind).”
“Apple’s apple was born when Jobs decided that the company’s original logo (a woodcut by co-founder Ronald Wayne depicting Sir Isaac Newton) was far too complex to be memorable,” Klara reports. “So he hired Palo Alto, Calif., designer Rob Janoff. The brief (if that’s even the term) was four words: ‘Don’t make it cute.'”
Read more in the full article here.
Human creativity can go in so many different directions. And when not hooked up to reason or truth, can even be wonderfully entertaining.
Glen Beck is a twit. I’ve seen the story of the original Newton logo and the rainbow apple logo in print many times. VERY old news.
Please. Stop insulting twits.
‘Some time later after I had just come from an apple farm, I don’t eat meat and I was on one of my fruitarian diets, I told Woz: “Oh, I’ve got a name for the company: Apple Computer.” 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.’
‘Steve Jobs Bio: The Unauthorized Autobiography.’
The dude abides.
Abides with what?
(Ignoring the oblique reference to The Big Lebowski…)
The Stranger:
The Dude abides. I don’t know about you but I take comfort in that. It’s good knowin’ he’s out there. The Dude. Takin’ ‘er easy for all us sinners.
Next the idiots will want to ban computers because the creator of the modern digital computer was gay. Too funny!
“Earlier in December, conservative commentator Glenn Beck raised eyebrows when he managed to link Apple’s famous logo to, among other things, Nazis, homosexuality and Benedict Cumberbatch,”
“…managed to link…”? Try “attempted to link.”
Or “so-called ‘linked’ ” 🙂
Just your typical Ayn Rand-loving neocon loon.
Please. Stop insulting loons.
Says Russ, the second hander.
Ayn Rand would have despised him. She was a hard-line atheist.
-jcr
Now I’m going to disclose a secret: Glenn Beck, like many other Neo-Cons, is out of his bloody mind. I pity people who take the lunatic ramblings of such people seriously.
Folks: Get a better shepherd. Or better yet, become your own shepherd. It’s what life’s about. CHOICE.
Exactly,
Among other things the minds of people who trend conservative seem more receptive to buy in to conspiracy theories, threats and us versus them clannish type behaviors. This subject has been studied with Functional MRI and other methods and shows definite differences between people who trend conservative and liberal.
The size of the Right Amygdala and the tendency to be more conservative has been and is being studied.
In the end, though, conservatism is a malady that can be cured with knowledge and real world experience. It is easy to demonize and fear that which you do not know or understand.
DavGreg,
It’s not just conservative wing-nuts – it’s all wing-nuts, left and right. Liberal wing-nuts love to blame all the world’s ills on businesses, and people who are financially successful. They hold themselves to be above the petty, clannish “us vs. them” mentality, but they aren’t. They are just as judgmental, and hate-mongering as anyone on the right.
Partisan politics is for people who can’t be bothered with reality, and want an oversimplified view of the world to provide them with a list of people to blame (other than themselves) for all the bad things, and make them believe they are somehow smarter than everyone else.
Well stated, Umm. If there has to be political content on this site, may it always be as balanced and reasoned as your post. Extremism breeds opposing extremism and harms us all.
Liberalism is a mental disorder
Let’s be honest: it’s clear the original logo was all about Sir Isaac Newton and the story of the falling apple and his theory of gravity. But the revised logo, with the bite taken out of it, is CLEARLY a nod to the biblical story of “the fruit of knowledge,” which is usually depicted as an apple. So that theory is, in fact, true…
I’ll be honest. I’ve taken a bite out of many an apple and never once thought of that biblical story.
Sometimes an apple is just an apple.
But an apple with a worm in it is a balanced meal.
According to Apple Confidential 2.0 the designer made the logo with bite out of it to prevent it from being mistaken for a cherry tomato.
The original logo designed by Wayne is reproduced in the book. Jobs was correct (IMHO) in that it was too finely detailed to reproduce accurately or be memorable. The apple was a very small part of the original logo.
Perhaps that’s a “byte” taken out of it?
“…Enigma code breaker Alan Turing, a brilliant and closeted mathematician who, uncovered by Britain’s moral police in 1954”
I didn’t realize being a mathematician was such a big deal back in 1954.
Seriously, Turing’s suicide was a devastating tragedy. Who knows what opportunities mankind missed out on. Where would be today if he had lived to the turn of the century?
Since removed but here’s a link from the wayback machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20090904212159/http://glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com/
The way I remember it, the stripes in the original color logo are not in the same order when compared to a rainbow. Steve purposely randomized them to represent the chaotic effect Apple was having on the computer industry.
related news:
http://www.theonion.com/video/victim-in-fatal-car-accident-tragically-not-glenn,14380/
That’s all rubbish. The Apple was born from Steve’s time spent picking apples on a farm…..and the Macintosh is a variety of apple. End of.
“Earlier in December, conservative commentator Glenn Beck raised eyebrows when he managed to link Apple’s famous logo to, among other things, Nazis, homosexuality and Benedict Cumberbatch,” What exactly does that mean? What do Nazis, homosexuality and a fine actor, Benedict Cumberbatch have in common? I realize the Glen Beck sees conspiracies everywhere, regardless of wether he is asleep or awake. He really needs to take his medications avery day.
Byte