During the 1984 Super Bowl, a young company that had been founded less than a decade earlier in a garage in Los Altos, California, spent $1.5 million to its first significant commercial for a new, groundbreaking product — the Macintosh, the first personal computer. The company was Apple, and the advertisement was a defining moment that distinguished Apple as a company willing to go against the grain and rescue humanity from conformity.
The ad had been inspired by George Orwell’s 1984 and featured a woman escaping police pursuit, running through a movie theater. She runs to the front of the theater and throws a hammer through a screen portraying a man’s face meant to represent Big Brother. As the camera pans to the audience, fully in shock from the movie screen’s explosion, the commercial concludes with black text that reads: “On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”
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