How the Mac Was Almost a Bicycle

The name Macintosh was originally selected because it was Jef Raskin’s favorite type of apple, but the Mac almost wasn’t an Apple at all. When Raskin took a leave of absence in February 1981, Steve Jobs and Rod Holt made the decision to change Apple to something else. They felt that the name Macintosh was just a code name and that a name change was in order to reflect the change in regime.Holt decided on Bicycle as the new name that would replace Raskin’s Macintosh for the duration of the project and presented it to his design team. When they balked, Holt insisted that all references to Macintosh be changed to Bicycle, telling them that it shouldn’t really matter “since it was only a code name.”

The Bicycle name originated from an ad that Apple had placed in Scientific American magazine. The ad featured quotes from Steve Jobs about computers, including one about how personal computers were “bicycles for the mind.” The logic was that humans could run as fast as other species, but a human—on a bicycle—could beat them all. Rod’s edict was never obeyed. Somehow, Macintosh just seemed right.

Source : ZDNet

"Computers are like a bicycle for our minds."

After being ousted from Apple, Steve Jobs headed for the Tuscan hills of northern Italy, where he bought a bicycle and a sleeping bag, and contemplated what he would do next. That turned out to be NeXT Software, which he sold to Apple, fuelling his return and second act. (from theglobeandmail.com) Is there a deeper, interesting cycling thread here? I began to wonder...

Of course the internet makes researching a story like this easy.
Quote from an interview of Steve Jobs by “The Belfast Telegraph” at the recent Paris Expo:… asked what is the last piece of technology that he acquired — not made by Apple — that really delighted him? He pauses for few long seconds, looks down, puts his hands on his knees, looks away. “I actually bought a bicycle recently. It’s just … wonderful.”

Little did I realize that Mr. Job's had a deep appreciation of the efficiency of locomotion and elegance that a bicycle lends to our otherwise humble species, making us the most energy efficient beast on this earth. In this video, he discusses the bicycle and makes the analogy that the "computer is like a bicycle for our minds." Of course, I think that is a wonderful analogy. Much as computers were the rage of the late 1900's, so was the bicycle the rage of the late 1800's, giving our society this wonderful means of locomotion... a new found freedom.

From an interview with Steve Hayden, the former Chiat Day copywriter who wrote Apple's famous 1984 Super Bowl commercial (http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,60441,00.html). To illustrate, Hayden showed some slides of some early Apple magazine ads filled with dense copy about "philosophy," which likened Apple's computers to a "new kind of bicycle" and a "wheel for the mind."

Source : YouTube/ article from atlbike.org