You omitted the part that Mr. Gow refused it.
Here is the story how Macintosh got the name, from the Horse's mouth
Jef Raskin said: "“I intentionally changed the spelling,” insists Raskin. “I’m a pretty good speller. Writing is one of the things I do well. The name of the apple is McIntosh. I thought that would lead us to a conflict with McIntosh Laboratory, the hi-fi manufacturer. So I used the spelling Macintosh, figuring that if it conflicted with the overcoat, who cares?”
This "good speller" twisted the fact that overcoat is spelled Mackintosh, not Macintosh. He is no fool, he only tries to hide the fact that Apple DELIBERATELLY used Macintosh name because McIntosh is household name of with the allure of the highest quality, like Rolls Royce, Rolex or Cartier. At that time many affluent people never heard of Apple Computers and thought that McIntosh Laboratory is making one.
And Apple had to pay for this ploy.
According to the article quoted above, "However, in late March 1983, Apple managed to license the rights to the name and in 1986 purchased the trademark outright. Although the terms of these agreements remain confidential to this day, it has been reported that Apple paid $100,000 in cash for the Macintosh name. According to McIntosh’s legal counsel, that’s “substantially off the mark” and the real payoff was “significantly higher.”
Roger Russell, long time McIntosh executive gives more details on his web site:
"McIntosh entered into a license agreement with the Apple Computer Company. The agreement was for 10 years and allowed Apple Computer to use the Macintosh name in connection with computer production. There was a fee paid by Apple to McIntosh at the beginning of the agreement. Although the spelling was not the same, it sounded the same when it was spoken. The following statement appeared on the label on the back of the Macintosh Plus 1Mb computer.
Apple and the Apple logo are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Macintosh is a trademark of McIntosh Laboratory, Inc. and is being used with express permission of its owner".
I am an old Freeper hand and never write things I am not positive about.
He is no fool, he only tries to hide the fact that Apple DELIBERATELLY used Macintosh name because McIntosh is household name of with the allure of the highest quality, like Rolls Royce, Rolex or Cartier. At that time many affluent people never heard of Apple Computers and thought that McIntosh Laboratory is making one.So, you're also a psychic?
You are right that they did pay some royalties. My bad recollection.
My main disagreement with you is your assertion that Apple deliberately chose the name Macintosh to imply a quality relationship with the audio equipment company. That is simply not true. You are inferring from the name similarities something that is not there.
Apple already had an excellent reputation among the public and did not need to attach its products to any other manufacturer, especially a small niche market one. Quite frankly, not that many people were familiar with the name McIntosh when they bought audio equipment. It was priced out of the reach of most people in Apple's target market. It was the high-end niche seller in the audiophile market. It was certainly not a high awareness brand in the computer community. Most people would not make any connection at all with a company that was then selling CD players for $2000 and speakers for up to $36,000. If anything, Apple would not have wanted to associate its new computer with the most expensive audio equipment on the planet, especially after having experienced a PR nightmare with the Lisa's $9,995 price tag that was perceived by the public as being way too pricey (although way under priced compared to other business workstation grade computers with which it was intended to compete that were in the $15 and up range).
(Contrary to myth, the Mac was more than price competitive in its market. Apple priced the original 16bit 128K Mac at $2495, lower than an IBM PC with 2 8.25" floppies, no HD, 128K RAM, and green screen monitor was around $2999 in early 1984. The IBM AT, IBM's first 16 bit PC, was released 7 months after the Mac at $4000 to $6700, depending on configuration.)
Apple succeeded in gaining permission to use "Macintosh" from McIntosh Laboratories in mid 1983, prior to the 1984 release if the Apple Macintosh computer, so there could have been no penalties attached. Just three years later, in 1986, Apple acquired all rights to the name "Macintosh" as a Trademark in computer related products regardless of how it was pronounced, homophone or not, with ML's acquiescence. Apple was never infringing McIntosh Laboratories Trademarks.
Also from Jef Raskin, your horse's mouth:
"I named it for my favorite kind of eatin' apple, the succulent McIntosh (I changed the spelling of the name to avoid potential conflict with McIntosh, the audio equipment manufacturer)."
According to Raskin, Apple also paid Mackintosh Rainwear a licensing fee... which was probably totally unnecessary as there are many non-competing products in differing industries with identical trademarked names. Certainly no one would mistake a computer for a raincoat unless it is someone with a pathology such as "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat."
"Glen Cole asks if my attempt to avoid trademark conflict wiht McIntosh audio equipment by spelling the computer "Macintosh" were successful. He correctly remembers that it was not. Apple even had to pay the raincoat manufacturer for use of the name, I have no idea why. Glen also asks how I feel about the nickname "Mac" for the product. Fine, we used it from the very beginning."
By the way, you are aware that Jef Raskin left Apple in early 1982, at a time when Apple's products were NOT released with the project code name which is what "Macintosh" was, and way before any marketing decisions for the Macintosh would even start to be considered? It was Steve Jobs who decided to retain the working name as the product name.
Before Apple owned the rights to the name Macintosh completely, the total licensing cost to Apple from the various companies that were using some variation of Macintosh or Mac, was under $2 million. In addition to McIntosh Labs and Mackintosh Rainwear, Apple also had to pay a Philadelphia company, Management and Computer Services, Inc., for the use of the plural name "Macs." In the internal dispute between Jobs and Sculley about using the project code name of Macintosh for the final product, CEO John Sculley says:
. . . “Steve (Jobs) prevailed, but it ultimately cost us nearly $2 million in out-of-court settlements.”The other company appears to be Management and Computer Services Inc., a small Philadelphia software company.
In 1985, Apple settled a trademark infringement suit with MACS Inc. for an undisclosed sum, according to a Jan. 24 report from the Associated Press:
“Apple Computer Inc. will pay an undisclosed sum to Management and Computer Services Inc. to settle a trademark-infringement lawsuit, the companies said today. The software company sued Apple for using ‘Mac’ to describe items associated with its Macintosh personal computer. Management and Computer Services uses ‘Macs’ as a trademark.”
None of these were deliberate. It's just the normal course of events in a world of Trademarks and legal entanglements. It is also why most of the other computer makers and drug producers pay big bucks to come up with weird sounding names that can't be related to any other product.
For some strange reason MAC Cosmetics, MACK Trucks, and BigMac, have not sued or been sued by Apple for trademark infringing name usage.
Now, if you want to talk about Apple's use of the name iPhone infringing CISCO's iPhone, you might have a case.