
The Horrifying Apple Super Bowl Ad That Time Forgot, 1985 - MarkTee
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/01/tech-time-warp-lemmings/
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jkaljundi
Both this one and 1984 ad could be made into great spoof ads about Mac and
iPhone users today. How the world has changed.

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mattl
[http://static.fsf.org/nosvn/stickers/DBD-
Sticker_002-jmt.svg](http://static.fsf.org/nosvn/stickers/DBD-
Sticker_002-jmt.svg)

CC-BY-SA if you want to reuse.

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Theodores
The tone of this advert was not that different to the big government
advertising campaigns of the era, whether they be warnings about AIDS, drink
driving, not locking up your house or buying shares in a once government owned
utility.

When viewed in that context it is not that out of the ordinary, and it was
probably put together by the same fear-mongering creatives that worked on the
government campaigns.

I was wondering what the Mapple Office product was, wondering if it meant Word
was out on a Mac, but no, they meant the fileserver plus printer. Wasn't it
Canon that actually made the printer?

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fredoralive
_Wasn 't it Canon that actually made the printer?_

The internals at least, the original Laserwriter used the same Canon LBP-CX
print engine as the original HP LaserJet. Both had unique control hardware /
software, and somewhat different cases.

Quite a lot of printers seem to share the same Canon guts:
[http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/reference/pcr/engine/1311](http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/reference/pcr/engine/1311)

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userbinator
Those ads are a little ironic, considering Apple's design philosophy now.

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barrkel
It shows the deep roots smugness has in Apple culture.

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leoc
Actually Apple's advertisers, Chiat/Day, pushed them into running "Lemmings":
neither Jobs nor Sculley was particularly happy with it. And to be fair, when
Chiat/Day made "1984" Jobs had loved it but the rest of the Apple board hadn't
liked it and had wanted to cancel it. (Source: Isaacson's /Steve Jobs/.)
Another example of what Nigel Tufnell observed about cleverness...

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chris_wot
John Sculley said the same thing in "From Pepsi to Apple".

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angkec
Reminds me of the Pink Floyd MTV The Wall. Where lines of students followed
each other into a meat process machine.

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bsaul
I can't imagine what it feels like to witness first row a whole stadium being
dead silent by an ad that you designed ( or at least were involved with). Even
for someone like steve jobs, that must have been really painfull.

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mhurron
What other response would be expected from a very quiet commercial? It's not
really a scream and cheer inducing spot.

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JacobIrwin
Who has forgotten about this?? It's probably in the top three of all-time most
memorable Super Bowl commercials. Not a fan of this luring/phishy title..

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mscarborough
I'd never seen or heard about it before. I think it has been overshadowed in
pop culture history by the 1984 ad the year before.

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tosseraccount
The irony is, the IBM PC was a very open machine. The Apple folks were the
secretive ones.

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greenyoda
Very open indeed. The Technical Reference Manual for the PC actually included
circuit diagrams and the source code for the BIOS. Here's the version from the
PC/XT (warning: huge PDF file):

[http://www.retroarchive.org/dos/docs/ibm5160techref.pdf](http://www.retroarchive.org/dos/docs/ibm5160techref.pdf)

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userbinator
Here's the AT one, it was the last one that was open in that way (and closest
to what the modern PC is based on): [http://bitsavers.trailing-
edge.com/pdf/ibm/pc/at/1502494_PC_...](http://bitsavers.trailing-
edge.com/pdf/ibm/pc/at/1502494_PC_AT_Technical_Reference_Mar84.pdf) It's an
even bigger PDF than the XT one :)

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unpointfulness
I don't understand. In what way was that ad "horrifying"?

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jamesbritt
Might be the whole mass-death thing.

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InclinedPlane
It's easy to forget how many missteps Apple made at the time and how easy it
was for the company to push Steve Jobs out the door.

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hcarvalhoalves
Very dystopian and moody. I've never seen an ad so dark.

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sjtrny
Come over to Australia or New Zealand. Our PSAs tend to be dark and in your
face eg [http://youtu.be/ZgkwYyPUMsU](http://youtu.be/ZgkwYyPUMsU) and
[http://youtu.be/bvLaTupw-hk](http://youtu.be/bvLaTupw-hk)

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hcarvalhoalves
Well, I'm okay with those ads. They are just the real deal.

The Apple ad, on the other hand, is pure fantasy, but uncomfortably creepy.

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shinratdr
Easily one of my favorites. Comments about it are painfully predictable and
get split into two basic camps. People try and read all types of bullshit
about current Apple into it, and those who make the very simplistic
underdogs/countercultrualists-turned-authoritarians observation.

However, for those who simply take it for what it is, it's genuinely creepy
which is so unusual for advertising. Strange creepy you get every so often,
but scary/dark creepy is pretty rare in advertising. With the obvious
exception of scared straight PSAs and political ads. Rarely does a business
trying to simply sell you a product take such a freaky approach.

Sorry, I'll let you return to your glib observations and poorly thought out
conclusions about Apple users, "Apple culture" and whatnot.

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testrun
Talking about glib observations....

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jonheller
I don't understand all the irony people keep pointing too. The point as I
understand it is that people were miserable using the business products of
that day.

Nowadays you could make an argument that people are lemmings for using Apple
products just for the sake of them being Apple products, but judging from both
anecdotes and high customer satisfaction ratings, I highly doubt the majority
of Apple product users are miserable with their iPhones etc.

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kayoone
it might be controversial, but horrifying ?

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300bps
Some people find portrayals of mass suicide by jumping off a cliff horrifying.

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coldcode
Criticizing a commercial from 1985 as being representative of anything Apple
is doing today is a little much. Sure it sucked but it was memorably sucky.
How many squeeze the charm in ads are still talked about?

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w1ntermute
Well if an ad from 1985 is not representative of today's Apple, then people
should also stop praising the 1984 ad, since that is also not representative.

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wtracy
When the announces announces "The Macintosh Office", the implication at first
seems to be that the people _buying_ the Macintosh Office are the lemmings
jumping off a cliff.

Terrible messaging all around.

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csmithuk
Well they got the office market share projected right!

(yes this is sarcastic).

