Sunday, February 14, 2010

The bite in the apple

I always assumed that the bite in the apple which is the logo of Apple Mac represents eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil - though I never bothered to enquire.
I was told yesterday by a seemingly well informed person that it is meant to represent a bit of computer history - the bite that Alan Turing, the brilliant English scientist and decoder of Enigma, took from an apple dipped in cyanide. This was his way of commiting suicide after being hounded by the authorities for his homosexuality.

Is this well known?

As an interesting aside, following a recent petition to Downing Street, Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, apologised on behalf of the British Government for the way in which Turing was treated, which was a decent thing to do.

2 comments:

AA said...

Unfortunately the bite in the apple is an urban myth. The original designer Rob Janoff explains:
http://creativebits.org/interview/interview_rob_janoff_designer_apple_logo

S.Z. said...

Thanks for the clarification. So my original interpretation, eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, was nearer the truth. I should have added "lust for eating of the tree..."

The interesting point is, whatever the intentions of the artist, the visual image that he created is obviously ambiguous enough to allow of several different interpretations.