For the first time in several years, Apple looks poised to refresh its famous logo. One of the world"s most recognizable corporate symbols -- the Apple logo -- is about to get a silvery chrome finish. The logo"s shape remains unchanged -- an apple with a bite taken out of the right side. The effect is a lot like the chrome female robots of Hajime Sorayama. At least, that"s the best guess of Apple watchers, who spotted the new logo in the latest test version of Apple"s OS X operating system. It is not clear whether Apple will adopt the new silver logo for product design, as well as marketing and packaging, or simply restrict it to the new software.
Whatever Apple decides to do, the new logo got a hearty endorsement from Rob Janoff, the graphic designer who created Apple"s original, rainbow-striped logo. "It freshens it up," Janoff said of the new color scheme. "It"s great to take an image and keep revising it and making it better. I"m totally into it." Janoff acknowledged an outcry might be heard from Apple purists. He noted there were complaints in 1998 when Apple"s CEO Steve Jobs ordered Janoff"s rainbow-striped logo to be replaced with a monochrome version on the PowerBook G3, the first Mac to get the new logo. "I"d rather they updated it than dumped it," he said. Janoff said when he first presented the Apple logo to Steve Jobs in 1976, he showed a range of alternative monochrome designs. One of them was metallic silver and bore a striking resemblance to the new chrome logo.