Jef Raskin originally named the massive Macintosh project at Apple after his absolute favorite variety of apple, the McIntosh, specifically because he considered it a delicious and reliable piece of fruit.

A closer look

Jef Raskin originally named the massive Macintosh project at Apple after his absolute favorite variety of apple, the McIntosh, specifically because he considered it a delicious and reliable piece of fruit. He strategically altered the spelling to avoid a trademark dispute with a high-end audio equipment manufacturer, inadvertently cementing one of the most powerful brand names in the entire history of consumer technology. It is wild to consider that a multi-trillion dollar tech ecosystem, encompassing everything from sleek aluminum laptops to impossibly expensive desktop monitors, owes its entire naming convention to a completely average mid-century snack. Had Raskin preferred a slightly different agricultural product, we could easily be living in an alternate reality where graphic designers absolutely insist on doing all their professional editing on a Granny Smith. It beautifully highlights that behind every calculated brand identity is usually just a hungry engineer