usermilk writes "There is a great article on the history of the Apple logo running at MacNYT.dk." The story's been translated into English, so no worries.
"the stripes in the apple logo plays on the comparison with IBM, that also uses a striped logo"
What's interesting is why the IBM logo uses stripes. It used to be solid, but was changed because it looked to "dominant". IBM being very dominant back then, believed that adding the negative space lightened up the logo and made them look less threatening (if you see it next to the old solid logo this is very much the case).
What's more interesting is that Paul Rand, who designed the IBM logo (along w/ the logo's for UPS, ABC, Westinghouse, etc, and who is regarded as perhaps the greatest graphic designer of all time) was commissioned later by Steve Jobs himself to create the logo for NeXT Computers. Rand was paid an astonishing $100,000 for this logo (the most ever for a logo at that time I believe), and in his presentation of his idea he simply handed Jobs a 52 page booklet and did not say a word. Jobs fell in love with the new logo immediately.
On a related note, the full history of the dogcow can be seen in Apple's tech support
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
"the stripes in the apple logo plays on the comparison with IBM, that also uses a striped logo"
What's interesting is why the IBM logo uses stripes. It used to be solid, but was changed because it looked to "dominant". IBM being very dominant back then, believed that adding the negative space lightened up the logo and made them look less threatening (if you see it next to the old solid logo this is very much the case).
What's more interesting is that Paul Rand, who designed the IBM logo (along w/ the logo's for UPS, ABC, Westinghouse, etc, and who is regarded as perhaps the greatest graphic designer of all time) was commissioned later by Steve Jobs himself to create the logo for NeXT Computers. Rand was paid an astonishing $100,000 for this logo (the most ever for a logo at that time I believe), and in his presentation of his idea he simply handed Jobs a 52 page booklet and did not say a word. Jobs fell in love with the new logo immediately.