It was director Ridley Scott who introduced the idea of the Macintosh to the world. His iconic commercial, 1984, written by Steve Hayden, Lee Clow and Brent Thomas, was quickly acclaimed as a masterpiece, representing the Mac as a revolutionary product that could save humanity from conformity.
With more than a nod to George Orwell’s classic novel of the same name, and aired during a Super Bowl break on 22 January 1984, it made consumers sit up and take notice. Within 100 days, this $1 million, 60-second ad helped Apple sell 72,000 Macs. But even then, no-one could have foreseen how much of a blockbuster the Mac would become.
The computer had been in development for quite some time. In 1979, Jef Raskin, who had joined Apple the previous year as employee number 31, had proposed an easy-to-use 8-bit computer, codenamed Annie, that he envisaged could sell for just $500 if it was designed well enough and was manufactured in high volume.
To help him achieve his aim, he created a team that included software developer Bud Tribble, computer engineer Burrell Smith and student Bill Atkinson, who would also work as a computer engineer. He also wrote a mission document called the Book of Macintosh – a play on the Book of Mormon. Raskin later joked that the tome had an anti-religious overtone.
The book was a collection of essays
