Tuesday, 21 August 2012

Apple Macintosh was briefly called the Bicycle

I just started reading the excellent biography Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Here's a paragraph from page 115 describing how Jobs took over the Macintosh project in 1981:
In order to make the project his own, Jobs decided it should no longer be code-named after Raskin's favorite apple. In various interviews, Jobs had been referring to computers as a bicycle for the mind; the ability of humans to create a bicycle allowed them to move more efficiently than even a condor, and likewise the ability to create computers would multiply the efficiency of their minds. So one day Jobs decreed that henceforth the Macintosh should be known instead as the Bicycle. This did not go over well. "Burrell and I thought this was the silliest thing we ever heard, and we simply refused to use the new name," recalled Hertzfeld. Within a month the idea was dropped.

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