Bike? No, it McIntosh

Jef Raskin chose the name "Macintosh" for the project because of the love of the varieties of apples. In February 1981, when he was forced into a long vacation, Steve Jobs and Rod Holt decided to change the name of development, partly in order to distance himself from the project of its creator. They decided that "Mac" in any case remain the code name, but did not want the other staff too tied to this name.

Jef Raskin (March 9, 1943 - February 26, 2005) - a specialist in computer interfaces, the author of articles and books on usability «The Humane Interface», employee number 31 of the company Apple Computer, is best known as the initiator of the project "Macintosh" at the end 70-x.

By the time Apple posted a large dvustranichnuyu advertising publication in the journal Scientific American, which contained Jobs quotes about the virtues of personal computers. The essence of advertising, people are not as fast runners, like many other species of living creatures, but the man on a bicycle udelaet them all. Personal computers were presented there as "bicycles for the mind."

About a month or so later after the departure of Jeff's small design team received the news. Rod Holt announced that a new name for the project sounds like "Bike", and all references to the "Macintosh" should be replaced with "Bicycle". In response to the objections relevant to the stupidity of the name Rod pointed out the irrelevance of the issue in this case - it's still just a code name.

However, the decree Rod not in a hurry to perform. For unknown reasons, the name "Macintosh" just seemed right. It is so stuck within the team that no one, except for the Rod, not a project called the "bicycle". This name seemed very out of place. It came to disciplinary sanctions - anyone who uses the name "Macintosh" in the presence of Rhoda relied reprimand. However, it did not help.

Finally, about a month after the initial "pedal" initiative during the next uttered "Mac" Rod threw up his hands in despair and said to us: "I give up! You can call it a Mac, if you want. This is just a code name, in any case! ".

But this is the code name was much more stable. The fall of 1982, Apple paid a marketing company tens of thousands of dollars for the generation of options for the development of their official names Lisa and Macintosh. There was a lot of ideas, as a result of which the Mac could be called «Apple 40" or even «Apple Allegro». After listening to all suggestions, Steve and his team decided to stop marketing in the Macintosh and Lisa as official names. For Lisa even got to make a transcript: LISA - Local Integrated Systems Architecture, but in most team more caught Lisa: Invented Stupid Acronym. Fortunately, Mac seemed protected from similar acronyms.

Ahead there was only one obstacle - the Macintosh was too in tune with the brand name of the company McIntosh. I'm not sure how it was possible to solve this issue, but I suspect that Apple paid them a small sum of money. Anyway, in January 1983, Steve told his team that they had the right to use the name. He opened a bottle of champagne in front of one of the prototypes, and said: "I name Macintosh you!".

(via andy Hertzfeld)