Michael Hainsworth

The way you use a computer today is the direct result of something that happened 25 years ago today. And we clear up a misconception about a famous Apple ad (video included).

Macintosh 128K

I’ve always said that I was never more productive than when I was using my first Macintosh. I used to to create fancy assignments for College and swear it had a lot to do with the high marks I received.

The world was introduced to the Macintosh with a very unique advertisement, 1984, that promised to smash the IBM/Microsoft dominance in the personal computer industry at the time. It never happened, but Microsoft’s dominance with Windows today is the direct result of Apple’s forward thinking on interfaces.  The editor in chief of MacWorld UK, Mark Hattersley points out the Mac changed everything:

It was a hugely popular machine. It took desktop computing away from IBM and back to Apple for a good number of years,. It brought the notion of the desktop graphical interface to the mass market.

It’s been said that the award winning ad by Chiat-Day itself aired only once during the Superbowl, but that’s not true: it aired a month earlier at 1AM on a small town television station in Idaho so it could qualify for a Clio award — and it won. (Video after jump)

When director Ridley Scott held casting calls for the female role, the sledgehammer was too unwieldy for the actresses who showed up. One almost hit a passerby with it during a screen test in a park. Discus thrower Anya Major was discovered working out at a gym and got the gig.

While Apple gets the credit for creating the interface we use today, the true source of inspiration came from Xerox.

Raskin finally left the Macintosh project in 1981 over a personality conflict with Jobs, and the final Macintosh design is said to be closer to Jobs’ ideas than Raskin’s.[3] After hearing of the pioneering GUI technology being developed at Xerox PARC, Jobs had negotiated a visit to see the Xerox Alto computer and Smalltalk development tools in exchange for Apple stock options. The Lisa and Macintosh user interfaces were partially influenced by technology seen at Xerox PARC and were combined with the Macintosh group’s own ideas. - Wikipedia.org