the entire information age,
was George Orwell right about 1984?
Despite Steve Jobs' showmanship,
the IBM PC was hurting Apple's business.
And most pundits considered that...
Apple was going to be
out of business in a few short months.
Business Week ran an article on their cover saying
ehm "It's Over - IBM Has Won."
The Mac team saw themselves as Apple's pirates
but the gang was now being called on to save the ship,
as the Apple II was losing precious market share.
In the case of the Macintosh team,
they were behind schedule in getting the Mac out
which was not unusual in high technology
and so just getting that product to market
was extremely important.
After many delays, a date for
the launch of the Mac was announced.
The pressure of the deadline was mounting,
but Steve was still a perfectionist.
No design issue was too small and
it was never too late to do it right.
It was a pressure cooker.
We were working until we finished.
We couldn't go to sleep or anything
I was up for three days in that very last push
and finally the stars aligned and the last release
we made at six a.m. that morning.
It was now all or nothing,
because Lisa had turned out an expensive flop.
The fate of the whole company
seemed to rest on the launch of the Mac.
John Sculley had even authorised a
15 million dollar advertising campaign
to coincide with the Mac's public unveiling
January 24th, 1984.
I remember how nervous Steve was
before the introduction of the Macintosh
and the rehearsal the night before was a total disaster
nothing seemed to go right,
Steve was upset at everybody,
we wondered how in the world we were going to
get through the introduction the following day
but when that moment came
Steve was a master showman.
There have only been two milestone products in our industry
the Apple 2 in 1977 and the IBM PC in 1981.
Today...one year after LISA
we are introducing the third industry milestone product
...Macintosh.
Many of us have been working on
Macintosh for over two years now
and it has turned out insanely great.
You've just seen some pictures of Macintosh
now I'd like to show you Macintosh in person.
The Macintosh was undoubtedly the first affordable
personal computer with a genuine graphical user interface.
It was also the first computer to be
a monument to one man's ego.
Forget the brilliant work done at Xerox PARC
and the innovations borrowed from the Lisa.
On the day only one man was claiming paternity for the Mac.
Computer generated voice:
So it is with considerable pride, that I introduce a man
who's been like a father to me - Steve Jobs.
I was standing off-stage and as he came off
he said this is the proudest happiest moment
of my life and it was all over his face
it clearly was cause he had launched a revolution.
Ultimately it comes down to taste.
It comes down to trying to expose yourself to
the best things that humans have done
and then try to bring those things in to what you're doing.
I mean Picasso had a saying he said
good artists copy great artists steal.
And we have always been shameless
about stealing great ideas
and I think part of what made the Macintosh
great was that the people working on it
were musicians and poets and artists
and zoologists and historians
who also happened to be the best
computer scientists in the world.
With delusions of grandeur running rampant,
Apple created a Hollywood-style TV commercial.
It symbolised how the friendly Mac would free us
from the Orwellian tyranny of clunky IBM PC's.
Pleeeeeease!
Despite the hype, by late 1984,
the Mac's sales were disastrous.
In ad after ad, Apple desperately pointed out
that the Mac was far easier to use than the IBM PC.
But it sold for $2500
a thousand more than the IBM.
And despite Jobs' best efforts in recruiting
software makers like Bill Gates, applications were scarce.
It didn't do very much.
We had Mac Paint and Mac Write
were our only applications
and the