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“1984″ – Apple’s famous Super Bowl Spot

The most famous Super Bowl ad –

The Hammer That Shattered the Monolith: How 60 Seconds Defined the Apple Mythos

It is January 22, 1984. Inside Tampa Stadium, Super Bowl XVIII is in full swing. The Los Angeles Raiders are systematically dismantling the Washington Redskins. But during a break in the third quarter, the game becomes a footnote. For 60 seconds, nearly 100 million Americans are pulled away from the grass and grit into a dystopian nightmare—and then shown a glimpse of a digital revolution.

This wasn’t just a commercial. It was a cinematic manifesto directed by Ridley Scott, a man who had just finished reshaping science fiction with Blade Runner.

The Aesthetic of the Abyss

The spot opens on a monochrome, ash-colored world. Rows of hollow-eyed men, their heads shaved and spirits broken, march in lockstep through industrial corridors. They gather in a cold hall before a towering screen where a bespectacled “Big Brother”—a thinly veiled avatar for the then-dominant IBM—drones on about the “unification of thoughts.”

Then, a flash of color breaks the gray. A young woman (played by British athlete Anya Major) sprints toward the screen, pursued by riot police. She wears bright orange shorts and a white tank top emblazoned with a line drawing of a computer. In her hands, she swings a heavy sledgehammer with the grace of an Olympian. As she releases the hammer, it sails through the air and crashes directly into the face of the tyrant.

The screen explodes in a blinding white light. A voiceover—and a simple scroll of text—delivers the finishing blow: “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984’.”

Corporate Cold Feet: The Board vs. The Visionaries

Today, the “1984” ad is heralded as the greatest commercial of all time. Yet, it almost never aired.

The backstory is a corporate thriller. The agency Chiat/Day had crafted the concept, and Steve Jobs was immediately electrified by it. He wanted a “thunderclap.” However, when the finished film was screened for Apple’s board of directors in December 1983, the reaction was icy silence.

Mike Markkula, Apple’s chairman and major investor, was horrified. “This is the worst ad I’ve ever seen. Who wants to fire the agency?” he reportedly asked. The board ordered CEO John Sculley to sell back the expensive Super Bowl airtime they had already purchased.

Wozniak’s Act of Rebellion

Steve Jobs, refusing to see his masterpiece buried, showed the spot to co-founder Steve Wozniak. “Woz” was so blown away that he offered to pay for half of the airtime out of his own pocket if the board refused to budge. “If Apple won’t run it, I’ll pay $400,000 and you pay $400,000,” Wozniak told Jobs.

In the end, it was a mix of chutzpah and luck: Chiat/Day claimed they couldn’t find a buyer for the 60-second slot in time. With the slot already paid for and no one to take it, Apple was forced to run the ad.

Skinheads and Discus Throws: The Making of a Legend

Ridley Scott’s production was grueling and authentic. Filmed at Shepperton Studios in London, Scott didn’t hire standard extras. To achieve the look of a true oppressed proletariat, he hired actual London skinheads for a pittance and the promise of a free lunch. The atmosphere on set was reportedly tense, with the extras’ rowdy behavior adding a layer of genuine grit to the film.

The choice of Anya Major for the lead role was a stroke of casting genius. Many models had auditioned, but most couldn’t even swing the hammer while running. Major was an experienced discus thrower; she had the muscle memory and the athletic form to hurl the sledgehammer with deadly precision.

The Legacy: When Advertising Became Art

The impact the next morning was unprecedented. News stations didn’t just talk about the ad; they replayed it in its entirety during their broadcasts. Apple generated over $5 million in free publicity. Overnight, the Macintosh became more than a piece of hardware; it became a symbol of individuality and freedom.

“1984” marked the moment advertising stopped merely explaining products and started creating myths. It was the birth of Apple as a lifestyle brand and Steve Jobs as the high priest of the digital counter-culture.

There is a modern irony to the story: today, critics often point at Apple’s massive market cap and closed ecosystem, suggesting the company has become the very “Big Brother” it once vowed to destroy. Regardless of the politics, the 60-second storm Ridley Scott and Steve Jobs unleashed remains a masterclass in storytelling—a hammer throw that changed the cultural trajectory of technology forever.

The commercial was rebroadcast in an updated version in 2004 on its 20th anniversary, with the heroine modified to be listening to an iPod. Viewers generally saw the Big Brother target of the Apple advertisement as being Microsoft, with the original villain, IBM, being all but forgotten.

Apple commercial “1984”: The Plot

The commercial opens with a dystopic, industrial setting in blue and gray tones, showing a line of people (of ambiguous gender) marching in unison through a long tunnel monitored by a string of telescreens. This is in sharp contrast to the full-color shots of the nameless runner (Anya Major). She looks like an Olympic track and field athlete, as she is carrying a large brass-headed hammer and is wearing an athletic “uniform” (bright orange athletic shorts, running shoes, a white tank top with a cubist picture of Apple’s Macintosh computer, a white sweat band on her left wrist, and a red one on her right).

As she is chased by four police officers (presumably agents of the Thought Police) wearing black uniforms, protected by riot gear, helmets with visors covering their faces, and armed with large night sticks, she races towards a large screen with the image of a Big Brother-like figure (David Graham, also seen on the telescreens earlier) giving a speech:

My friends, each of you is a single cell in the great body of the State. And today, that great body has purged itself of parasites. We have triumphed over the unprincipled dissemination of facts. The thugs and wreckers have been cast out. And the poisonous weeds of disinformation have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Let each and every cell rejoice! For today we celebrate the first, glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directive! We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests purveying contradictory truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!

The runner, now close to the screen, hurls the hammer towards it, right at the moment Big Brother announces, “we shall prevail!” In a flurry of light and smoke, the screen is destroyed, shocking the people watching the screen.
The commercial concludes with a portentous voiceover, accompanied by scrolling black text (in Apple’s early signature “Garamond” font); the hazy, whitish-blue aftermath of the cataclysmic event serves as the background. It reads:

On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.

The screen fades to black as the voiceover ends, and the rainbow Apple logo appears.

Apple commercial “1984”: The Production

Development

The commercial was created by the advertising agency Chiat/Day, Venice, with copy by Steve Hayden, art direction by Brent Thomas and creative direction by Lee Clow. Ridley Scott (whose dystopian sci-fi film, Blade Runner was released two years prior) was hired by agency producer Richard O’Neill to direct it, with a then-“unheard-of production budget of $900,000.” The actors who appeared in the commercial were paid $25 per day.

Steve Jobs and John Sculley were so enthusiastic about the final product that they “…purchased one and a half minutes of ad time for the Super Bowl, annually the most-watched television program in America. In December 1983 they screened the commercial for the Apple Board of Directors. To Jobs’ and Sculley’s surprise, the entire board hated the commercial.” However, Scully himself got “cold feet” and asked Chiat/Day to sell off the two commercial spots.

Despite the board’s dislike of the film, Steve Jobs continued to support it. Steve Wozniak watched it and offered to pay for half of the spot personally if the board refused to air it.

Of the original ninety seconds booked, Chiat/Day managed to resell thirty seconds to another advertiser, leaving the other sixty second slot.

Intended message

Adelia Cellini states in a 2004 article for MacWorld, “The Story Behind Apple’s ‘1984’ TV Commercial“:

Let’s see – an all-powerful entity blathering on about Unification of Thoughts to an army of soulless drones, only to be brought down by a plucky, Apple-esque underdog. So Big Brother, the villain from Apple’s ‘1984’ Mac ad, represented IBM, right? According to the ad’s creators, that’s not exactly the case. The original concept was to show the fight for the control of computer technology as a struggle of the few against the many, says TBWA/Chiat/Day’s Lee Clow. Apple wanted the Mac to symbolize the idea of empowerment, with the ad showcasing the Mac as a tool for combating conformity and asserting originality. What better way to do that than have a striking blonde athlete take a sledghammer to the face of that ultimate symbol of conformity, Big Brother?

However, in his 1983 Apple keynote address, Steve Jobs made the following comment before showcasing a preview of the commercial to a select audience:

It is now 1984. It appears IBM wants it all. Apple is perceived to be the only hope to offer IBM a run for its money. Dealers initially welcoming IBM with open arms now fear an IBM dominated and controlled future. They are increasing and desperately turning back to Apple as the only force that can ensure their future freedom. 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 about 1984?

Apple commercial “1984”: The Reception

Awards

* 2007: Best Super Bowl Spot (in the game’s 40-year history)

* 1999: TV Guide – Number One Greatest Commercial of All Time

* 1995: Advertising Age – Greatest Commercial

* 1984: 31st Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival – Grand Prix

Social impact

Ted Friedman, in his 2005 text, Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture, notes the impact of the commercial:

Super Bowl viewers were overwhelmed by the startling ad. The ad garnered millions of dollars worth of free publicity, as news programs rebroadcast it that night. It was quickly hailed by many in the advertising industry as a masterwork. Advertising Age named it the 1980s Commercial of the Decade, and it continues to rank high on lists of the most influential commercials of all time […] 1984 was never broadcast again, adding to its mystique.

1984 became a signature representation of Apple computers. It was scripted as a thematic element in the 1999 docudrama, Pirates of Silicon Valley, which explores the rise of Apple and Microsoft (the film opens and closes with references to the commercial including a re-enactment of the heroine running towards the screen of Big Brother and clips of the original commercial).

“1984” became a signature representation of Apple computers. It was scripted as a thematic element in the 1999 docudrama, Pirates of Silicon Valley, which explores the rise of Apple and Microsoft (the film opens and closes with references to the commercial including a re-enactment of the heroine running towards the screen of Big Brother and clips of the original commercial). The “1984” ad was also prominent in the 20th anniversary celebration of the Macintosh in 2004, as Apple reposted a new version of the ad on its website. In this updated version, an iPod, complete with signature white earbuds, was digitally added to the heroine. Attendees were given a poster showing the heroine with iPod as a commemorative gift.

Influence in media

A commercial for the video game Half-Life 2 was based on this commercial. A parody of the commercial is seen in the Futurama episode Future Stock, promoting Planet Express. Another parody appears in The Simpsons TV show episode Mypods and Boomsticks, featuring Steve Jobs as “Big Brother” and the Comic Book Guy as the runner.

For the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh, Apple re-released the ad with the runner wearing an iPod.

The History of the Apple Macintosh

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The Apple Macintosh revolutionized the entire computer industry by the year of 1984. Steve Jobs and his ingenious Macintosh team arranged for the computer to be used by the normal “person in the street” – and not only by experts.

“Insanely great” – Steve Jobs could hardly put into words his enthusiasm by the launch of the Macintosh. On the legendary annual general meeting of January 24th, 1984, in the Flint Center not far from the Apple Campus in Cupertino, the Apple co-founder initially quoted Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” in order to then polemicize against an imminent predominance of the young computer industry by IBM.

Steve Jobs’ introduction of the Apple Macintosh:

“The early 1980s. 1981 – Apple II has become the world’s most popular computer, and Apple has grown to a 300 million dollar corporation, becoming the fastest growing company in American business history. With over fifty companies vying for a share, IBM enters the personal computer market in November of 1981, with the IBM PC.

1983. Apple and IBM emerge as the industry’s strongest competitors, with each selling approximately one billion dollars worth of personal computers in 1983. The shakeout is in full swing. The first major personal computer firm goes bankrupt, with others teetering on the brink. Total industry losses for 1983 overshadow even the combined profits of Apple and IBM.

It is now 1984. It appears that IBM wants it all. Apple is perceived to be the only hope to offer IBM a run for its money. Dealers, after initially welcoming IBM with open arms, now fear an IBM dominated and controlled future and are turning back to Apple as the only force who can ensure their future freedom.

IBM wants it all, and is aiming its guns at its last obstacle to industry control, Apple. Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry? The entire information age? Was George Orwell right?“

The crowd, among them the complete Macintosh developer’s team, shouted back: “Nooooo!”

The introduction of the first Mac on January 24th, 1984; taken from the “Lost 1984 Videos”

There had been only two milestone products so far: the Apple II in 1977 and the IBM PC in 1981, Jobs continued. “Today (…) we are introducing the third industry milestone product, the Macintosh. Many of us have been working on Macintosh for over two years now and it has turned out insanely great.”

Steve Jobs

Taking a look at the history of the personal computer today, Steve Jobs was on the right track with his historical comparison. However, it would not be IBM that became the great dominator of the computer industry over the years, but rather, the alliance of Microsoft and Intel.

Previous to the Macintosh developer team, others had already tried to design a computer with a mouse and a graphical user interface – one year before Apple did, with its own business computer Lisa, which retailed for 10,000 dollars.

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Apple’s 1984 spoof of ‘Ghostbusters’ goes after IBM

Did Steve Jobs steal everything from Xerox PARC?

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Rich Neighbor with Open Doors

Screenshot of the movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley”

It is claimed again and again that in the course of the Macintosh’s development, Apple just resorted to the ideas the research laboratory Xerox PARC had hatched before. Fact or Fiction?

The myth says, Apple CEO Steve Jobs saw Xerox PARC product, such as the GUI, either on a tour or at a trade show. He then used the PARC GUI implementation without permission, to create the Apple Lisa and the original Mac OS / Macintosh GUI.

The myth entwines about a late 1979 visit to Xerox PARC by a group of Apple engineers and executives led by Steve Jobs. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of “Making the Macintosh”, writes:

According to early reports, it was on this visit that Jobs discovered the mouse, windows, icons, and other technologies that had been developed at PARC. These wonders had been locked away at PARC by a staff that didn’t understand the revolutionary potential of what they had created. Jobs, in contrast, was immediately converted to the religion of the graphical user interface, and ordered them copied by Apple, starting down the track that would eventually yield the Lisa and “insanely great” Macintosh. The Apple engineers– that band of brothers, that bunch of pirates– stole the fire of the gods, and gave it to the people.

It’s a good story. Unfortunately, it’s also wrong in almost every way a story can be wrong. There are problems with chronology and timing. The testimony of a number of key figures at Apple suggests that the visit was not the revelation early accounts made it out to be. But the story also carries deeper assumptions about Apple, Xerox PARC, computer science in the late 1970s, and even the nature of invention and innovation that deserve to be examined and challenged.
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Let us take a closer look at what happend at Xerox PARC:

In the Untied States, the brand name “Xerox” denotes photocopying just as “Kleenex” stands for tissues or “Scotch tape” for adhesive film. After all, already in 1950, the Xerox Corp. was the world’s first company to actually transfer the “Xerography” invented by the American law student Chester Carlson into a functional product. Carlson received in 1937 a patent for a process that he called “electrophotography.” On 22 October 1938 followed the premiere in practice: With the help of a metal plate was coated with sulfur and a lamp Chester the lettering “10-22-38 Astoria” on a wax paper.

By the end of the sixties, the Xerox management sensed the threat of Japanese companies catching up on Xerox’s technological advantage. Moreover, the Xerox head worried that the “paperless office” might emerge with the following computer generations, in which the Xerox would no longer have a place. Against this background, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California was founded in 1970. John Warnock, former researcher in the Xerox PARC and later one of the two founders of Adobe Systems, remembers: “The atmosphere was electric – there was total intellectual freedom. There was no conventional wisdom; almost every idea was up for challenge and got challenged regularly.”

The PARC Computer Science Laboratory (CSL) – 1970 ca. – © PARC (Palo Alto Research Center, Incorporated)

Larry Tessler, who later took part in developing the Macintosh and the Newton PDA at Apple, also enjoyed the liberties the PARC provided in the seventies: “The management said go create the new world. We don’t understand it. Here are people who have a lot of ideas and tremendous talent, [are] young, energetic.” The problem, however, was that the company management at the East Coast of the USA did not [care a straw for] the PARC’s research results unless they were directly involved with photocopiers.

In his TV documentation “Triumph of the Nerds” Robert Cringley is interviewing researchers at the Xerox PARC

Within two years, the researchers at the PARC had designed the Alto, which was something like the first personal computer. The Alto did not feature character-oriented graphics, as did all the other computers of that time, but a bit-oriented version instead. A high quality printer could print exactly what the screen displayed.

A mouse. Removable data storage. Networking. A visual user interface. Easy-to-use graphics software. “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) printing, with printed documents matching what users saw on screen. E-mail. Alto for the first time combined these and other now-familiar elements in one small computer.

Developed by Xerox as a research system, the Alto marked a radical leap in the evolution of how computers interact with people, leading the way to today’s computers.

By making human-computer communications more intuitive and user friendly, Alto and similar systems opened computing to wide use by non-specialists, including children.

People were able to focus on using the computer as a tool to accomplish a task rather than on learning their computer’s technical details.
The Computer History Museum about the Xerox Alto

However, this marvelous machine was not freely available on the market. Only small numbers were built initially, but by the late 1970s, about 1,000 were in use at various Xerox laboratories, and about another 500 in several universities. Total production was about 2,000 systems.

The revolutionary Alto would have been an expensive personal computer if put on sale commercially. Lead engineer Charles Thacker noted that the first one cost Xerox $12,000. As a product, the price tag might have been $40,000.

Commercial for the Xerox Alto (1972).

This commercial for Xerox’s Alto computer released in 1972 introduced the world to the first desktop computer with a graphical user interface. Named after Xerox PARC’s home city of Palo Alto, California, the computer introduced the world to the window-oriented mouse and keyboard interface we use today. The Alto also had a distinctive portrait screen — an idea that was well before its time.

The video showed how the computer could revolutionize your office life, with email, word processing and reminders all controlled by a cursor. It also shows the protagonist expressing his thoughts and actions out loud, as if in conversation with the Alto (which seems to be nicknamed “Fred”).

Some Apple engineers were already familiar with PARC, its work, or technologies like the mouse. Bill Atkinson had read about Smalltalk as an undergraduate. Some had worked at PARC: Jef Raskin spent time there during a sabbatical year at Stanford, and had a number of friends who were researchers there. Finally, there were even some Apple employees whose had learned about the mouse while working for Douglas Engelbart at SRI in the 1960s and early 1970s, or Tymshare in the later 1970s.

Read next page: How Apple discovered Xerox PARC

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Apple History TV: Steve Jobs about Microsoft (1995)

1 Reply

Steve Jobs

The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is – I don’t mean that in a small way I mean that in a big way. In the sense that they they don’t think of original ideas and they don’t bring much culture into their product ehm and you say why is that important – well you know proportionally spaced fonts come from type setting and beautiful books, that’s where one gets the idea – if it weren’t for the Mac they would never have that in their products and ehm so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft’s success – I have no problem with their success, they’ve earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products.

Steve Ballmer

I will admit quite frankly that I think Windows today is probably four years behind, three years behind where it would have been had we not danced with IBM for so long. Because the amount of split energy, split works, split IQ in the company really cost our end customer real innovation in our product line and so whenever I hear these criticisms which I gotta to say sting eh sometimes, I say to myself just you watch, just you watch Windows 95, Windows 9…there’s no lack of focus there hasn’t been here for the last three or four years since we didn’t have this big spot with IBM. Even in the operating systems here now, you’ll start to see clear, clear…and people will recognise clear leadership.