An unexpected parallel between religious images and Apple symbols has been drawn by a Russian Orthodox Church bishop. The cleric suspects the app icons owe much of their success to those of the church, long used as “a window to a different world.”

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The metropolitan Hilarion had a chance to witness the computer industry revolutionizing “virtually from the very beginning,” he said in a TV interview. And while the first computers were dealing exclusively with text, Apple products went further. “Instead of a text, they had what they called an ‘icon’ – an image, each leading somewhere,” the bishop went on.

“I think the creators of the [Apple] system had used what the church had known for centuries for a reason,” Hilarion said. “Those who worship have icons in their homes and pray with them, since each in a way represents a window to another world,” he said, adding that thanks are due to this fact for Apple’s popularity.

While the bishop admitted it makes no difference where prayers are read from, be it a book or a mobile phone, he said he is not particularly fond of priests holding their Apple devices in front of the altar. “It looks as if [a priest] is checking his email instead of reading a prayer.”