The Macintosh Revolution in 1984
Apple’s Macintosh was game-changing When it was introduced in 1984.
Apple’s Macintosh made it easier for people to operate a computer which lead to the way users interacted with it Triggered a Revolution in User Experience.
Designing for usability, efficiency, accessibility, elegance and delight paid off for apple.
Apple’s brand is every bit associated with the term “design”.
Apple turned technology into fashion, and it did it through user experience.
When Apple announced the Macintosh personal computer with a Super Bowl XVIII television ad on January 22, 1984, it more resembled a movie premiere than a technology release.
The commercial was, in fact, directed by filmmaker Ridley Scott.
That’s because founder Steve Jobs knew he was not selling just computing power, storage or a desktop publishing solution.
Rather, Jobs was selling a product for human beings to use, one to be taken into their homes and integrated into their lives.
In 1983, the personal computing market was up for grabs.
Apple was selling its Apple II like crazy but was facing increasing competition from IBM’s PC and “clones” made by Compaq and Commodore. Meanwhile, Apple, led by Steve Jobs, was busy developing its new Macintosh computer. Remember that in 1983, most businesses and governments still employed large, expensive, and technically intimidating mainframes.
And while the first personal computers of the early 1980s were smaller and less intimidating, they still featured black screens with green text-based commands.
Drawing inspiration from the pioneering Xerox Alto and improving on the underperforming Apple Lisa, Jobs and the Apple team built the Apple Macintosh with several revolutionary new features we now take for granted.
A handheld input device called a “mouse.”
A graphical user interface with overlapping “windows” and menus.
Clickable pictures called “icons.” Cut-copy-paste editing.
In short, Jobs and his team were creating an “insanely great” personal computer that was intuitive and easy to use—one he hoped would shake-up the PC market.
At the same time, Apple had recently lured marketing whiz John Sculley away from Pepsi to be the firm’s new chief executive.
Sculley, who had masterminded the “Pepsi Generation” campaign, raised Apple’s ad budget.
Apple hired the Los Angeles advertising firm to launch the Macintosh in early 1984. They developed a concept inspired by George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, in which The Party, run by the all-seeing Big Brother, kept the proletariat in check with constant surveillance by the Thought Police. In the ad, IBM’s “Big Blue” would be cast as Big Brother, dominating the computer industry with its dull conformity, while Apple would re-write the book’s ending so that the Macintosh metaphorically defeats the regime. To direct the commercial, the Los Angeles advertising firm hired British movie director Ridley Scott who’d perfected the cinematic look and feel of dystopian futures in Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982). The 60-second mini-film was shot in one week.
Shot in dark, blue-gray hues to evoke IBM’s Big Blue, the only splashes of color were the bright red running shorts of the protagonist, an athletic young woman who sprints through the commercial carrying a sledgehammer, and Apple’s rainbow logo. The commercial never showed the actual computer, but ended with a tease: “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984.’”
When shown the finished ad in late 1983, Apple’s board members hated it.
The ad run once during the third quarter of the Super Bowl. Some 43 million Americans saw the ad.
The ad, of course, was a sensation. The commercial’s social and political overtones held particular resonance in the mid-1980s, as the United States and Soviet Union were still engaged in an ideological Cold War.
And, like Lyndon Johnson’s famous “Daisy” ad from the 1964 presidential campaign, the ad aired only once in primetime, but was replayed again and again on the network news that evening as the ad itself became a buzz-worthy source of free publicity.
The ad won several prestigious awards, including the Grand Prize at the Cannes International Advertising Festival (1984) and Advertising Age’s 1980s “Commercial of the Decade.” But the ad’s most enduring legacy is that it cemented the Super Bowl as each year’s blockbuster moment for advertisers and their clients.
While the ad aired during the Super Bowl on January 22, it merely pointed to Macintosh’s official debut two days later. On January 24, 1984, Apple held its annual shareholders meeting at the Flint Center auditorium.
After dispensing with the formalities of board votes and quarterly earnings statements, the real show began.
Steve Jobs walked on stage in a double-breasted suit and bow tie and rallied the troops by tweaking his chief rival: “IBM wants it all and is aiming its guns on its last obstacle to industry control, Apple.
Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry, the entire information age? Was George Orwell right?”
Jobs then presented perhaps the greatest new product demonstration in history. Jobs walked over to a black bag, unzipped it, and set up the Macintosh to wild applause. Then Jobs inserted a floppy disk and started the demonstration of the Mac’s windows, menus, fonts, and drawing tools, all set to the stirring theme from Chariots of Fire. Then, the Mac spoke for itself: “Hello, I am Macintosh…”
The Macintosh was not the first computer to have a graphical user interface or employ the desktop metaphor: icons, files, folders, windows and so on. The Macintosh was not the first personal computer meant for home, office or educational use. It was not the first computer to use a mouse. It was not even the first computer from Apple to be or have any of these things. The Apple Lisa, released a year before, had them all.
It was not any one technical thing that the Macintosh did first.
But the Macintosh brought together numerous advances that were about giving people an accessory—not for geeks or techno-hobbyists, but for regular everyday people who used it to write documents, edit spreadsheets, make drawings and play games.
The Macintosh revolutionized the personal computing industry and everything that was to follow because of its emphasis on providing a satisfying, simplified user experience.
The Macintosh simplified the interaction techniques required to operate a computer and improved functioning to reasonable speeds. Complex keyboard commands and dedicated keys were replaced with point-and-click operations, pull-down menus, draggable windows and icons, and systemwide undo, cut, copy and paste. Unlike with the Lisa, the Macintosh could run only one program at a time, but this simplified the user experience.
The Macintosh also provided a user interface toolbox for application developers, enabling applications to have a standard look and feel by using common interface widgets such as buttons, menus, fonts, dialogue boxes and windows.
With the Macintosh, the learning curve for users was flattened, allowing people to feel proficient in short order.
Computing, was now for everyone.
Rarely today do consumer products succeed in the market based on functionality alone. Consumers expect a good user experience and will pay a premium for it. The Macintosh started that obsession and demonstrated its centrality.
