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Blast from the Past: The Story of the Apple Clover Symbol

by Erica Sadun Jan 1st 2007 at 7:00AM

Do you remember Andy Hertzfeld? He was the author of a huge part of the original Mac ROM and he discusses the creation of the Apple command logo in this writeup. Turns out that the logo was based on a Swedish symbol used to flag noteworthy attractions at campgrounds. Susan Kare, Apple's bitmap artist, found it in an international symbol dictionary. So why didn't they just use an Apple symbol? Steve Jobs had had enough. "There are too many Apples on the screen! It's ridiculous! We're taking the Apple logo in vain! We've got to stop doing that!" Neat story to read through, and only one of Hertzfeld's many marvelous Apple reminiscences.

Although the actual proper name of the icon is the Saint Johns Cross, when describing this key to others, I've called it the "butterfly icon", "squiggle icon", 'propeller icon" as well as "clover". What names have you TUAW readers given to the clover symbol?

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Do you remember Andy Hertzfeld? He was the author of a huge part of the original Mac ROM and he discusses the creation of the Apple command...
 

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sarah

splat. (this is what i was told it was called some 13 years ago and it's a hard habit to break.)

January 07 2007 at 11:32 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Danno

I don't know about you old school Mac guys... but my Apple Keyboard has an Apple logo on the Command key.

January 02 2007 at 4:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Edward Andrew Holets

I have heard it called the Daisy key by many a lab instructor...

January 02 2007 at 2:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
nIcK

I have called it the squiggly key since the late 80s.

January 02 2007 at 1:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dsevil

Unicode official name for the symbol is "Command Key" (U+2318).

January 02 2007 at 12:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
diskgrinder

hairball

January 02 2007 at 11:28 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
nonsequitur

According to Woz, it's technically the infinite loop. They saw it in Sweden. Even so, I call it the "Apple" key, just because it's what i first saw it as and it stuck. I had no idea what the symbol was, so i called it "Apple" because i knew what that was.

January 02 2007 at 11:08 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
spil

I just call it the command key.
I think the command logo is also used on some snowboard brand's logo. I also have a little clay piece I made when I was in like 2nd grade that has the command logo on it, and I haven't used an Apple until until about five years later.

January 02 2007 at 10:30 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
phil

I call it the 'command' key and tell people it's the key to use in combination with other keys to issue COMMANDS to the computer ... like print, save, copy, etc.

I also tell them that the 'clover' is the International Symbol for 'command.'

Whenever some one says 'Open Apple', I get really pissed off and say "WTF? Open Apple? WTF?"

January 02 2007 at 9:59 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ante Vukorepa

Pretzel...

January 02 2007 at 7:40 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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