"This sounded like a persuasive argument, so Benjamin and I
kept walking," Jeff reported in his whimsical blog www.jeffdeck.com on 9 May. "I decided
that the whole town [Niagara Falls, Ontario] could go to hell,
for all I cared."
"In our first three encounters, we’d been rebuffed, threatened,
and condescended to, and from here on I would feel no
obligation to point out mistakes to those who had wrought
them."
Instead, he contented himself with photographing numerous typos
he found in Niagara Falls, and displaying them in his popular
blog.
Calming down, the 28-year-old crusader wrote: "My indignation
died down when we made our way out of the wretched tourist area
and to the Falls themselves. They seemed a bit smaller than
they had looked to me the last time I visited, but then again,
I’d been around twelve or thirteen at the time."
Before crossing the border, Jeff amended a sign in a fruit
store in Erie, Pennsylvania, offering MACINTOSH apples for
sale.
"We’re not talking about one of the computing products put out
by my much-loathed nemesis, after all, so an a is unwelcome,"
he said.
He's right, of course.
McIntosh Red apples were named in honor of a Scottish
immigrant's son who discovered seeds of a marvelous new apple
in Canada more than 200 years ago. His name was John McIntosh,
and today his apples are one of the world's favorites. You can
read about him in Wikipedia:John_McIntosh.
There's an interesting link between McIntosh apples (the
fruit) and Mac Apples (the computer), explained by TAM, The
Apple Museum: theapplemuseum.com.
Steve Jobs came up with the name in early 1976. At the
time, he was often visiting and working on a small farm friends
of his owned. It was a hippie commune where Steve spent a few
months of the year.
When he returned from one of those stays, he told Steve
Wozniak about his idea. Jobs probably was working on apple
plantages. Or he just wanted their startup to be in front of
Atari® in the phone book. Or it was a tribute to Apple Records®,
the music label of the Beatles.
Well, perhaps the computer should have been labelled the Apple
Mc!
©June 2008 Eric Shackle
Click on author's byline for bio and list of
other works published by Pencil Stubs
Online.