Btw. when Apple started to market Macintosh, they had to pay royalty to McIntosh Laboratory to avoid litigation (different spelling but sounds the same.)
The Apple's idea of using the name Macintosh was an attempt to benefit from the McIntosh fame of building highest quality products.
Legal, but not very ethical.
Myth. Apple already had a reputation built on 8 years of building high quality products when the Macintosh was released. It was named Macintosh after the Macintosh variety of Apple.
By the way, there is some element of truth in the above statement... but Apple did not pay any royalties to McIntosh Laboratory to use the name for their computer. McIntosh relinquished the homophonic TradMarked name for use in computer products in 1982 at the request of Steve Jobs prior to the 1984 introduction of the Mac.
"November 14, 1982: Steve Jobs writes a letter requesting McIntosh Laboratory (www.mcintoshlabs.com) provide Apple a worldwide release for the name Macintosh for use in the computer industry. Jef Raskin's project had been code-named Macintosh since its inception in 1979, but when Apple attempted to trademark the name in 1982, the request was denied because it phonetically infringed on the trademark already owned by the high-end audio equipment manufacturer of Binghamton, New York. In his letter to Gordon Gow, president of McIntosh Labs, Mr. Jobs writes, "We have become very attached to the name Macintosh. Much like one's own child, our product has developed a very definite personality."">
Wrong - one has to emulate the open firmware of Apple to get the OS to install. This cannot be done through just simply matching components.
Apple using the "Macintosh" name to play off of McIntosh's reputation? Gee, and all this time, I thought Macintosh was a type of apple... stupid me.