April 30, 2005 Steve Jobs's Review of His Biography: Ban It By KATIE HAFNER
SAN FRANCISCO, April 29 - No one can accuse Steve Jobs of indifference.
In an image-obsessed fit of pique, Apple Computer has banished books published by John Wiley & Sons from the shelves of Apple's 105 retail stores - all because of Wiley's plans to publish an unauthorized biography of Mr. Jobs, Apple's chief executive.
... [I]ndustry insiders doubt that the book or Apple's retaliatory move will alter how Mr. Jobs is viewed in Silicon Valley.
"It is not possible, aside from things unimagined, to damage his reputation," said Mitchell Kertzman, a partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners in San Francisco. "Steve is on such a roll in both of his companies, he's earned the right to do whatever he wants."
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/30/technology/30apple.html>
Apple's 1984: The Introduction of the Macintosh in the Cultural History of Personal Computers
by Ted Friedman
Revised version of a paper presented at the Society for the History of Technology Convention, Pasadena, California, October 1997.
In the third quarter of the 1984 Super Bowl, a strange and disorienting advertisement appeared on the TV screens of the millions of viewers tuned in to the yearly ritual. The ad opens on a gray network of futuristic tubes connecting blank, ominous buildings. Inside the tubes, we see cowed subjects marching towards a cavernous auditorium, where they bow before a Big Brother figure pontificating from a giant TV screen. But one lone woman remains unbroken. Chased by storm troopers, she runs up to the screen, hurls a hammer with a heroic grunt, and shatters the TV image. As the screen explodes, bathing the stunned audience in the light of freedom, a voice-over announces, "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like "1984."
This commercial, designed by the advertising agency Chiat/Day to introduce Apple's Macintosh computer and directed by Ridley Scott fresh off his science fiction classic Blade Runner, has never run again since that Super Bowl spot. But few commercials have ever been more influential. ...
With the 1984 ad, Apple identified the Macintosh with an ideology of "empowerment" - a vision of the PC as a tool for combating conformity and asserting individuality. ...
<http://www.duke.edu/~tlove/mac.htm>
Carl