Hahahaha this is great – did you know the Apple logo is blasphemous?
Yes well once you’re told of course you can see it. Apple; bite missing. But would you have thought of it if you hadn’t been told? Aha!!1! I thought not. You’re probably blasphemous yourself.
In this case it’s a sect of ultra-Orthodox believers in Russia that are claiming that the Apple logo is indeed blasphemous:
Radical orthodox Christians from Russia remove Apple logotype from the company’s products and put a cross sign instead of them. The orthodox find the half-bitten apple logotype anti-Christian and insulting their belief, something that may potentially cause serious problems for Apple’s products in the country.
Interfax news-agency reports about “several” cases, where the radical orthodox, including priests, swapped the Apple logo for an image of the cross, the symbol of Jesus Christ. According to the ultra-radical orthodox activists, the bitten apple symbolizes the original sin of Adam and Eve and is generally anti-Christian.
Of course. Because it couldn’t just be an apple, with a bite taken out. Plus the forbidden fruit isn’t an apple anyway. But whatever.
…one of the results of the Pussy Riot controversy is that the Duma, the Russian Parliament, is considering laws to make offending religious feelings a criminal offence. The question, obviously, will be whose religious feelings? How large a group will have to be offended? My understanding of Russia is not what it once was (back when I lived there for example) but I would expect the law to really say that offending the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church will be an offence and offending anyone else won’t be. But that does assume that they write the law that way.
It’s always possible that they’ll write it much more broadly and that any small group will be able to claim that pretty much anything at all is blasphemous according to their specific religious beliefs. Even the Apple logo.
Or the apple. Or the apple plus all other kinds of fruit, to make sure.
[Patiently: No, it’s not the same as “bitch” and “cunt.” Go away.]
Oh for fuck’s sake, that’s ridiculous. I’m assuming that apple-with-a-bite-out-of-it = Original Sin something something, but it’s such a LONG stretch to get there.
I remember reading something circa Steve Jobs’s death about why the apple has a bite out of it–turns out it wasn’t intended as a dig against orthodox Christians, but just needed for scale. The silhouette of the unbitten apple wasn’t clearly distinguishable from a cherry…which would have likely generated a whole different controversy, I’m sure. No one can win against these delusional fools.
I always thought it did indeed represent that apple (notwithstanding the fact that apple wasn’t actually an apple (and never existed anyway)). I took it as a broad metaphor for curiosity and the human search for knowledge – the driving force behind every technological advance we’ve ever made.
And if you think about it, there’s a lot there for religious folks to get upset about. The Bible promises good stuff after you die; science not only delays your inevitable death by decades, it gives you cool gadgets to occupy you in the meantime.
My perception may be wrong, but I’ll go on believing it anyway because it has no practical impact on my life or anyone else’s (I neither buy Apple products nor abjure them and make no effort to persuade/dissuade others from doing so).
Aaaagh! For the love of..well, you know. Apple computers used the bitten apple image because otherwise they would have infringed copyright on the Beatles Apple Records logo, which was un-bitten.
Or something like that.
Naturally, this means that anyone with an Apple product will either have to remove said product or be expelled from Freshers’ Fayres in future. After all, if the sensibilities of some religious students must be protected in the name of a poorly written policy then the sensibilities of all possible religious students must be protected too.
I suppose cherries are taboo? After all, if Adam and Eve hadn’t lost theirs…..
@AsqJames
It can stand for curiosity in a sense. The very first Apple logo showed Isaac Newton and the whole tree. But that wasn’t the reason for the name. Steve Jobs simply liked apples and worked in an orchid once.
There are other more complicated theories like wanting to appear before Atari in listings, an homage to Alan Turing or to the Beatles’s record company.
I suppose cherries are taboo? After all, if Adam and Eve hadn’t lost theirs…
No, on the contrary, there is a “Cherry Tree Carol” with which the Christians (well, maybe only western ones) are perfectly at ease.
I’m going to claim that the logo is Alan Turing’s cyanide laced apple (with a bite out).
It isn’t true, but it should be.
steve84 @ # 6: Steve Jobs … worked in an orchid once.
He must have been more skilled with microcircuitry than Wozniak led us to believe.
The version that I heard was that during the rush to startup, young Mr. J told his partners the name had to come before Atari in the phone book, and the decision had to be made before they adjourned – and he suggested Apple in commemoration of his days as a migrant farmworker (unless they had something better…).
@Steve84 & @JVC,
Hmm, Einstein and Turing both are very appealing creation myths, but I can’t work out which I should embrace as the true word of Jobs. I’m swaying between Curiosityism, Gravityism and Turingism. The orchid story is clearly an attempt by Jobs’ acolytes to portray him as fulfilling the ancient prophecies of Einsteinian Gravityism, but is an unnecessary embellishment.
I may need to organise an AppleCon in Nicea where we can meditate on it and choose the one true dogma, clearly there’s no way we can believe in all three at the same time.
Once we’re done we’ll declare holy war on Pierce’s prosaic and heretical beliefs.
I find lower case “T” is blasphemous as a likeness of a Roman means of punishing criminals used for killing Jesus. As French people say à bas avec le “T” minuscule!
So do I have a cookie?
It was the fruit of the tree of knowledge that was forbidden? Apparently, fruit from the tree of stupid was all you can eat?
Anyway – this is going to run afoul of the Macians and their splinter groups the i-thingians — if those groups are not religious, who is?
Actually, Apple did run afoul of the Beatles’ trademark. There was even a lawsuit. Wozniak, I think, admitted that the Beatles were an inspiration for Apple’s name.
Now for something completely different:
To paraphrase Freud, sometimes an apple is just an apple.
The same dinky wingbats are trying to ban a brand of milk because it has a rainbow on the carton. No, honestly.
Perhaps this is a sign of my Catholic education but I totally associated the apple with the bite out of it as a reference to the Garden of Eden.
The forbidden fruit was from the tree of knowledge. The bite gave humanity knowledge. Computers are a source of information and knowledge. Frankly, I thought that was exactly what it meant.
I suppose the difference is, I don’t have a problem with a computer company using a logo about knowledge. The fact that people believe in a god that wants to keep them ignorant is a problem.
I’ve heard it said that the forbidden fruit was depicted as an apple as pun on the Latin words mālus (apple) and malus (evil).
“Steve Jobs simply liked apples and worked in an orchid once.”
Yep, and the Mac was named after the McIntosh cultivar.
But about the logo, surely everyone knows that it’s an apple with a byte taken out of it!
/@
They can change the logo, but only if it’s a pic of Jeebus on the cross…with a bite taken out him. 😀
Or would that be too catholic for them?
Excellent.
My guess is that the Duma will use the Orthodox Church’s complaint to make some money. Charge Apple a “fine” for using the trademark in country or something, then let sales go ahead.
I know it wasn’t meant as such, but the logo also tends to remind me of the suicide of computer science’s most tragic hero: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death