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A History of Computers, As Seen in Old TV Ads
Tiny Tuba writes "PC World's Harry McCracken pulls together a compendium of vintage PC commercials posted on YouTube. There are commercials from the 1980s right up to the present. If you are looking for a laugh, you will have fun with the Atari 400, Commodore 64 and more." Worth it for the Shattner Vic-20 commercial alone, but the others are well-picked too. Naturally, the Apple 1984 commercial is included.
Khan! KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
...the best ad EVER!
;)
Are You Keeping Up With The Commodore?
I guarantee you'll have that stupid jingle stuck in your head for DAYS! (BWHAHAH!) I even named my most recent blog article after it.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
There was a few comericals for Prime Computer with Dr. Who. I wish I could find a link for them.
Those were some serious adds.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
A more interesting progression is in the increase in pr0n quality on computers. You can't beat the classics .
I thought it was funny until I found an Atari 400 in the shed......and then tripped over the Commodor 64.
"Dark Wings, Dark Words"
Here is one I had downloaded some time ago from somewhere, and recently put up on YouTube. Featuring: Tommy Lasorda, the Pointer Sisters, Chuck Yeager, and 'Tip' O'Neil!
Dark Reflection
Did Ballmer ever have hair? LOL
Does anyone remember that old Apple commercial with the 1 second glipse of an Ant Farm on a kid's desk? Does anyone know where that can be found online? I had no luck with various Apple video ads. sites, YouTube, etc. I think the ad was about education with Apple II GS computer.
:)
Thank you in advance.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Cool video: A 15 minutes YouTube video showing off the Amiga 500, also known as the A500. It was the first "low-end" Commodore Amiga 16/32-bit multimedia home/personal computer. It was announced at the winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1987, at the same time as the high-end A2000, and competed directly against the Atari 520ST.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I haven't seen most of these (I'm 23 so I missed the early computer age). I really like the Kaypro ad, and the IBM commercial with "Chaplin" is quite good also. That said, the commercial with the M*A*S*H cast is just a disaster (as the article mentions).
I wonder what a computer commercial by Michele Gondry would be like.
PS: Isn't it weird to see commercial after commercial, year after year, using the same 3 talking points? "Helps your kids in school", "Faster", and "Better value"?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I kid you not, right after watching the Ballmer commercial, the sound went out on my computer.
That mofo has some powerful anti-mojo.
(Though I am from Nebraska, so maybe that's why.)
Stupid monkeyboy...
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Having never (to my recollection) seen this on TV (not a follower of the Superbowl), I'd say the best part of the ad is the bouncing boobs....... Or the Futurama parody ad.....
Do you see the FNORDS? I refuse to post anonymously, as I am fireproof!
Hmm, I was using plenty of computers in the 80's and don't remember the Prime Computer. Did it transform? Did it roll out? I must see these commercials!
[blockquote]Q: Where are these commercials from?
A: The U.S., as far as I know. Rule one of European computer commercials: They're too dirty for American TV.
[/blockquote]
The commercial that they link to is definitely something that could be shown on television. I have seen FAR worse than that. Granted, the U.S. certainly has worse decency laws than Europe (I remember seeing a water-bottle commercial involving a woman swimming naked in a submerged room), but censoring that would just be ridiculous.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
Mentioned, but not listed, the Windows 95 Start Me Up Launch Video
Sig: I stole this sig.
Halfway down the page, here. Now don't say I never give you anything!
Each day just get better, there's no doubt, each day he sweat a lot more...
I can't wait for Windows Vista Release Press Conference
ghostbar page.
Before the IBM PC, there were quite a few computers that were taken seriously. A lot of things were developing in interesting ways. There was progress. Some of them were good at graphics, some were good at video, some could do decent music, some were actually decent business machines, some had GUIs. Then the IBM PC came along with its bad graphics (a Hercules monochrome card was considered an upgrade) and we got a command line monoculture for the next ten years. Even by 1990, getting AutoCAD and Animator to play nice on the same machine was painful. (If I ever get my hands around the throat of the sadist who invented the PharLap memory manager ...)
It was kind of like the giant foot came down from the sky and squashed Bambi. I wonder how things would have developed if IBM hadn't given us their PC.
He should be here since EVERYONE KNOWS Microsft is your computer... Actually his Windows 1.0 Commercial reminded me of the used car salesman commercials on the Sunday Afternoon Western's :)
The Steven Speilberg-produced Amiga 'Levitation' commercial.
:P
always mosh clockwise
Am I the only person who thinks the 1984 apple commercial's current status in history is nothing but revisionist bs? It wasn't talked about and was completely forgotten until the mid 90s. I don't find it artistic enough to merit the reverence that seems to surround it. It's like one guy wrote an article about it in the 90s and everyone bought into it like all the great things people had to say about Ronald Regan.
Somehow, I think a Commodore commercial would be everyone's honest favorite, after all, it is the best selling personal computer of all time with an massive active scene even today. The guy clearly hasn't a clue.
One of my favourites was quite a recent (about 3-4 years ago) IBM advert aired in the UK (don't know about US). It starts out with an emergency board meeting at a big corporate firm and evidently some vital part of the corporations infrastructure is offline. Lots of buck passing is heard, something like: "The network center says it's a database problem and the database people say it's a web site problem...", "So what do the web designers say?", "We don't know, they've gone snowboarding..."
...half of my friends were snowboarding web designers at the time
This was very funny because it's true...
1983, actually.
The Ballmer one is my favorite. He really fits the part of the infomercial guy. The overall theme of all those ads, however, is that it's pretty mindboggling how primitive those graphics actually were knowing what computers are capable of today. Sometimes it's sort of unbelieveable in the context of the ads, for example the Charlie Chaplin PC junior ad, and how his rollerskate business is somehow improved %100 by a drawing of a rollerskate that looks like something done on an Etch-a-Sketch. Anyhow, I'm also sure in twenty years whatever computer graphics are doing are going to make today's look just as bad.
--------
Webomatica
The Apple "1984" commercial is considered to be one of the greatest advertisements of all time, in any product category. Indeed it is standard curriculum in marketing classes at colleges & universities around the world.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
http://girls.c64.org/ Oh, and a great i hate apple youtube video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ps_LSn4boQE
Harry McCracken
This must be Phil's brother.
Alan Alda setting up an Atari console while cracking jokes and maintaining eye contact with the camera, just to show how easy it was. At the end, a flat voice says "42 seconds". Alda looks up to his left and says, "Wait. I can do it faster."
George Plimpton pitching for Mattel Intellivision in his tweedy highbrow style. "When I went to compare Mattel Intellivision against the Atari, I found..." Of course, soon afterwards the joke became, "I found that there was no Mattel Intellivision."
My parents didn't really know what a computer was, they just knew that my brother and I wanted one. I had dreams of building an intelligent computer that could talk to me like War Games. So, when the flyer came in the mail that we would get a free Commodore 16 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_16 if we drove 3 hours south to visit a Time Share resort, I begged and pleaded until we were on the road.
To make a long story short. They had to send us the computer in the mail as they didn't actually have them in stock. So the long drive drive, and Time Share presentation we endured was frustrating in the end... But a few weeks later I was saving my first madlibs program on a tape drive, and truly enjoying life.
This lead me to my first Commodore 64, and then the 128. I made silly games like Box Hunters and Iron Clad that used the amazing sprite animations available on the 128. I thought I was a genius...lol
My God I loved my Commodores. I still do. BBS's.. Ghost Busters, Winter Games, Mission Impossible, Overkill... I could go on, but I bet MANY of you had the same experiences. Times will never be like that again. That feeling of having a keyboard in your hands and thinking that somehow you are going to give your computer AI with the BASIC computer language... The thought of downloading software over your phone line, and playing games with people you couldn't see...
I think I'm going to cry.
I particulary liked the Magic server Pixie Dust and The Universal Business Adapter.
... you need an adapter.
the UBA ad featured a group of suits in a board room, with this blob that had every sort of connector imaginable on it. "the Universal Business adaptor allows you to connect any system to anyother system" the suits then start to question " sytstem x to y with z, a, b, and c" yes is the responce."does it work in Europe?"
Also particulary memorable was the iMac ad with the Rolling Stones song "she comes in colors" (though Not IBM
Does anyone know what that music was in the background of those commodore commercials?
Man, I used to watch all those demo videos that came on the Windows 95 CD over and over back when it came out, but it wasn't until I saw it again just now that I noticed something: in the last scene when it says welcome to Windows 95 and has the new-fangled Start button under it to demonstrate the big new idea of the OS, it's a black cursor that comes out to click it! That's right, it's a black cursor, not a white one, so that means the animator must have been thinking about Macs in his head!
Oh the ironing!
The green wire-frame "bra designed for your comfort" that featured the sound of an Apple ][ booting up as the background noise?
Lasted less than a week on broadcast TV.
Microsoft sure got greedy in the last 20 years...
So say we all
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QRETD2BtDZI
Does anybody else remember this ad? I guess it was kind of late in the Commodore 64's life cycle, but I swear I used to see this ad several times a day. When my friends saw that I had a Commodore 64, they'd mockingly sing the jingle, which indicates just how well-known it was, at least where I lived.
I remember this time period as well, but I think I missed being involved in it first-hand by just a couple years or so. At the time the Mac was first introduced, I was avidly reading computer magazines like "Byte" that covered it in detail, and I had a friend who owned an Apple //e. But my only real hands-on computer experience other than that seemed to be Radio Shack TRS-80 machines. The school I was going to had a lab of Model III's and my neighbor down the street owned one too. Another neighbor spent big $'s on a "Model 12" for his heating and cooling business, so of course, us kids tried to find cool games and things to do with it also. (Not much for the Model 12 and 16 if spreadsheets weren't your idea of a good time, though!)
//e seemed *far* more fun to use, by contrast. It's interesting how Apple stubbornly ran with the Mac line though, and let the hugely popular // series die a slow death. (People were so hooked on their //e's that Apple had to sell a "compatibility card" for the Macs for a long time that let you run all your //e software on it and use your old //e joysticks!)
... but I can't help but wonder what we'd have if Wozniak was at the helm the whole time, vs. Jobs.
My first machine was a lowly Timex/Sinclair 1000 (only $99 at the local K-Mart!), so I chugged along with that for a few years before finally getting a Tandy Color Computer 2.
When I finally did get my hands on a used Macintosh, I remember being really unimpressed by the small, black and white display. It was sharp and crisp, but I just couldn't quite see what made it so great. My friend's old
Today, the Mac is great (and a FAR cry from the original models)
Slashdot spent its entire advertising budget on the Slashdot Cruiser, and so never made any TV commercials.
Okay, first, and the easiest. Those stupid Mac commercials that claim they are more "fun" than a PC. It's blatantly obvious they haven't mentioned PC Gaming (which, IMHO, is far superior than console gaming) because then it would fall flat on their face. Sure, a Mac has a lot of features out of the box than a MS Windows loaded PC. But if MS tried something like that, lots of people would (rightly so) be up in arms. Anyway, if people are willing to try Macs, they are willing to try Linux on cheaper hardware. Second, what's the deal with the IBM commercials making the user feel completely stupid. In fact, it makes the point of saying everyone except Big Blue is stupid. Why are they insistant on insulting their target audience?
Remember that 30 minute long informercial for the Macintosh? It must have been around the early-mid 90s
I love these little educational essays illustrated with video. Since we are such a visual generation when you count TV, movies, and games, I suspect educational material will be revolutionized by embedded video. Video gives life to the still media of text. Hypertext splits monolithic video streams into interactive chucks (better than DVDs). I suspect we are going to see some very creative essays and artworks in this new media soon.
Looks more like the history of PCs. No ads there for the IBM 360, VAX 11/780 or AT&T 3B2-600.
These ones are much more recent but they make me laugh every time I see them... but it might just be me!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpY2Ei02lKI: Powerbook
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHWDAomz2CY: I Mac
I'm not sure it was a Vector Graphic, but something like that in the 1980s. I remember that the computer was up on a stage and there was some applause or something and a man who said "What a mind" and then a woman says "what a body." Hilarious at the time, no doubt ultra-camp now. Probably the Vector 4