Call me a nerd but I was excited to see an Apple commercial on TV at the time and they always aired super late with a 1800 # to call. This was before Apple Stores existed and most computer stores were kind of intimidating at the time for a 10 year old kid. Our first Mac was a 33MHz Performa 550 in 1994 with 5MB of RAM and 160MB HD, today I have an 4GHz M3 Max MacBook Pro 16" with 48GB RAM and 1TB storage.
I love how the grandpa isn't the one set in his ways! He's having fun with it and, despite his confusion, is willing to learn the new technology. I was expecting him to be the grumpy one and not the dad.
One computer for six people! In a typical American middle class family like this one, today there would be more PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones in the house than people.
You can tell they're shopping at CompUSSR. Even back then you'd have to search out a PC that didn't have a sound card or a CD ROM drive. My first computer in 1989 came with a sound card. We added a CD ROM drive in 1991 I believe. Of course if you just bought a computer at that point, it would've come with one. All in all, I LOVE this infomercial. It's so cheesey. :) Thanks for posting it.
This playing after the Kids' WB block is what got me to beg my mom to finally get a computer and so she got a Performa (which we had to share). I don't care what anyone says about the Performa or any Mac from the 1990s, I had fun with the games on it it and the Power Mac and iMac G3 that came after. My subsequent Macs however have gotten have gotten more internet-friendly but less game-friendly and funnily enough I get less happy 🙃 Thx Steve Jobs
Back in the day when 7 people sharing 1 computer was normal. In 2015, a family like this would have more desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones than people.
Holy shit I the part at the end where they talk about points triggered a vague memory. I must have watched this back in the day. I haven't seen the rest but I remember the dad awarding points to random shit. I nostalgia'd, I lose.
@justus4justice Also, using the command prompt may have been needed for some advanced settings, but the same goes for any operating system including Windows 7 and MacOS X. Basic things could be set via the GUI, and advanced settings are not for average users anyway. The point is that this commercial suggests that Windows didn't have a GUI at all, whereas the truth is quite the opposite. If Apple lies to you about that, how can you trust anything they say?
Except that if you looked closely, you'd notice that it was actually Windows 3.1, not 95. Even on Win95 though, I do remember having to do quite a bit at the command prompt. Not to mention, both 95 and 3.1 were essentially just shells that sat on top of MS-DOS. If you ever needed to troubleshoot something, you were likely going to be at the command line.
Well, you can consider the occasional "special events" Apple does nowadays as LIVE infomercials. Whenever they introduce the latest generation Mac/iPhone/iPad/Apple Watch that will be available in weeks, that means it's a cue to save up as much of your hard-earned money as you can! (By the way...At the time of this infomercial, I was originally planning on getting a Mac myself after my school was equipped with almost every one of them, but Windows 95 would change my mind completely)
I remember watching these. They ran for a few years (different families I think. I could be wrong.) For a few years watching these were a part of the Christmas season for me. Looking back of course they are now cheesy and funny. But at the time it was kinda techy.
MULTIMEDIA!!!!! I never knew what that word meant, but I remember wanting a computer that had it when I was younger. All you ever heard was multimedia, multimedia, multimedia!!!!!! Come to find out, it just means the computer has sound and can play movies. BTW, what the hell was pops using?? That computer he was using at work looked to be at least 12 years old. Was his company failing???
I thought Gramps lived in the nursing home with Jerry Seinfeld's Grandmother. Did the Martinettis put him there after he invited a stranger to the house?
i remember fighting with my brother and mom to go online (aol) everyone wanted to be online. then i remember when napster came out it was amazing...free music!!
I use the Power Macintosh G3 at least during a few days. I still have to re-install the whole operating system (Mac OS 8.5) from the USB flash drive because Mac OS 9.2 is a piece of rubbish.
I too recall watching this back in the day , and dreaming I could afford one . The computer really made this family better for having owned it . Yet , little TJ seems in fear that without points , the computer would disappear . It is pretty clear at the store scene that it is just a question of who was paying for it , Dad , or Grandpa . They made a wager on who got stuck with writing the check . Q These days , all the family , including the dog would say " what do I care " as no matter how ma
I had this computer. It was great to take the pictures from the writer's craft and mutilate them. This didn't have AOL at this time it was called EWORLD. I used to troll chat rooms on it. There was a really awesome picture of genital warts in the Family Doctor. I printed it out in my 3rd grade class.
This is hilarious.... So what was the price for the Mac? I bet still around $1500 hahaha Technology is crazy... those fat monitors all need to go away completely.
@justus4justice "Not to mention, both 95 and 3.1 were essentially just shells that sat on top of MS-DOS" Dude, you don't want to know what Mac OS was back then... No wonder it was thrown away in 1999 and replaced with a third party operating system based on Unix and FreeBSD. By the way, what you refer to as "shell" is called GUI (graphical user interface), and operating system GUI's always sit on top of the kernel, so I don't think the word "just" is justified in your sentence.
I'm buying a MacBook Pro in the near future. MacBook Pro is the future of Macintosh. So I decided to head to the Apple Store at Baybrook Mall with Mimi, Bubba, Alexis and Brittany to test out the MacBook Pro computer before buying one. MacBook Pro: It has Wi-Fi. It tracks down your Windows Phone. It also does multimedia and games and so much more. It also does TV and Video. It has Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks. It has a Intel processor. It goes where you go. It goes where my girlfriend goes. Here is a example of Disney Princess My Fairytale Adventure running on Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks (see next video about Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks).
