The tone of this advert was not that different to the big government advertising campaigns of the era, whether they be warnings about AIDS, drink driving, not locking up your house or buying shares in a once government owned utility.
When viewed in that context it is not that out of the ordinary, and it was probably put together by the same fear-mongering creatives that worked on the government campaigns.
I was wondering what the Mapple Office product was, wondering if it meant Word was out on a Mac, but no, they meant the fileserver plus printer. Wasn't it Canon that actually made the printer?
The internals at least, the original Laserwriter used the same Canon LBP-CX print engine as the original HP LaserJet. Both had unique control hardware / software, and somewhat different cases.
Who has forgotten about this?? It's probably in the top three of all-time most memorable Super Bowl commercials. Not a fan of this luring/phishy title..
I can't imagine what it feels like to witness first row a whole stadium being dead silent by an ad that you designed ( or at least were involved with). Even for someone like steve jobs, that must have been really painfull.
Ha! I saw this one linked on Kotaku the other day and thought it was awesome. Part of me wishes we had spots like this in the USA, and the other part of me is happy we're not all scarred for life....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STHpMUYeznQ
Actually Apple's advertisers, Chiat/Day, pushed them into running "Lemmings": neither Jobs nor Sculley was particularly happy with it. And to be fair, when Chiat/Day made "1984" Jobs had loved it but the rest of the Apple board hadn't liked it and had wanted to cancel it. (Source: Isaacson's /Steve Jobs/.) Another example of what Nigel Tufnell observed about cleverness...
Criticizing a commercial from 1985 as being representative of anything Apple is doing today is a little much. Sure it sucked but it was memorably sucky. How many squeeze the charm in ads are still talked about?
Well if an ad from 1985 is not representative of today's Apple, then people should also stop praising the 1984 ad, since that is also not representative.
When the announces announces "The Macintosh Office", the implication at first seems to be that the people buying the Macintosh Office are the lemmings jumping off a cliff.
Very open indeed. The Technical Reference Manual for the PC actually included circuit diagrams and the source code for the BIOS. Here's the version from the PC/XT (warning: huge PDF file):
Easily one of my favorites. Comments about it are painfully predictable and get split into two basic camps. People try and read all types of bullshit about current Apple into it, and those who make the very simplistic underdogs/countercultrualists-turned-authoritarians observation.
However, for those who simply take it for what it is, it's genuinely creepy which is so unusual for advertising. Strange creepy you get every so often, but scary/dark creepy is pretty rare in advertising. With the obvious exception of scared straight PSAs and political ads. Rarely does a business trying to simply sell you a product take such a freaky approach.
Sorry, I'll let you return to your glib observations and poorly thought out conclusions about Apple users, "Apple culture" and whatnot.
I don't understand all the irony people keep pointing too. The point as I understand it is that people were miserable using the business products of that day.
Nowadays you could make an argument that people are lemmings for using Apple products just for the sake of them being Apple products, but judging from both anecdotes and high customer satisfaction ratings, I highly doubt the majority of Apple product users are miserable with their iPhones etc.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 113 ms ] threadWhen viewed in that context it is not that out of the ordinary, and it was probably put together by the same fear-mongering creatives that worked on the government campaigns.
I was wondering what the Mapple Office product was, wondering if it meant Word was out on a Mac, but no, they meant the fileserver plus printer. Wasn't it Canon that actually made the printer?
The internals at least, the original Laserwriter used the same Canon LBP-CX print engine as the original HP LaserJet. Both had unique control hardware / software, and somewhat different cases.
Quite a lot of printers seem to share the same Canon guts: http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/reference/pcr/engine/1311
(yes this is sarcastic).
The Apple ad, on the other hand, is pure fantasy, but uncomfortably creepy.
CC-BY-SA if you want to reuse.
Terrible messaging all around.
http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/
That would be enough to stop me from buying one. I have an X60 already (and found the schematics online), maybe it wouldn't be too hard to fix.
http://www.retroarchive.org/dos/docs/ibm5160techref.pdf
However, for those who simply take it for what it is, it's genuinely creepy which is so unusual for advertising. Strange creepy you get every so often, but scary/dark creepy is pretty rare in advertising. With the obvious exception of scared straight PSAs and political ads. Rarely does a business trying to simply sell you a product take such a freaky approach.
Sorry, I'll let you return to your glib observations and poorly thought out conclusions about Apple users, "Apple culture" and whatnot.
Nowadays you could make an argument that people are lemmings for using Apple products just for the sake of them being Apple products, but judging from both anecdotes and high customer satisfaction ratings, I highly doubt the majority of Apple product users are miserable with their iPhones etc.