A 60-second TV spot was created in the month leading up to the 1984 launch of the original Macintosh, but it was shelved and never saw the public airwaves. Apple never aired it because it was felt that the spot might be seen as “too self-congratulatory.”
Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original members of the Macintosh team that helped pioneer the personal computer revolution alongside Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, published the video to his Google+ page on Thursday.
“Here’s a rare commercial for the original Macintosh that Chiat-Day made in the fall of 1983 , featuring snippets from interviews of the design team,” he said. “It never aired because Apple deemed it too self-congratulatory, although it was used in some promotional materials sent to dealers.”
The commercial features Hertzfeld, Burrel Smith (hardware engineer), George Crow (Manager of Analog Design), Bill Atkinson (Apple Fellow), and Mike Murray (Marketing Manager).
This is a delightful peek into the early days of the Macintosh, and the people who designed and built it.
