Origin of company names Apple & Atari - verify?

From: Starling <starling_at_umr.edu>
Date: Fri May 9 03:19:59 1997

> Anyhind in today's list they had "'Why' behind the names"
> The reason for certain names of companies/items.
>
> Apple - desire to be before "Atari" in the phone book.

Heard two different stories:

1) Jobs & Wozinak sitting around in garage trying to think of a name.
    They agree to close their eyes and name it the first thing that they see
    when they open them: Apple.

2) This is the more plausible one that I think is true: Apple is named
    after Allan Turing. Turing, for those that don't know, was a English
    computer scientist that helped crack the Nazi Enigma code during WWII.
    He also did a lot of theoretical work in AI that set the foundation for
    a lot of other computer scientists (heard of the "Turing Test?").
    Turing's other hobby was poisons. He enjoyed studying making and playing
    with poisons. Well, it also happens that Allan Turing was gay. In
    1940s England, this was a federal offense. He was arrested and
    sentenced to forced to take the estrogen hormone to try to "fix"
    him. Needless to say this was unbearable and he decided to take his
    own life. It is said that Turing was obsessed with the story of Snow
    White and the poison APPLE. So he took his own life by poisoning an
    apple and eating it. (all this up until this point is true) Then
    what I've heard is that Jobs wanted to name the company in memory of
    Turing's apple, which would explain the bite out of the apple.


> Atari - to look like a Japanese company

Atari is in fact a Japanese word. I forget what it means, but it's the
equivalent of "checkmate" in the game of Go. Founder of Atari allegedly
really liked Japanese culture and Go.

Interestingly enough, I've also read somewhere that Steve Jobs got his
job at Atari by waltzing into the CEO's office barefoot and refused to
leave until he had a job. Jobs wrote the Breakout cartridge for the
Atari 2600.

starling
Received on Fri May 09 1997 - 03:19:59 BST