Apple's 1984 Internal Inspirational Video with Steve Jobs as Franklin Roosevelt
Network World shares a rather unique internal Apple video from 1984 intended to inspire Apple employees as the Macintosh sought to supplant IBM in the workplace. The short black-and-white film is set to a World War II theme and features a brief appearance by Steve Jobs in the role of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Jobs' appearance, complete with fake accent to initially disguise his true identity, comes at roughly 5:20 into the film.
Entitled "1944," the almost 9-minute full version was Apple's in-house takeoff on "1984," the iconic first Macintosh TV ad that caused a sensation during that year's Super Bowl. Set as a World War II tale of good vs. IBM, it is a broadcast-quality production (said to have cost $50,000) that was designed to fire up Apple's international sales force at a 1984 meeting in Hawaii. A copy of "1944" was provided to me by one-time Apple employee Craig Elliott, now CEO of Pertino Networks, a cloud-computing startup located two blocks from Apple in Cupertino.
Jobs' appearance, complete with fake accent to initially disguise his true identity, comes at roughly 5:20 into the film.
Top Rated Comments
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14 months ago
I'm glad I grew up in the 90's, the 80's sound weird
I feel bad for you.
GEN X FTW
14 months ago
LOL! this is hilarious, I cant believe Steve did that, how corny. Now that he's gone people can release stuff like that with having Steve kill them:eek:
14 months ago
"We don't talk about ///"
lol
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It was the 80s. People still had a sense of humor.
lol
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I watched the whole video and it's hard not to believe the comparison is between IBM users and concentration camp victims as someone else previously pointed out (and was down voted for saying so). The people they give the Macs to have sunken faces with makeup to make them look sick, and they are wearing chains in a prison like environment. The fighting scenes seem to involve the Mac people getting to these other people. The analogy seems pretty clear.
It was the 80s. People still had a sense of humor.
14 months ago
Utterly tasteless at 1:45... comparing IBM users to concentration camp victims.
I love it when over-sensitive people utter something that makes no sense at all. There are absolutely NO references to concentration camp victims, just zombified office workers depicted as POWs.
So please stop this politically-correct whining - besides, it was just an internal corporate movie.
Best part: when they mention their past victories in WWI and WWII; when one of the soldiers asks about WWIII (Apple III), the girl soldier answers: "we don't talk about III." :D
14 months ago
Utterly tasteless at 1:45... comparing IBM users to concentration camp victims.
Well, apparently IBM sold (directly or through proxies) equipment that the nazis made use of. Didn't a guy write a book about this?
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