25th anniversary video: Steve Jobs unveils the Mac
The famous Ridley Scott "Big Brother" commercial — shown once on Super Bowl Sunday, Jan. 22, 1984 — was only a teaser.
The Mac's real 25th birthday dates from Jan. 24, when the machine went on sale and a dapper-looking Steve Jobs — dressed in double-breasted blazer and green bow tie — unveiled it at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts near Apple (AAPL) headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.
You're likely see clips from the Super Bowl ad more than once this weekend. (It's pasted in full below the fold.)
But my favorite video from the launch of the Macintosh is the one recorded 25 years ago at the Flint Center by Scott Knaster, restored and digitized by TextLab, and available today on YouTube.
It's a lovely period piece, with plenty of cheesy Jobsian stagecraft and a crowd that goes nonlinear over features we now take for so much for granted, the effect is unintentionally comical.
The Flint Center video:
Below the fold: The Ridley Scott commercial.
See also:
He's still the same guy. So obviously the same guy who was visibly proud to pull an ipod from the change pocket of his jeans.
Perhaps forgotten was the (major) public showing of the Mac a week or so later in DC to a standing room only crowd of Apple Pi members and others, whose cheering was loud and long when they saw the first Mac graphics demo projected on the big screen. We all knew that we'd seen the door open to a different world than the one we knew…
Yes – WOW
Great to see these – never seen the flint before.
When younger people watch the flint demo, they should try to think of what came before (and continued for many year in DOS) – the command line interpreter.
If you have a Mac – get a shell guide and open the Terminal and try to look at your file system.
If you have MS system – I imagine you can still open a DOS wind if you want to.
So for those who have never seen this type of interface, give it a try. You will see how Mac really changed the world. (Yes, Xerox PARC invented it – but Apple DID it.)
The enthusiastic response is comical only for those with no idea of the state of the art in January 1984. For someone like me, who was using an Apple ][+ at the time, this stuff was pants-wetting revolutionary.
Clarification on the music during the unveiling: It's the theme from the movie Chariots of Fire (a big hit in the early 80's), not from Sagan's Cosmos.
History in the making! A really touching sight when you consider all that has happened after that moment – a big "get well" to Steve Jobs who has had integrity, courage, cunning and humor enough to bring us from that moment and to AppStore today. A fantastic and unparalleled achievement!
Wow, what a wonderful bit of nostalgia. A youthful Steve with a full shock of hair and a fashionista bow tie, while Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" theme sparkles in the background. Sniff.
The 1984 Ad was shown twice, the first was late night, somewhere in Idaho to be eligible for some kind of award.
Otherwise, Happy Birthday Macintosh…
25 years old and just beginning life!
"dressed in black tails and green bow tie"
Double-breasted blazer. Not tails.
ex ped: Thanks. Shows how little I know about such matters. Fixed.
Albany's Anonymous is right. The music is not from Sagan's "Cosmos" but from "Chariots of Fire," though both are haunting. Actually there seems to have been no great love between Carl and Steve since Sagan once threatened to sue Apple over a copyright issue.