Why Steve Jobs Named His Company 'Apple' ?
So, naming a company after a fruit is quite unusual,
especially in the company industry. Which was dominated by brands like IBM and
Hewlett Packard. But the Jobs didn’t just think of the name ‘Apple’ randomly. It
represented certain values that he wanted to include in the company. And those
values were developed during Job’s stay at an apple orchard commune in the
1970s. it was called the All One Farm, and featured a community of people
dedicated to meditation and spirituality.
He spent several months there, pruning trees, picking
apples, collecting firewood, and even adding electrical wiring to a barn. It just
so happened that after leaving farm commune, Jobs and his friend Steve Wozniak
began building computers together. And they decided to create a company in need
of a name.
With Job’s stay at the All One Farm fresh in his mind, the
word ‘Apple’ symbolized the spiritual, fun, and inclusive values he envisioned
for their computer company. His friend Wozniak liked the name, although he told
Jobs to consider the name “Matrix Electronics,” since he thought it sounded
cool.
But Jobs already had
an affinity for Apples even before his experience at the All One Farm. He’d
adopted a restrictive fruitarian diet. Eating nothing but fruit for most of his
young adult life. Jobs took this practice to such an extreme, that he often ate
just one fruit for weeks at a time. The common type being Apples.
He believed that eating only fruit would prevent body odor
and eliminate the need to bathe. Although he changed his tune after coworkers
at Atari complained about his smell so often that management gave Jobs an
ultimatum: Start bathing, or find another job. In fact, his time at Atari also
contributed to him choosing the name Apple. Since it meant his company would be
listed before Atari in the phone book.
So due to his extreme diet, experience at an Apple orchard,
and desire to get ahead of Atari, Jobs decided to name his computer company ‘Apple’.