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 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