In case you've forgotten, this week was the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Apple Macintosh. It's also the 25th anniversary of the Chiat/Ridley Scott, 1984 TV spot that featured the girl in the red shorts running through a bunch of agency account executives dressed as zombies to defeat Big Brother — supposedly IBM. It aired Jan. 22, 1984, during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII.
Two days later, Jobs, who in those days favored natty suits and bow ties rather than grungy jeans and black polo neck sweaters, strode onto the stage at the Flint Center at De Anza College in Cupertino, recited a few verses from Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin','' then pulled the first Macintosh out of its canvass carrying case.
Jobs inserted a floppy disk, and the small computer began to speak: "Hello, I am Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag! Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I'd like to share with you a maxim I thought of the first time I met an IBM mainframe: Never trust a computer that you can't lift!"
The rest is history... Or not quite. What people forget is that Apple had launched the Lisa computer two years earlier with the exact same features that later made the Mac so popular. With one big difference, it had a price tag, that in today's money was about fifty thousand dollars. You could have bought a used IBM mainframe for less! It quickly died. The rest is history.
George Parker
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