Rarely-seen 1983 commercial for original Mac was abandoned for being "too self-congratulatory"

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 72
    drblankdrblank Posts: 3,385member


    It actually kind of reminds me of an intro to a 30 Minute infomercial.

  • Reply 22 of 72
    charlitunacharlituna Posts: 7,217member
    sully77 wrote: »
    How ironic. Sounds a lot like those product videos with various apple executives and engineers that apple now releases anytime there's a launch. Doesn't seem so self congratulatory now?

    Different world, different rules

    And those videos are for the keynote and website. They aren't created to be used as public commercial as this video was.
  • Reply 23 of 72
    pendergastpendergast Posts: 1,358member
    I think all it needs is a white background.
  • Reply 24 of 72

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by drblank View Post


    I want a NEW one.  Mine is now almost 8 years old....



    Me too.  My Fat Mac upgraded to a Mac plus is 26 years old and sitting in the basement...  Wait, I already got MBA last month...  How time changed.

  • Reply 25 of 72

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by ifij775 View Post



    I want one


     


    You will be disappointed once you try to install mountain lion.

  • Reply 26 of 72
    ryukryuk Posts: 29member
    I guessing the guys and gals @ AI was saving this for a day like this ( when they have nothing to post) who cares really
  • Reply 27 of 72
    macrulezmacrulez Posts: 2,455member


    deleted

  • Reply 28 of 72


    Originally Posted by Ryuk View Post

    …who cares really


     


    Still not sure what this site's about, are you?

  • Reply 29 of 72
    maestro64maestro64 Posts: 5,043member


    I feel bad for George Crow since he obviously designed the Analog board for the original Mac. It had a such high failure rate they redesign the board so many times it was at revision P before they finally fix the diode on the video flyback circuit from blowing up. Which was in the Mac Se model years later. 


     


    He obviously failed at making a lower cost product that just worked.

  • Reply 30 of 72

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post



    A 60-second television spot created in the months leading up to the early 1984 launch of Apple's original Macintosh was shelved and never aired publicly due to concerns that it would be seen as "too self-congratulatory."


     





    While I'm very glad the "1984" commercial came out first when it did, IMHO I think this would have made a great follow-up commercial. Certainly is better than the "Lemmings" disaster. As for being too self-congratulatory, I think a good dose of chutzpah is needed when introducing a radically new product. 


     


     



    "I can't really describe it to you in words, but if I could get you to sit down in front of it and play with it, you won't let go of it," 






    How can I possibly criticize this? This is exactly how I was introduced to my first Mac - an original 128k model.

  • Reply 31 of 72

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by digitalclips View Post





    I have several, make me an offer /.. true .. but kidding


    Thought the same thing - I don't have my 128k (that I made into 512k) but do have my Plus and an SE 30 as well as several others I kept along the way. Hard to believe my first Mac 128K was $2499 + $499 for ImageWriter and $499 again for an external 400K drive (the coffee grinder) when it became available a couple months later. The only software I had for the longest was MacPaint/MacWrite which it  came with and MS Multiplan and Chart which I purchased separately while I waited for a very long time with others for Thinks PASCAL for the Mac. I still did incredible stuff with it at the time and could blow people out of their socks with the Paint/Write combo and of course Multiplan (VisiCalc or SuperCalc were the predominate spreadsheets of the time).

  • Reply 32 of 72

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Rabbit_Coach View Post


     


    You will be disappointed once you try to install mountain lion.



    LMAO!

  • Reply 33 of 72
    mac_128mac_128 Posts: 3,454member
    maestro64 wrote: »
    I feel bad for George Crow ...
    Exactly what I was thinking ...

    Pretty ironic he would be the one to say this, even though it was the directive for the entire group.

    I don't blame him of course ... It was the corporate guys, namely Sculley who were ultimately responsible for the Macimtosh not being the affordable "Volkswagen" of personal computers. Obviously his choice to maximize profit ultimately led to the decisions to use the absolute minimum components specified by the engineers. The fact that the analogue board has two sets of holes to accommodate a larger more robust flyback transformer than the smaller, notoriously unreliable one that originally shipped, says it all about the internal battles between management and the engineers ...

    That said, it would seem Steve Jobs learned well from Sculley and continued to keep the profit margins of his products high, though it seems not at the expense of the quality the second time around. The smart business move of course this time around was leveraging volume over quality. Despite his efforts to portray the contrary, I'm pretty sure Jobs liked having a lot of money, otherwise he could have easily charged less for Apple products and been more competitive. The fact Apple was sitting on such a huge pile of capital that it took their shareholders ire to provoke a dividend payout speaks volumes about how inflated their profit margins were. It would be a different matter if Apple was actually investing that money in R&D, or buying new technologies, but they weren't. They just sat on it year after year watching it get exponentially bigger at the expense of the consumer.
  • Reply 34 of 72
    You will be disappointed once you try to install mountain lion.

    LMAO!

    Just turn it on and ML will download and install automatically from the Mac App Store -- over WiFi.... It's "magical"!

    ...the entire OS on a 400K micro floppy... running in 128K RAM... with apps in there too!
  • Reply 35 of 72
    gustavgustav Posts: 827member


    They should have put them on a white background.

  • Reply 36 of 72
    malaxmalax Posts: 1,598member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Gazoobee View Post


     


    I don't know how you can look at a inspirational, historical gem like that and only thing all these pissy thoughts.  Glass half empty much?  



     


    Because I've seen much better inspirational stuff from the same time period about the same product.  Yes, it's interesting as a "hey look it's the guys actually involved in the creation" glimpse into history.  I was just reacting to headline of the article saying "was shelved and never aired publicly due to concerns that it would be seen as "too self-congratulatory."  No, it was shelved because it was a bad ad.  I actually don't think it was too self-congratulatory, especially the line about having to try it to understand it.  That's not "gloating" at all.


     


    An analogous ad today would feature some young Facebook developers rambling about how they coded the newest way to poke someone.  That's just rarely the right way to advertise a product.

  • Reply 37 of 72
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    Thought the same thing - I don't have my 128k (that I made into 512k) but do have my Plus and an SE 30 as well as several others I kept along the way. Hard to believe my first Mac 128K was $2499 + $499 for ImageWriter and $499 again for an external 400K drive (the coffee grinder) when it became available a couple months later. The only software I had for the longest was MacPaint/MacWrite which it  came with and MS Multiplan and Chart which I purchased separately while I waited for a very long time with others for Thinks PASCAL for the Mac. I still did incredible stuff with it at the time and could blow people out of their socks with the Paint/Write combo and of course Multiplan (VisiCalc or SuperCalc were the predominate spreadsheets of the time).

    Awesome. I maybe one of the few but I also loved my Apple /// with VisiCalc.
  • Reply 38 of 72
    welshdogwelshdog Posts: 1,897member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Mac_128 View Post



    The fact Apple was sitting on such a huge pile of capital that it took their shareholders ire to provoke a dividend payout speaks volumes about how inflated their profit margins were. It would be a different matter if Apple was actually investing that money in R&D, or buying new technologies, but they weren't. They just sat on it year after year watching it get exponentially bigger at the expense of the consumer.


    The amount of cash Apple with spend in the dividend is trivial.  It was seen as a cheap way to placate shareholders without depleting the cash pile by any significant measure.

  • Reply 39 of 72
    ryukryuk Posts: 29member
    It's a comerical from 1980 once again it's point less (tall ski) mybye u have no idea what this site is about
  • Reply 40 of 72


    Originally Posted by Ryuk View Post

    It's a comerical from 1980 


     


    No… it's an internal video in much the same vein as Apple's now released product videos for newly designed hardware.






    once again it's point less



     


    Except it isn't, as it highlights and gives insight into various aspects of the hardware in question, just like its modern equivalent.


     




    mybye u have no idea what this site is about



     


    I ask again, why do you think this site is here? What do you think our purpose is? This is an honest question, because I genuinely believe you do not know.

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