Steve Jobs on Apple Name: Simplicity and Sophistication
This clip is an excerpt from a longer recording: Steve Jobs on Apple's Early Vision: Computers for One Person.
What Jobs talks about
Jobs explains how the company settled on the name Apple Computer, saying they decided quickly and kept revisiting whether it still fit what they were building.
He ties the name to what he wanted the company to stand for: simplicity, but also a very refined sophistication. He says apples seemed to symbolize that balance well.
The passage is a small but revealing look at how Jobs thought about branding: a name should reflect the spirit of the product and the company’s deeper aim.
Jobs speaks throughout.
In his words
“We were going to call it Apple Computer”
“I like apples a lot”
“The simplicity and yet very refined sophistication”
“Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication”
“It actually was really what we've been striving for”
Key points
- Apple was chosen quickly, after a suggestion to come up with a better name by five o'clock that day.
- Jobs says he liked apples and also had an Atari connection in the phone book.
- The name mattered because it fit the company's goal of simplicity and refined sophistication.
- He connects the name to the first brochure’s message: “Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication.”
- Jobs says that slogan was not just talk; it reflected what they were truly striving for.
Full transcript
We simply decided that we were going to call it Apple Computer and suggested a better name by five o'clock that day. Partly because I like apples a lot and partially because I was the head of Atari in the phone book and I used to work at Atari. But we reexamined it on a regular basis and we found that the juxtaposition of something that seemed to epitomize what we were going after, which was the simplicity and yet very refined sophistication. You've seen our first brochure, probably some of you have, the title of it was Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication.
And that wasn't just a bullshit slogan, it actually was really what we've been striving for. And the apples seem to symbolize that. So I think we're going to stick with it.
Transcribed from the audio with OpenAI Whisper. Timestamps link to the video above. Errors are possible.