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Average global dwellers know, eat, and talk about the apple everyday in one way or another. In memory of Steve Jobs (1955-2011), the late technology genius and inventor of the century, people talk more about Apple, together with its iPhone 4S (converted into ``for Steve” by mourners).
It would be amusing to trace the history of the apple and the changing trends of its practical application to human livelihood. The temperate-region fruit is thought to be originally from southwestern Asia and was transplanted to other continents.
Apples are red, yellow, russet, and sometimes striped in color. They are eaten plain, cooked, dried, or juiced.
Apples often appear in myth and folklore of ancient civilization. They have also been chosen for characters, fairy tales, symbols or logos in diverse realms of artificial establishments in modern times.
Alexander the Great is credited with finding dwarfed apples in Kazakhstan in Asia in 328 B.C. Those he brought to Macedonia might have been the forefathers of dwarfing root stocks.
The fruit was considered, in ancient Greece, to be sacred to Aphrodite. Throwing an apple at someone was to symbolically declare one’s love. Catching it was likewise showing one’s acceptance of that love. Virtually, one would say ``she’s the apple of my eye” instead of ``she’s the strawberry of my eye,” even at present times.
In the Garden of Eden, the apple was a symbol of knowledge, immortality, temptation, the fall of man into sin and sin itself. It was an apple, the forbidden fruit that Eve coaxed Adam to share with her, leaving the biblical story of the origin of human beings.
The legend of William Tell in a Swss town shooting an apple off his son’s head with his crossbow in the 14th century is well known.
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), Amsterdam’s Jewish philosopher said; ``Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”
When Sir Isaac Newton (1642~1727) was sitting beneath a tree contemplating the mysterious universe, an apple hit him on his head. In a flash, he thought of the law of universal gravitation.
A Welsh proverb says that ``An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”
Apples contain low amounts of vitamin C, but are a rich source of antioxidant compounds.
Aliens visiting New York City allegedly became confused whether the city belongs to an apple collecting-distributing center. They have seen the Big Apple symbols and partly-eaten apple emblems of Apple Inc. everywhere.
Apple is one of the most established and healthy IT cultural brands in the world. The biggest threat to Apple is the fierce competition in the technology markets for new Asteroid products unveiled by Tim Cook, with which Samsung, LG and Hynix remain business rivals.
The fruit of the apple tree is one of the most widely cultivated, most important. Korea celebrated the 10th anniversary of Korea’s Apple Day on Oct. 24 (another phonetic connotation denoting bilateral apology).
Nobody knows to what extent and to what degree the apple will enrich the human life for health and well-being hereafter. We can never undervalue its unknown effects and influence.
The writer is an outside director of KunWha Pharmaceutical in Seoul. He can be reached at kexim2@unitel.co.kr.
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