Difference between Apple and Mac

[delsoljb32]

there is a book called "Apple Confidential 2.0"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...37464?v=glance

i was bored one day and read the first few chapters, in there it goes through the origins of the company, the name, logo, etc.

heheh, one story i found funny was that Jobs worked for Atari, but his friend Wozniac was better at coding, and actually wrote the code for 'Breakout' FOR Jobs, so they could have money for the company (or something like that, dunno, its early )

[nixgeek]

Originally Posted by texanpenguin

nixgeek, that story is a lie, if only for the fact that the Apple logo wasn't an apple with a bite out of it until the Apple II was released.

Before that it was a picture of Newton under a tree. A big, illustrative logo, drawn by Apple co-founder Ron Wayne:

http://img92.echo.cx/img92/9731/ronwayne8rx.jpg


Sites often claim that the Apple name was chosen because:

1. Starts with an 'A' - top of alphabetical lists
2. Apple is an organic, non-computational term, so has a high recall rate when used amongst acronyms and techno-words.
3. Apple has good health connotations (an Apple a day keeps the doctor away)


The current logo, designed by Rob Janoff, has varying explanations. Some say the bite is a subtle link to a "Byte", others say it's supposed to be the dent left in the apple by Newton's head (I find this very hard to believe).

The rainbow is accused of being a relationship with the gay/lesbian pride movement, however the colours are out of rainbow order (often said to mean anarchy, naughtiness). My feelings are that a rainbow was just something else that stood out in corporate identities.

According to popular rumour, the Apple logo was initially plain red (as Apples often are), but was changed to differentiate itself from a tomato. Apparently this was officially corroborated.

Touche sir...I stand corrected.

I had forgotten about that old logo. Man, I wish I could find the manual that said that about Apple's logo and the company name.

And thanks for the other information...I truly didn't know about the disorder of the rainbow color. Pretty cool.

[Lt Major Burns]

now, Mac is the name for a desktop apple computer running MacOS. (eMac, iMac, Mac Mini, PowerMac)

Book's are the portables runnig MacOS. these are not macs though, officially (iBook, PowerBook)

the i is the consumer line (iMac, iBook), born from the abbrieviation of internetMac, internetBook, because it was easy to access the internet on them

the Power is the pro-user lines. (PowerBook, PowerMac), from the fact they use PowerPC chips, and are powerful.

Newton (long dead now) was not a mac, because it didn;t run MacOS, it ran NewtonOS. they were the Apple Newtons, not Apple Mac Newtons.

[mbveau]

That makes sense, isn't the Newton a type of apple? Anyway; thanks for the history lesson guys!

[Lt Major Burns]

Newton was a range of (too) ahead-of-it's-time PDA's, and also the eMate education "laptop" (which was like a big chunky psion 7, again using the e for education, like the eMac). they were an independent line of apple products, designed and made by apple, running apples portable os, NewtonOS. it talked to MacOS, but was independent, like PalmOS. But yes, they all came with multi-coloured apple badges on them. it was definately an apple product.

[fryke]

Just a few corrections. (Ah...) Lt., we certainly don't really call the 'Books just 'Books. They're Macs, too. Mikuro: The Mac was a Mac even before System 7, of course. (And just as an addition, the first Macintosh System to be officially called "Mac OS" was 7.6, although the term Mac OS already was in the startup screen of System 7.5.3 IIRC.) Also, MAC in all-caps _does_ exist, of course, although it has nothing to do with the Mac we know, besides that Macs have NICs (Network Interface Cards), too. MAC stands for "Media Access Control address, a hardware address that uniquely identifies each node of a network" according to webopedia.

Apart from _all_ of that, I really hope that one day, Apple will release a product that is simply referred to as "Macintosh" or "Mac". Even the early Macs had a description in their product names: Macintosh 128K, Macintosh 512K, Macintosh Plus, Macintosh SE, Macintosh II etc. (see www.apple-history.com for info about any old Macs...)

About those "lies" on how the name Apple came to be: I guess even the Steves might have trouble remembering how _exactly_ the story goes. So let's just say that the early logo was about the apple that fell on Newton's head.