If you love Woz (and who doesn’t?) we’ve got an extra special Friday treat for you.
Vince Patton emailed us, linking us to an incredible YouTube account filled with vintage videos of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak talking to the Denver Apple Pi computer club back in 1984, in which Woz talks about being put on probation for computer abuse, hacking a video-on-demand box for free movies at a hotel, and how Steve Jobs coerced him to quit his cushy job at HP to make a go for Apple.
Malkovich has Siri telling jokes, but Apple's fans are far from amused.
Apple has produced some of the most memorable adverts in history. Its “1984’ commercial for the original Macintosh is still talked about today, and we can all remember the “Mac vs. PC” commercials, and the dancing silhouettes that were used to promote the iPod. However, it hasn’t quite been the same story in recent years.
Despite promoting incredibly popular products like the iPhone and the iPad, Apple’s most recent commercials have been far from unforgettable. In fact, the CEO of one ad-tracking firm has revealed that Apple is being mocked for its latest Siri commercials, which employ celebrities to sell a feature that rarely works in real life.
American television has been infested with ridiculous singing shows – American Idol, The Voice, X Factor, Sing Off, and now Duets. It’s become too much. Why won’t everyone just enjoy watching Walter White run his meth empire instead? I dunno, but the newest singing show, Duets, is looking to set themselves apart from other shows by ripping off Apple’s classic ’1984’ commercial in order to get people to plop down and listen to Kelly Clarkson screech for two hours. Sounds like a great marketing plan.
Oh, and they got Jennifer Nettles to join the show too. I guess Toni Basil wasn’t available.
Steve Jobs dressed as FDR tries to rally the troops against IBM.
Steve Jobs dressing up as Franklin Delano Roosevelt to rally Apple’s troops is one of the weirdest bits of ephemera about Apple history.
The internal video — which followed Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl commercial and was meant to motivate Apple’s international sales force — features Jobs doing a bizarre caricature of the beloved four-term president that borrowed just as much from FDR’s real mannerisms as it did from Burgess Meredith’s interpretation of the Penguin.
After the success of their 1984 Super Bowl commercial, Apple created a broad-cast quality production titled “1944’ that was designed to motivate Apple’s international sales force during a 1984 company meeting in Hawaii. Apple supposedly spent $50,000 on the production that used a mix of professional actors alongside prominent Apple figures. The 9-minute commericial uses a World War II theme to focus on the battle between Apple and IBM, with El Jobso taking up the mantle of FDR. The entire video is pretty bizarre and terribly corny, but definitely worth watching.
Apple’s infamous 1984 advertising campaign for the original Macintosh needs little introduction from myself. The one-minute clip, which was inspired by George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four novel and depicts IBM users as mindless followers, was a huge success. So much so that the marketing guru behind it, Regis McKenna, believes it was more successful than the Macintosh itself.
Marking the 27th anniversary, Hayden describes the utterly chaotic process behind the making of what’s been called “the best TV commercial ever.” Everyone hated it, and no one wanted it to run except Steve Wozniak, who offered to pay half the costs himself.
The first version of the spot was more Jetsons than Metropolis. The intention was to remove people’s fears of technology at a time when owning your own computer made about as much sense as owning your own cruise missile. We wanted to democratize technology, telling people that the power was now literally in their hands.
Back in 1984, Apple introduced the Mac with its famous 1984 Superbowl ad. Now Motorola is invoking some of the same ideas to promote its Xoom tablet, but this time, Apple is Big Brother.
Motorola’s new Superbowl Ad , “Goodbye 1984,” says that 2011 looks a lot like 1984:
One authority. One design. One way to work.
It’s time for more choices. It’s time to explore. It’s time to live a free life.
The ad is pretty bare-bones, and it’s not clear whether it will run during the Superbowl or is just a teaser or a trial balloon.
Funny how often Apple is compared to Big Brother these days. Over the weekend, The New York Times invoked Microsoft in its heyday with its market-crushing “platform” — a position Apple finds itself in now, says the Times.
Here’s Motorola’s ad below, and Apple’s original 1984, just for comparison purposes.
![Steve Job Cosplays FDR In This Bizarre WWII-Style Apple Ad [Video]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/SteveFDR.jpg "SteveFDR")
