Anybody who has seen the famous 1984 commercial for the first Mac knows that Steve Jobs seemed to see himself as battling the forces of “evil” in the form of IBM’s corporate culture and bland PCs. Now, an internal employee motivational video entitled 1944, which was Apple’s humorous take on the 1984 video, has begun making the rounds online thanks to former Apple employee Craig Elliott, who provided a copy to Network World .
The video, Network World reported, was “designed to fire up Apple’s international sales force at a 1984 meeting in Hawaii.”
In the video, during which Apple’s sales team is represented as allied soldiers during the Second World War, Jobs played FDR, who, while chomping down on one of the former President’s trademark cigarettes in a holder, told one of his generals “you and your brave fighting force have a rendezvous with destiny. Your battle will be long, it will be hard, but it will be won. I am sure your victory will be great.”
After hanging up the phone and turning to the camera, Jobs uttered the phrase for which he is famous: “ Insanely great.”
The rest of the film showed allied soldiers saving a room full of Zombie office workers by replacing their PCs with Macs. Strange, but like most Apple commercials, internal or for commercial distribution, pretty funny…
Here is the snippet with Jobs:
And here is the complete video:
