1984 Apple's Macintosh Commercial (HD)

Mac History · 6.5M views · 2012-02-01 · 1:00

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Overview

The famous 1984 Super Bowl commercial introducing the Apple Macintosh, directed by Ridley Scott and based on Orwell's novel.

On Hacker News

HN mostly references it as a cultural touchstone, either praised as one of the most powerful ads ever or used ironically to criticize Apple's later behavior.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2016–2025

Topics

Tech company stories & documentaries History of computing Arts & entertainment (other)

What people said

rationalist · 2025-12 · Criticism
"You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." Apple's 1984 Commercial: [VIDEO]
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PaulHoule · 2025-10 · Reference
This '1984' Apple ad shows how Freedom is Slavery to the average Joe: [VIDEO] The original reading is that the bad guys are IBM and people who make you type on the command line and learn assembly language and such but if you roll it up to 2025 maybe the bad guys are the drones who have the latest iPhone and iPad and iWatch and AirPods and iPad Pro and Macbook and Mac Studio and Vision Pro and the real liberators write AVR8 assembly for the Arduino.
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DemocracyFTW2 · 2025-04 · Joke / meme
> a sentient superintelligence named AM has taken over the earth's resources and exterminated humanity after combining the powers of three US, Soviet, and Chinese supercomputers into one So—we finally get a grasp at who was depicted in that commercial, and what it was all about [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by Mac History, played through YouTube.

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