Apple Trivia
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120 free Apple trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
65 free apple trivia questions with answers. This page covers both apples. Half of it is trivia about apples the fruit: where the wild ancestor still grows, which country grows half the world's crop, how Honeycrisp, Fuji, Granny Smith and Red Delicious got their names, why bobbing for apples works, the Norse goddess who kept the gods young, the Swiss marksman, the Welsh proverb, and what Johnny Appleseed's orchards were really for. The other half is Apple Inc.: Jobs and Wozniak, the 1984 ad, iMac, iPod, iPhone, the logo, Tim Cook and the strangest corners of the company's history. Questions run from easy warm-ups to genuinely hard, and every answer has been checked against a reference source, shown under each question once you answer. Play the whole set, or lift a fruit round for a harvest festival, classroom or pub quiz.
30 of 120 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Apple Computer was founded on April 1 of which year?
1976
1976, and Ronald Wayne bailed out within two weeks; the company was incorporated the following January.
Q 02Which co-founder sold his stake in the newborn company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800?
Ronald Wayne
Ronald Wayne, who drew up the partnership papers and held a 10% stake, withdrew on April 12, 1976 for $800, worried that as the only partner with assets he was exposed to Apple's debts.
Q 03What was the sale price of the Apple I when it went on sale in July 1976?
$666.66
The Apple I sold for $666.66, a price Wozniak chose because he liked repeating digits; it shipped as a bare assembled circuit board with no case, keyboard or power supply.
Q 04Which retailer's order for 50 computers, placed after a Homebrew Computer Club demo, allowed the Apple I to go into production?
The Byte Shop
The Byte Shop's Paul Terrell placed the order after seeing the prototype demonstrated, and insisted on fully assembled boards rather than kits.
Q 05Which company, Steve Wozniak's pre-Apple employer, turned down his computer design five times?
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard, where Wozniak designed calculators, declined his computer design five times; he left HP to join Apple full time after Mike Markkula's 1977 investment.
Q 06Which pioneering 1979 spreadsheet made businesses buy the Apple II just to run it?
VisiCalc
VisiCalc, written by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, was the first spreadsheet for personal computers and the Apple II's killer app; Lotus 1-2-3 did the same for the IBM PC in 1983.
Q 07Apple's first logo, drawn by its short-lived third co-founder, showed which scientist under a tree?
Isaac Newton
Apple's 1976 logo showed Isaac Newton reading beneath an apple tree, framed by a ribbon quoting Wordsworth; the rainbow bitten-apple mark replaced it within a year.
Q 08Who designed the rainbow-striped bitten apple logo that Apple used until 1999?
Rob Janoff
Rob Janoff, an art director at the Regis McKenna agency, drew the rainbow apple in 1977; he says the bite was for scale so the fruit would not be mistaken for a cherry.
Q 09At which company's Palo Alto lab did Jobs see the graphical interface that shaped the Lisa and Mac in 1979?
Xerox
Xerox PARC showed Jobs the Alto's mouse-driven graphical interface in December 1979, after Xerox was allowed to buy 100,000 pre-IPO Apple shares for $1 million.
Q 10Apple went public on the Nasdaq on December 12, 1980 at what price per share?
$22
Apple sold 4.6 million shares at $22 each on December 12, 1980, raising about $101 million, the largest IPO since Ford in 1956 and minting some 300 millionaires.
Q 11Jobs later admitted the Apple Lisa was really named after whom?
His daughter
Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson the Lisa was named for his daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs, whatever Apple's 'Local Integrated Software Architecture' backronym claimed; the $9,995 machine sold poorly.
Q 12The Macintosh was named after the favourite apple variety of which Apple employee?
Jef Raskin
Jef Raskin, who started the Macintosh project in 1979, named it after his favourite apple, the McIntosh, altering the spelling partly to avoid the McIntosh Laboratory audio brand.
Q 13Who directed Apple's "1984" commercial that introduced the Macintosh during the Super Bowl?
Ridley Scott
Q 21The first iMac shipped in 1998 in a translucent shade named after a beach in which city?
Sydney
The blue-green tint was named for the water off Bondi Beach; the machine also dropped the floppy drive in favour of USB and CD-ROM.
Q 22What name did Jobs prefer for the iMac before the ad agency talked him out of it?
MacMan
Jobs favoured MacMan, a name Ken Segall of the agency Chiat/Day thought evoked Walkman and Pac-Man; Segall pitched iMac twice before Jobs accepted it.
Q 23Apple pitched the original 5 GB iPod in 2001 with the promise of how many songs 'in your pocket'?
1,000
1,000 songs in your pocket was the line; the player was developed in under a year and hailed as Apple's 21st-century Walkman.
Ridley Scott, whose Blade Runner had opened about eighteen months earlier, shot the '1984' spot at Shepperton Studios in England for a reported $370,000.
Q 14In the "1984" ad, the running heroine hurls what at the giant screen showing Big Brother?
A sledgehammer
English athlete Anya Major hurled the sledgehammer into the Big Brother screen; the ad's single national airing came in the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984.
Q 15The original Macintosh went on sale on January 24, 1984 at what price?
$2,495
The Macintosh launched at $2,495, $500 above the planned $1,995 to fund marketing; 70,000 sold by early May 1984, but sales slumped that autumn and weakened Jobs inside Apple.
Q 16Which company was John Sculley running when Jobs asked if he wanted to keep selling 'sugared water'?
Pepsi-Cola
John Sculley was president of Pepsi-Cola when Jobs recruited him in 1983; two years later Sculley won their power struggle and Jobs left, taking five senior employees to start a new company.
Q 17After leaving Apple in 1985, Jobs founded which computer company that Apple later bought?
NeXT
Apple bought NeXT for about $429 million in a deal announced in December 1996, gaining NeXTSTEP, the foundation of Mac OS X, and WebObjects, which ran its online store.
Q 18Jobs paid $10 million in 1986 for which company's computer graphics division, later Pixar?
Lucasfilm
Jobs bought the Lucasfilm Computer Division's graphics group from George Lucas in 1986, paying $5 million for the technology and investing another $5 million; renamed Pixar, it released Toy Story in 1995.
Q 19Which CEO was ousted by Apple's board in July 1997, clearing the way for Jobs to become interim CEO?
Gil Amelio
Gil Amelio was pushed out on July 9, 1997 after about seventeen months as CEO; Jobs announced Microsoft's $150 million investment at Macworld Boston that August and became interim CEO in September.
Q 20Which actor narrated the television version of Apple's "Think different" commercial?
Richard Dreyfuss
Richard Dreyfuss narrated the 'Here's to the crazy ones' script; Jobs recorded his own version but chose Dreyfuss's, and the spot won the 1998 Emmy for Outstanding Commercial.
Q 24Copywriter Vinnie Chieco proposed the name iPod after a prototype reminded him of which film?
2001: A Space Odyssey
Freelance copywriter Vinnie Chieco thought the white prototype resembled an EVA pod from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the line 'Open the pod bay doors, HAL' gave him the name.
Q 25iTunes began life as which Mac MP3 player, which Apple bought in 2000 and renamed?
SoundJam MP
Apple bought SoundJam MP from Casady & Greene in 2000; its developers Jeff Robbin and Bill Kincaid joined Apple, simplified the interface, added CD burning and dropped the skins, shipping iTunes in January 2001.
Q 26How many tracks did the iTunes Music Store offer when it opened on April 28, 2003?
200,000
The iTunes Music Store opened with 200,000 songs at 99 cents each from the five major labels and sold a million tracks in its first week; a Windows version followed in October 2003.
Q 27Where did Steve Jobs unveil the first iPhone on January 9, 2007?
Macworld Expo in San Francisco
Jobs introduced the iPhone at the Macworld Expo keynote in San Francisco's Moscone Center on January 9, 2007, the same speech in which Apple Computer, Inc. dropped 'Computer' from its name.
Q 28Which company already owned the iPhone trademark when Apple announced its phone in 2007?
Cisco
Cisco had held the iPhone trademark since buying Infogear in 2000, and its Linksys unit put the name on VoIP phones in December 2006; a February 2007 settlement let both companies use it.
Q 29What was the internal codename of the effort that produced the first iPhone?
Project Purple
Project Purple began in 2005, with the phone's carrier work done in secret alongside Cingular Wireless, which was rebranded AT&T before the iPhone's June 2007 launch.
Q 30How many applications were available when the App Store opened on July 10, 2008?
About 500
The App Store launched with about 500 apps, a quarter of them free, and passed 10 million downloads in its first weekend; Apple's 30 percent cut fell to 15 percent for small developers in 2020.