These days, Apple is known for its impeccable design sensibilities. Less than 20 years ago, though, that wasn’t the case. Case in point? These awesomely retro, fluorescently hideous in-store demos made to help sell the Macintosh in 1997.
Over at Macworld, Christopher Phin has the scoop on this curious slice of Apple history:
What you’re seeing is the main menu of the Consumer In-Store Demo CD-ROM, made by a company called 25ème Heure for Apple Computer Europe, designed to let you explore all the amazing things you could do with a Mac. And it is a thing of beauty—so long as you define “beauty” as “something that reeks of the ’90s but that you have a sneaking love for because it’s so evocative of a particular time in your life”,
The screenshots in the gallery are just ghastly. Despite the fact that this CD-ROM was produced the year Steve Jobs returned to Apple, his design-centric approach was clearly not being felt yet, which is why you get typographic nightmares like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNKC0xKugNY
Or check out the insane opening loop of the CD-ROM, which is pretty much everything Saved by the Bell’s Zach Taylor could ever possibly want in a two-minute video clip:
https://youtu.be/pOpCTEKSZDQ
Aren’t you glad Steve Jobs came back to Apple? Check out more clips from this footnote in Apple history at Macworld.
