"The more we thought, the more they all sounded boring compared to Apple. You didn't have to have a real specific reason for choosing a name when you were a little tiny company of two people; you choose any name you want"
About this Quote
The origin story of Apple, as Wozniak tells it here, isn’t a hymn to branding genius so much as a quiet roast of it. “The more we thought” lands like a confession: deliberation didn’t produce clarity, it produced boredom. Compared to “Apple,” every other name sounded like corporate throat-clearing. That’s the sneaky power of the line. It frames the company’s most famous signifier not as the product of market research, but as an escape hatch from the bland seriousness that tech culture still defaults to.
Wozniak’s intent is almost disarmingly practical: when you’re two people, you’re not “positioning” anything. The subtext, though, is sharper. He’s pointing out how mythology gets retrofitted onto scrappy choices. Today, naming is treated like an executive rite, a whole industry of consultants and “brand architecture.” Woz reminds you that a lot of iconic decisions start as vibes, constraints, and impatience with the alternatives.
“You didn’t have to have a real specific reason” is doing double duty. It’s a statement about freedom (smallness lets you be weird) and a critique of rationalizations (big companies invent “reasons” to disguise fear). Apple’s name works because it’s soft where the category is hard: friendly, everyday, slightly playful. In a world of technical jargon and macho futurism, it smuggles approachability into the machine. That contrast isn’t accidental, even if the choice was.
Wozniak’s intent is almost disarmingly practical: when you’re two people, you’re not “positioning” anything. The subtext, though, is sharper. He’s pointing out how mythology gets retrofitted onto scrappy choices. Today, naming is treated like an executive rite, a whole industry of consultants and “brand architecture.” Woz reminds you that a lot of iconic decisions start as vibes, constraints, and impatience with the alternatives.
“You didn’t have to have a real specific reason” is doing double duty. It’s a statement about freedom (smallness lets you be weird) and a critique of rationalizations (big companies invent “reasons” to disguise fear). Apple’s name works because it’s soft where the category is hard: friendly, everyday, slightly playful. In a world of technical jargon and macho futurism, it smuggles approachability into the machine. That contrast isn’t accidental, even if the choice was.
Quote Details
| Topic | Startup |
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