I think that Alan Turing was much less well known at the time of Apple's founding than he is now.

The apple might not have been poisoned either.

It would have been a pretty morbid source of inspiration in any case. You really think Steve Jobs would like his company indirectly associated with suicide?

Idk I just saw a episode of QI on YouTube where Stephen Fry claims this and was wondering if it was true.

@NeilMeyer That puts things into context. Stephen Fry is a comedian. Did it ever occur that it might have been a joke? universal-machine.blogspot.com/2011/12/…

Suicide was the official verdict in Turing's death, but "official" does not always imply "true." At least one other explanation has been proposed: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death

The plot thickens - if you let it - when you consider that Apple used to use coloured stripes somewhat reminiscent of the rainbow pride flag in their logo.

I was there then. We knew who Alan Turing was. In particular, the "Turing machine" term was frequently mentioned in Creative Computing and BYTE.

Guys - it's absolutely amazing you haven't heard and it hasn't been mentioned on here that it's just a ripoff of the most famous Music company of all time, the Beatles Apple Records. (Re Jobs' interest in music and so on.) Obviously, this is, by far, there's not even a second, the biggest and most famous logo/naming copyright case in all of business history. (Still ongoing and, obviously, hugely inflamed when Apple (computers), you know, got in to the music distribution business.) It's astonishing this hasn't been mentioned

Jobs prattling about how he "saw it on a Freeway" is hilarious. And the dialog fed to Janoff by the legal forces is also hilarious. (the turing/poison thing is totally nonsensical.) {Stephen Fry is admirable involved in the political actions revolving around the movie The Imitation Game, but the apple etc comments are totally nonsensical}

@LamarLatrell: The rainbow Apple logo (1977) predates the introduction of the rainbow LGBT flag (1978).

Ah, interesting! The plot thickens - if you let it - when you consider that maybe the pride flag was influenced by the apple logo and its association with Alan Turing 😂😂

@Fattie It's not still ongoing. There were several cases starting from the founding of Apple Computers (Apple won that case because it is a TRADEMARK (not copyright) in a different market) then when Apple added sound to its computers, then when Macs had CDROM then when Apple Computers changed its name to Apple then the final case was when Apple actually entered the music market with iTunes (settled out of court)...

...There is no more case between Apple Records vs Apple. In 2010, one year before Jobs died, the two companies finally resolved their final disagreement when Beatles allowed Apple to sell their songs on iTunes.

@Fattie I think I recall having read this, but not where. You should submit this as an answer, especially if you find a good source.

Fruit is a common theme. At the time there was Apricot Computers and today we have Raspberry Pi. I predict that in the coming decades African tech startups will include Mango and Papaya.

Could those voting to close explain the vote in a comment please?

@LamarLatrell: The rainbow logo would IMHO almost certainly have been seen as a reference to the fact that the Apple II was the first remotely-affordable computer that could produce 16-color graphics. Television production facilities would have had some systems that could produce much fancier color graphics under CPU control, but those systems would have cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. It wasn't long before other computers offered fancier color graphics, but for a time the Apple's ability to offer color graphics was unique.

@Justme That tracks with Apple's later release of the Newton, an early (and not very successful) PDA.