Former Apple employee Joe Moreno wrote a post on his blog about the upside down Apple logo seen on old PowerBooks. The upside-down logo wasn’t too bad when Apple was using its rainbow Apple, which it tended to keep its emblems small and understated, but became more ridiculous when Cupertino introduced its big, glossy, white Apple logo with the PowerBook G3.

At first it wasn't a terribly offensive design choice.

And... ugh. What were they thinking.

Joe Moreno asked Apple’s internal system Can We Talk?: “Why is the Apple logo upside down on laptops when the lid is open?” The Apple Design Group responded that this was for the user’s benefit. On a closed PowerBook G3 and earlier, the Apple is rightside up to whoever’s opening it and upside down from the back. The Design team was apparently concerned that Apple users would get confused and attempt to open their PowerBooks from the wrong end. (Maybe that’s the real reason for all those cracked hinges…)

Joe Moreno attributes the upside down Apple to Steve Jobs’ obsession with “providing the best possible user experience” and that he “believed that it was more important to satisfy the user than the onlooker.” And then speculates that Jobs changed his mind.

All because Steve Jobs flipped the Apple logo?

Of course, Joe Moreno makes one small error in his blog: Steve Jobs didn’t work at Apple when the PowerBook was introduced. Even the Powerbook G3 was introduced in 1997, a year before Apple acquired NeXT with Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was behind the redesigned PowerBook series which debuted in 2001 with the PowerBook G4. The G4 resembles modern MacBooks with its minimalist metal design and an upright Apple logo.

Do you miss the upside down Apple logo? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.