August 27, 1999: Apple replaces its striped, multicolored logo used since 1977 with a new single-color version.
The replacement of the iconic logo shocks many longtime Apple fans. However, it is part of a sustained, company-wide overhaul by Steve Jobs. The makeover includes new products, the “Think Different” ad campaign and, eventually, the removal of the word “Computer” from the company’s name.
Given that it’s currently the world’s most valuable brand, few people would suggest that Apple should give up its name in favor of something a bit more, well, geeky.
But that wasn’t the case when the company launched, as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak recently revealed.
Had he lived, today would have marked the 60th birthday of Steve Jobs, who was born February 24, 1955.
While most of the tributes to Jobs will no doubt highlight later events in his life — the unveiling of the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone or the iPad — I instead wanted to mark the occasion with one of the lesser-known Jobs videos: his first television interview, recorded around the time the Apple II was making waves.
If you never thought you’d see the day when Jobs would geek out over seeing himself on a television screen, check out the video after the jump.
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.
