Apfelkind Café, Bonn, Germany
Apfelkind Café, Bonn, Germany
This small café, on a leafy residential street in Bonn, Germany, was created with nursing mothers in mind. Apple Corporation sued the café over its use of an apple in it’s logo. Christin Römer, the café owner, refused a settlement which stipulated that she sign a non-disclosure agreement. After a two-year legal battle, Apfelkind prevailed.
In human history the apple has come to represent love, beauty, fertility, evil, knowledge, life, health, the world’s largest corporate entity, as well as a simple object of delectation.
he Evolution and History of the Apple Logo, Edible Apple: your source for Apple news, rumors, and analysis, 20 April 2009.
http://www.edibleapple.com/2009/04/20/the-evolution-and-history-of-the-apple-logo/
The first iteration of the Apple Corporation logo was not an apple itself but featured an apple in a larger scene. Designed in 1976 by Ronald Wayne, who is sometimes referred to as the third co-founder of Apple, the logo depicts “Isaac Newton sitting under a tree, an apple dangling precipitously above his head.” The scene is surrounded by ribbons of text reading “Apple Computer Co.” In small lettering around the frame of the image is written “Newton… A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought … Alone.”
Lee, Jennifer S., It’s Like Comparing Apples to Apples, The New York Times City Room Blog, 4 April 2008.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/its-like-comparing-apples-to-apples/?_r=0
In 2007 the GreeNYC Campaign, a city program aimed to help New Yorkers live more environmentally, announced its new campaign logo: a “looped green apple” which was a playful nod to the environment and also to New York City’s nickname “The Big Apple.”
Four months after GreeNYC applied to the Untitled States Patent and Trade Office to use their logo, Apple Corporation filed a legal challenge stating that the small green apple too closely resembled their corporate logo: a silver apple with a bite taken out of the righthand side. The Corporation claimed would “cause ‘consumer confusion resulting in damage and injury’ to their brand, and would ‘cause dilution of the distinctiveness’ of Apple’s trademark” New York city has begun to use the apple logo.
Firth, Holden, Unraveling the tale behind the Apple logo, CNN, 7 October 2011.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/06/opinion/apple-logo/
One common story about the meaning of behind the Apple name and logo is that it is a tribute to Alan Turing “the man who laid the foundations for the modern-day computer, pioneered research into artificial intelligence and unlocked German wartime codes.” Turing’s actions helped to end WWII, saving thousands of lives, but his deeds were largely unrecognized due to his homosexuality (which was illegal in Britain at the time). At the time of his death in 1954, Turing was forced to choose between jail time for “gross indecency” and “estrogen injections intended to 'cure' his homosexuality.” Turning chose death instead, committing suicide by biting into “an apple he had laced with cyanide.”
It has long been speculated that when Steve Jobs and his co-founder were young entrepreneurs at Stanford they created the logo for their new computer company as a reference to Turing and his sacrifice. “They remembered Turing and his contribution to their field. They chose an apple -- not a complete apple, but one with a bite taken out of it.”
For the Beatles management Company, It’s Apple Versus Apple, The New York Times, 13 September, 2003.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/13/business/for-the-beatles-management-company-it-s-apple-versus-apple.html
When Apple first launched it’s iTunes store for digitizing, purchasing and downloading music, they received a court injunction from another apple: Apple Corps Ltd. “the company formed in 1968 by the Beatles to manage the group's business interests and serve as the band's music label.”
The music label claimed that the use of the name “Apple” and the apple logo in the context of music services “breaches the band's trademark.” The label had previously given Apple permission to use the name and logo as long as it was used in reference to computers and computer products only.
The Evolution and History of the Apple Logo, Edible Apple: your source for Apple news, rumors, and analysis, 20 April 2009.
http://www.edibleapple.com/2009/04/20/the-evolution-and-history-of-the-apple-logo/
The bite out of the apple, which first appears in the rainbow apple iteration of Apple Computer’s logo, has several possible meanings. One theory is that the bite “was originally implemented so that people would know that it represented an apple, and not a tomato.” Another possible reason is that the “bite” is an illusion to the “byte”- an essential component of computer science.
The choice of the rainbow stripes seems to have been an attempt by founder Steve Jobs to “humanize the company.” However former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée offered an alternative reading of the logo. He said “One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo, the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn’t dream a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope and anarchy.”
