Benjamin franklin and albert einstein, this is the exclusive biography of steve jobs

The “1984” Ad
In the spring of 1983, when Jobs had begun to plan for the Macintosh launch, he asked for a 
commercial that was as revolutionary and astonishing as the product they had created. “I want 
something that will stop people in their tracks,” he said. “I want a thunderclap.” The task fell to 
the Chiat/Day advertising agency, which had acquired the Apple account when it bought the 
advertising side of Regis McKenna’s business. The person put in charge was a lanky beach bum 
with a bushy beard, wild hair, goofy grin, and twinkling eyes named Lee Clow, who was the 
creative director of the agency’s office in the Venice Beach section of Los Angeles. Clow was 
savvy and fun, in a laid-back yet focused way, and he forged a bond with Jobs that would last 
three decades.
Clow and two of his team, the copywriter Steve Hayden and the art director Brent Thomas, had 
been toying with a tagline that played off the George Orwell novel: “Why 1984 won’t be like 
1984.
” Jobs loved it, and asked them to develop it for the Macintosh launch. So they put together a 
storyboard for a sixty-second ad that would look like a scene from a sci-fi movie. It featured a 
rebellious young woman outrunning the Orwellian thought police and throwing a sledgehammer 
into a screen showing a mind-controlling speech by Big Brother.
The concept captured the zeitgeist of the personal computer revolution. Many young people, 
especially those in the counterculture, had viewed computers as instruments that could be used by 
Orwellian governments and giant corporations to sap individuality. But by the end of the 1970s, 

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they were also being seen as potential tools for personal empowerment. The ad cast Macintosh as 
a warrior for the latter cause—a cool, rebellious, and heroic company that was the only thing 
standing in the way of the big evil corporation’s plan for world domination and total mind control.
Jobs liked that. Indeed the concept for the ad had a special resonance for him. He fancied 
himself a rebel, and he liked to associate himself with the values of the ragtag band of hackers and 
pirates he recruited to the Macintosh group. Even though he had left the apple commune in 
Oregon to start the Apple corporation, he still wanted to be viewed as a denizen of the 
counterculture rather than the corporate culture.
But he also realized, deep inside, that he had increasingly abandoned the hacker spirit. Some 
might even accuse him of selling out. When Wozniak held true to the Homebrew ethic by sharing 
his design for the Apple I for free, it was Jobs who insisted that they sell the boards instead. He 
was also the one who, despite Wozniak’s reluctance, wanted to turn Apple into a corporation and 
not freely distribute stock options to the friends who had been in the garage with them. Now he 
was about to launch the Macintosh, a machine that violated many of the principles of the hacker’s 
code: It was overpriced; it would have no slots, which meant that hobbyists could not plug in their 
own expansion cards or jack into the motherboard to add their own new functions; and it took 
special tools just to open the plastic case. It was a closed and controlled system, like something 
designed by Big Brother rather than by a hacker.
So the “1984” ad was a way of reaffirming, to himself and to the world, his desired self-image. 
The heroine, with a drawing of a Macintosh emblazoned on her pure white tank top, was a 
renegade out to foil the establishment. By hiring Ridley Scott, fresh off the success of 
Blade 
Runner
, as the director, Jobs could attach himself and Apple to the cyberpunk ethos of the time. 
With the ad, Apple could identify itself with the rebels and hackers who thought differently, and 
Jobs could reclaim his right to identify with them as well.
Sculley was initially skeptical when he saw the storyboards, but Jobs insisted that they needed 
something revolutionary. He was able to get an unprecedented budget of $750,000 just to film the 
ad, which they planned to premiere during the Super Bowl. Ridley Scott made it in London using 
dozens of real skinheads among the enthralled masses listening to Big Brother on the screen. A 
female discus thrower was chosen to play the heroine. Using a cold industrial setting dominated 
by metallic gray hues, Scott evoked the dystopian aura of