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.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
4 responses to “This 1997 Apple CD-ROM is the most ’90s thing you can possibly imagine”
Looks like the Main Title Sequence was made before 1997; it includes images of Windows 3.1
Between 1990 and 1999, I remember them being particularly 1990’s-centric. It was almost embarrassing.
This is pretty much in line with design trends at the time. In another 20 years, we will be looking at “flat design” and poking fun. Saying “look how far we have come” or “thank goodness [whomever] came along and showed us the way”
It’s like a digital TrapperKepper design. I remember as a kid thinking it looked futuristicly dated. Love it. Hahahaha