The Beatles sued technology company Apple in 1978 to defend naming rights to their record label, Apple Corps.

The Beatles once sued Nike

Nike used The Beatles' "Revolution" in an ad, sparking a $15M lawsuit over the song's use. While The Beatles and Nike ultimately reached an agreement, Nike ushered in the modern practice of using hit songs in advertisements, as opposed to jingles or covers.

Apple, the tech giant renowned for products like the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, started out in a garage in 1976.

Read about the time Apple tried to trademark an actual apple in Switzerland

In 2017, tech company Apple filed for the trademark to a black-and-white image of a Granny Smith apple in Switzerland—a request that was only partially granted. Apple wanted full control over the image, but many worried that granting the trademark would open up too many opportunities for the company to own the rights to the mere shape of an apple.

The Beatles' labels released almost twice as many of the band's records in the US to capitalize on the band's popularity.

The Beatles were not an immediate success in the US—their label rejected their first two singles, and the band was mocked on the TV show 'American Bandstand.'

An American Beatles album featured a bizarre, gruesome image of the band as butchers, which was swiftly recalled.

How AI helped the Beatles win their eighth Grammy

It’s been decades since the legendary British rock band broke up, yet they still managed to snag a Grammy at the 2025 awards ceremony. This feat is thanks to AI, specifically machine-learning technology, to isolate and clean up different components of a late 1970s recording. This mini-documentary shows how the band's surviving members crafted “Now and Then” with the modern technology.

Apple's board fired Steve Jobs in 1985

Apple's board fired cofounder Steve Jobs after he clashed with then-CEO John Sculley about Apple's goals and vision, as well as how to run the company. Apple later rehired Steve Jobs as interim CEO, a role he held until he died in 2011.

Paul McCartney announced his departure from the Beatles in a 1970 press release, surprising his bandmates.

Steve Jobs saved a nearly bankrupt Apple

Apple nearly went bankrupt in 1997, when the tech company had only three months of operational cash left. Apple's board ousted cofounder Steve Jobs in 1985, but he was brought back as interim CEO to revive the company when Apple purchased Jobs' company, NeXT.

Hear how the Beatles became the most influential band on Earth, with guest Conan O'Brien.

Apple’s '1984' ad aired once during the game and permanently shaped their advertising

During Super Bowl XVIII, Apple aired its dystopian “1984” commercial once to a mass audience, introducing the Macintosh and positioning Apple as a challenger to IBM’s dominance in personal computing.

How Apple's GarageBand changed music

Apple's preinstalled, easy-to-use software GarageBand was first released in 2004. Since then, it's changed the way artists write and record music. The program's accessibility and ease of use have allowed beginner artists to experiment and find their voice, while major artists like Rihanna, Grimes, and Bjork have used the program to record hit singles and perform live. This article from the Red Bull Music Academy explains how the basic interface reshaped an industry.

After the bitter breakup of the Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartney only played music together one more time—at an impromptu studio session in 1974, joined by Stevie Wonder.

The Beatles tried to get the rights to make a 'Lord of the Rings' film starring the band members as Gollum, Frodo, Gandalf, and Samwise.

The band 'The Bangles' was initially named 'The Bangs'

Legal troubles forced the band to change their name. See a slew of other music facts, like how Taylor Swift's "All Too Well (Taylor's Version) is the longest song to reach number one on the US singles chart. The song is over 10 minutes long, and surpassed Don McLean's "American Pie."

In 1984, Apple ran an award-winning Super Bowl commercial

Directed by Ridley Scott and a winner at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, the clip features a heroine flinging a sledgehammer at a Big Brother-style figure delivering a speech. As the screen shatters, a voiceover proclaims that Apple's release of the Macintosh will ensure, "1984 won't be like '1984.'"

Creating the iPhone ended the marriages of several of Apple's engineers

In the early 2000s, Apple recruited multiple engineers onto rival teams tasked with combining phone, internet, and iPod capabilities. Despite significant technical hurdles, Steve Jobs favored a prototype with multitouch technology and a modified Mac operating system over a competing in-house model based on the iPod's click wheel. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

The Beatles stopped touring in 1966, citing frustration with the era's limited sound systems.

Why Metallica sued Napster—and enraged music fans

When Lars Ulrich, the drummer for metal legends Metallica, began his press campaign against Napster, an early filesharing software, he said he was fighting for artists. Listeners weren't convinced, especially because data suggested that filesharing services helped record sales rather than hinder them. This history of the ordeal contextualizes more modern problems in the music business, especially considering streaming services like Spotify were initially seen as a solution to illegal filesharing.

'My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each others' negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts.'

-Apple co-founder Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

The BBC banned the Beatles' song 'A Day in the Life' for 5 years, fearing it encouraged drug use.

These famous brands used to have different names

Did you know that Nike used to be called Blue Ribbon Sports? Or that Google was originally named BackRub? Getting a brand's name right is a tough job; there's an entire cottage industry of brand naming agencies to prove it. See which brands got it right the first time—and which ones might be better off with their current names—in this article.

The Beatles loved Motown Records, covering some of the label's songs while honing their skills as a club act in Germany.

Explore Abbey Road Studios, the site that invented stereo recording and was the site of most of the Beatles' recordings.

Apple's first logo was a portrait of Isaac Newton sitting under a tree

Before the minimalist image of an apple with a bite taken out of it, Apple's logo depicted the fruit dangling above the physicist, likely a nod to the anecdote about his epiphany regarding gravity.

A dispute with his label led to Prince changing his name to a symbol

Prince wrote and recorded music at a fever pitch. That kind of prolific output, however, concerned his label, Warner Bros., which believed that too many releases might oversaturate the market. That eventually led to tensions between Prince and the label, with Prince asking for his master recordings, which would give him full control over how his music would be used. Warner Bros. declined, and Prince changed his name to the unpronounceable symbol that he'd used on album covers in the past, believing it would void his record contract. It didn't, but Warner Bros. eventually released him, though he began going by Prince in 2000 and resigned with Warner Bros. in 2014.

Apple's first backer recruited his own CEO to help manage the company

Wanting Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to focus on developing Apple computers, Mike Markkula brought in his colleague from Fairchild Semiconductor, Michael Scott. As employee number five, Scott helped professionalize the fledgling computer company and getting manufacturing off the ground. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Steve Jobs changed the world with Apple and Pixar

The devices Jobs introduced during his time at Apple, including the iPad and iPhone, were imitated by competitors, ultimately helping to create the numerous options consumers have today. In addition to leading Apple, Jobs also helped turn Pixar and the software startup NeXT into success stories.

In 2018, Apple became the world's first publicly traded trillion-dollar company

The valuation was made possible by Steve Jobs' return to the company in 1997, who implemented a simplification strategy by cutting the majority of Apple's existing product line. His promotion of Jony Ive to SVP of industrial design would help popularize Apple through colorful products and marketing.

The Beatles' song 'Taxman' was inspired by Britain's tax structure.

The Beatles' appearance on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' in 1964 launched Beatlemania in the US after the band struggled to break through to American audiences.

The Beatles' 'Tomorrow Never Knows,' the final track from 1966's 'Revolver,' used innovative recording methods—including a rudimentary form of sampling—to redefine the sound of popular music.

One of Apple's first computers sold for $375K at an auction

An operational Apple I, the first model of personal computer made by Apple, sold for $375K at an auction. The machine was first sold in 1976 and has a handwritten serial number by Steve Jobs himself. The auction, provided rare insight into the beginnings of the influential tech company.

Steve Jobs founded NeXT while on a break from Apple

While Steve Jobs was on a hiatus from working at Apple, he founded a company called NeXT and helped lead the release of its operating system NeXTSTEP. The operating system was used to create the first app store of sorts, as well as the first web browser.

Long before Coachella, Steve Wozniak attempted a similarly-minded festival

In 1982, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak was on a hiatus from Apple after a near-fatal plane crash. In his spare time, he decided to throw a festival that would bring together cutting-edge music and technology—a Woodstock for the 1980s. The result was the US Festival, an early ancestor of Coachella that brought world-class acts like Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, Talking Heads, the Grateful Dead, and the Ramones to a rustic venue outside Los Angeles.

Before starting Apple, Steve Jobs cold-called HP at 12 years old and got a summer job.

Apple’s ‘1984’ ad won big at Cannes Lions

One of Cannes Lions’ most legendary winners, Apple’s “1984” ad was conceived by Chiat/Day and directed by Ridley Scott, fresh off his iconic film “Blade Runner.”

In 2025, Apple devices couldn't send audio messages with the phrase 'Dave & Buster's'

The transcription engine in iOS 18, which converts speech to text in the Messages app, had been incorrectly processing phrases with the ampersand ("&") symbol. The error was corrected via a bug fix after extensive user error reports.

Tom Petty used bankruptcy to change the music industry after resolving a dispute over how a label was treating him as an artist and self-producing an album that racked up $500K in debt.

Tim Cook refused to give the FBI a backdoor into iPhones during a terrorism case

The Apple CEO's refusal to comply with the government's request was viewed as controversial, despite support from privacy advocates. The FBI would later back down, claiming to have gained access to the device without disclosing additional details.

Some people believe Paul McCartney died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike.

See Don Valentine's original 1977 memo for Sequoia's investment into Apple Computer

In honor of Apple's 50-year anniversary, Sequoia Capital recently posted a tweet on X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter) with a photo of the original 1977 memo for Sequoia's investment in Apple.

When Steve Jobs recruited former CEO Tim Cook to work at Apple in 1998, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy—and many of Cook's friends advised him not to take the job.

How Steve Jobs tried to end development on Linux by offering Linus Torvalds a job

In a 2012 interview, Linus Torvalds claimed that the Apple CEO offered him a job in 2000 to exclusively work on Mac OS's Mach kernel. While Linux has not provided the financial benefits that a business venture with Apple may have, Torvalds stated, "I'm very happy with feeling that I've done the right thing." (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Beat Generation iconoclast William S. Burroughs once appeared in a Nike ad, singing the praises of 'new technology.'

Apple’s third cofounder was its angel investor

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are well-known for cofounding Apple, but the company had a third founder who acted as an angel investor: Mike Markkula, who invested $250K in 1977.

Lessons learned from Steve Jobs

From predicting our screen-filled future in 1983 to slashing Apple's product line in 1997, Steve Jobs believed in focus, simplicity, and the fusion of technology and art. His philosophies still influence how products are built and marketed today.

The Bristol Sessions built a structure for a nascent music industry

Peer presented each artist at the Bristol Sessions with three separate contracts: one for royalties on the record, one for publishing of the composition, and one for management. It was a business model that would become the norm for the nascent recording industry.

When Steve Jobs Spent All His Money To See Neem Karoli Baba

In 1974, Steve Jobs traveled to India after reading a book by the famous American psychologist Ram Dass. Jobs visited the temple of one of Dass’s influences, Neem Karoli Baba. He stayed in India for seven months before returning to the US to found Apple. Jobs’s trip to India helped shape the tech leader’s vision for Apple.