Rob Janoff, designer of the Apple logo
Well, I’m probably the least religious person, so Adam and Eve didn’t have anything to do with it. The bite of knowledge sounds fabulous, but that’s not it. And there is a whole lot of other lore about it. Turing the famous supposed father of computer science who committed suicide in the early 50’s was British and was accused of being homosexual, which he was. He was facing a jail sentence so he committed suicide to avoid all that. So, I heard one of the legends being that the colored logo*(see below) was homage to him. People think I did the colored stripes because of the gay flag. And, that was something really thought for a long time. The other really cool part was that apparently he killed himself with a cyanide laced apple. And, then I found out Alan Turing’s favourite childhood story was Snow White where she falls asleep forever after eating a poisoned apple to be woken up by the handsome prince.
Anyway, when I explain the real reason why I did the bite it’s kind of a letdown. But I’ll tell you. I designed it with a bite for scale, so people get that it was an apple not a cherry.
Also it was kind of iconic about taking a bite out of an apple. Something that everyone can experience. It goes across cultures. If any ever had an apple he has probably bitten into it and that’s what you get. It was after I designed it that my creative director told me: “Well you know, there is a computer term called byte”. And I was like: “You’re kidding!” So, it was like perfect, but it was coincidental that it was also a computer term. At the time I had to be told everything about basic computer terms.