I was reading the Steve Jobs biography and thought it was interesting that the choice in the name "apple" came from him wanting something that came before Atari in the yellow pages, and also that he had spent time at a Hippie apple orchard in Oregon.

I was reading a Jack Tramiel biography recently, and read that early on the two Steve's sought to sell Apple to Commodore for under a million dollars.

Not quite. Rice-something has been used for goods coming from East Asia - depending on the quality of the goods in both derogatory and non derogatory manner. Like rice rockets - the japanese ultra high performance sport bikes for example