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 01Steve Jobs sold what to fund the first Apple I?
His van
His van, a Volkswagen, was sold to raise working capital, and partner Steve Wozniak sold his programmable calculator, so the company began on the proceeds of two second-hand sales.
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, pulled out within two weeks 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, turned his computer down five times; he resigned only when investor Mike Markkula asked him to commit to Apple full time.
Q 06Which pioneering 1979 spreadsheet made businesses buy the Apple II just to run it?
VisiCalc
VisiCalc came to Dan Bricklin as a daydream in a Harvard Business School classroom; written with Bob Frankston, it turned the Apple II from a hobbyist's machine into a business tool.
Q 07Apple's first logo, drawn by its short-lived third co-founder, pictured whom?
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton sits under an apple tree in the pen-and-ink logo of 1976, with a line of poetry running round the border; the rainbow bitten-apple mark replaced it the next year.
Q 08The designer of Apple's bitten-apple logo says the bite stops the fruit being mistaken for what?
A cherry
A cherry: Rob Janoff, who drew the logo in 1977, says he added the bite for scale, so that even a tiny apple silhouette could not be read as 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's December 1980 stock market debut was the biggest US share offering since which carmaker's in 1956?
Ford
Ford's 1956 flotation was the benchmark: Apple sold 4.6 million shares at $22 each on December 12, 1980, raising about $100 million and making some 300 people 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 started the Macintosh project in 1979 and named it after his favourite apple; when he went on leave in 1981, managers tried to rename it 'Bicycle', but the team objected.
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
Sydney's Bondi Beach gave the blue-green shade its name, Bondi Blue; the machine also dropped the floppy drive in favour of USB ports and a CD-ROM.
Q 22What name did Jobs prefer for the iMac before the ad agency talked him out of it?
MacMan
MacMan was the name Jobs favoured; Ken Segall of the ad agency pitched 'iMac' twice before Jobs, who hated it at first, came round.
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 fitted because Apple's Jon Rubinstein had spotted a tiny 1.8-inch Toshiba hard drive that Toshiba itself had no clear use for; the iPod reached shops within the year.
Ridley Scott, hired for the dystopian look of Blade Runner, cast real British skinheads as the marching drones; Apple's board hated the finished ad and wanted its airtime sold.
Q 14In the "1984" ad, the running heroine hurls what at the giant screen showing Big Brother?
A sledgehammer
A sledgehammer: athlete Anya Major won the part because she could spin and release the heavy hammer cleanly, which most of the models at the casting could not.
Q 15John Sculley raised the first Macintosh's launch price mainly to pay for what?
Marketing
Marketing was the aim: Sculley pushed the launch price up to $2,495 to pay for costly advertising campaigns, and the higher price was later blamed for holding back the Mac's sales.
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
NeXT cost Apple more than $400 million in a deal announced in December 1996; its software became the foundation of Mac OS X, and the purchase brought Jobs back to the company.
Q 18In 1986 Jobs bought which company's computer graphics division, the business that became Pixar?
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm sold the division to Jobs in 1986; the new Pixar began not as a film studio but by selling a graphics computer, and it gave up its hardware business in 1990.
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 in July 1997 after about seventeen months as CEO; that August Jobs announced a $150 million investment from long-time rival Microsoft, and he 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 25Which Apple app began as SoundJam MP, a Mac MP3 player that Apple bought in 2000 and renamed?
iTunes
iTunes arrived in January 2001, months after Apple bought SoundJam MP; its developers joined Apple, stripped out the skins, simplified the interface and added CD burning.
Q 26Which band kept its songs off Apple's music store until November 2010?
The Beatles
The Beatles reached Apple's store on November 16, 2010, after years of trademark fights between their company, Apple Corps, and the computer maker over who could use the name in music.
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 was built in a secretive partnership with Cingular Wireless, which gave Apple a free hand over the design and was itself rebranded AT&T before the June 2007 launch.
Q 30How many applications were available when the App Store opened on July 10, 2008?
About 500
About 500 apps were on offer at launch, a quarter of them free, and downloads passed 10 million in the first weekend; Apple cut its 30 percent commission to 15 percent for small developers from 2021.