Apple is a well-known and a some what mythical company. Most consumers probably know their products today. But if you dig a little below the surface, there is a very exciting story to be found about the company, that many may not have had a clue about. Here are 10 things you may not know about Apple.
Those who pay attention can see that in very many advertisements for Apple, the time shown on the screen is at 9:41. This has to do with the time that Steve Jobs told about the first iPhone. The company wanted the image on the phones to correspond to the real time when the iPhone was displayed. They had estimated that it would take 40 minutes for Jobs to get to the part where he showed the phone for the first time, but to be on the safe side, they added two minutes. When it was time to show the first iPad, they did the same thing, but then took a minute off from the presentation. The time of 9:41 has lived on ever since.
Many have speculated as to why the company is named as it is. Some thought the name had biblical connections, some thought it was related to science. But the answer is much more basic than that. Steve was on a fruit-based diet when the company was founded and he was particularly fond of apples.
Today we recognize Apple for its clean and modern look, but this has not always been the case. The company’s original logo was an old-fashioned picture of Isaac Newton, sitting under the famous apple tree where, according to legend, he got the idea about gravity.
Just a year later, the company changed the logo to the apple icon. The rainbow colors in the logo would symbolize that the company was the first to sell computers with color screens.
The bite taken from Apple’s logo is only there to clarify that it actually is an apple. So customers would not think that the logo represented a tomato or any other round fruit.
To celebrate the company’s 20th anniversary, a special edition of their personal computer was made. Only 12,000 copies were produced and it was sold for the staggering 7499 US dollars. But the price included a built-in 12.1-inch screen, vertically side-mounted CD player and keyboard clad in Italian calfskin. But the luxury did not stop there. The whole thing was topped off with the computer being delivered in a limousine and installed by a man in a tuxedo.
The Command button may be the most important button on a Mac computer. At first, the button was called Apple Key and the symbol on it was Apple’s own logo. The basic idea with that particular button was that you would not need a mouse at all, but control the computer through various keyboard shortcuts. But Steve felt that the name Apple and its symbol were being overused, something that he said would water out the brand. Therefore, the company chose to change the name and appearance of the button.
The symbol for the Command button today may seem a bit random and many people think it looks more like a pretzel. In fact, the logo is taken from the Nordic road sign for points of interest.
Yes, believe it or not, Apple has not only sold high-tech gadgets. It also sold clothes, for a while in 1986. The Apple Collection was Apple’s own clothing brand. The clothes may have been modern at the time, but this is a classic example that it was not always better before.
Apple has long been known for its quality and for being meticulous in everything they do. One such example is the flower found on the Apple Watch. Where many other companies would probably have chosen to animate the flowers that bloom, Apple spent hundreds of hours filming real flowers.
Siri is a feature we strongly associate with Apple. But from the beginning, Siri was intended to be a standalone app that would work with Apple, Android and Blackberry. The Siri feature was originally developed by SRI International and the app was released for iOS in February 2010. Apple then bought the company, just two months later, and integrated the feature with the iPhone 4S.
Apple does not own its iPhone brand but instead buys this as a license from Cisco. In recent years, Apple has also lost the exclusive right to the iPhone brand in Brazil. There is another company there, called Gradiente, which has its own iPhones sold in the country.