One of Apple's biggest announcements earlier this week was Apple Pay, a new system that allows owners of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus to pay for stuff in the real world by holding their phones up to checkout readers (it uses NFC technology). Is Apple Pay as revolutionary as it seems? We won't know for a while, obviously. What we do know right now, thanks to a ridiculous anecdote in The New York Times, is that executives at the bank JP Morgan Chase, one of Apple's biggest initial partners in Apple Pay, were so intent on keeping the new system a secret, they came up with a kind of prop-based sign language for revealing it, using a real apple. You know, the fruit that grows on trees. As the Times explains:

JPMorgan Chase’s chief financial officer, Marianne Lake, took the stage at a financial conference on Tuesday under strict orders not to mention her company’s involvement in Apple’s new payment system. But when Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, at a news conference in California at the same time, finally brought up Apple Pay, one of Ms. Lake’s deputies in New York took a green apple out of her bag and put it on a table on the stage, signaling that Ms. Lake was free to discuss the service. "So we are very excited about Apple Pay, and Chase customers will be able to participate in that," Ms. Lake said, noting the appearance of the apple with a nod of her head.

At least it wasn't a Red Delicious.