Six members at Warsash this month, after a couple of last minute absences. After Q&A (mostly iPhone notifications and settings that might have meant missed calls), Stuart showed some of the many, many interesting/amusing/gobsmackingly awful adverts, promotional videos and keynotes from Apple over the years. Time constraints meant there will be a second installment, we only got to 1998. Going back to 1980, we had a couple of ads for the Apple II, then more on the Lisa, the classic Ridley Scott '1984' Macintosh ad, Steve Jobs presenting it a couple of days later, the 'Pencil Test' animation from 1988 (created entirely with Macintosh II systems), promos for the Mac Quadra and PowerBook from 1990 & 1992, and a 'demo' of planned future Mac OS Copland from 1994 (not really a demo as Copland never worked properly). Then from 1997, part of the disastrous Macworld keynote by Gil Amelio, including Steve Jobs in rather superior presentational form (the whole show ran to three hours....), and an account of why it turned out so badly by its writer, Michael Markman (his video is much more entertaining than Gil was!). We concluded with the original 'Think Different' ad, Steve announcing Apple's return to profitability after years of struggle, and his launch of the Mac that really launched the turnaround, the very first iMac.
