Steve Jobs Demos the First Macintosh in 1984

We orig­i­nal­ly post­ed this video back in 2009, and it seems like the right time to bring it back. It cap­tures the first of many times that Steve Jobs thrilled audi­ences with the promise of what tech­nol­o­gy could deliv­er. The video takes you back to Jan­u­ary 1984, when Jobs demoed the first Mac­in­tosh. (The event was famous­ly pro­mot­ed by Rid­ley Scot­t’s com­mer­cial dur­ing the Super Bowl. See below) A young Jobs, sport­ing a bow tie and a fuller head of hair, could bare­ly hold back his smile and some tears, and the crowd sim­ply could­n’t con­tain its enthu­si­asm, giv­ing Jobs a five-minute stand­ing ova­tion. That’s where the video ends, fad­ing hap­pi­ly and suit­ably to black. We’ll miss you Steve. Read the New York Times obit here.

For anoth­er great Steve Jobs moment, don’t miss his inspir­ing Stan­ford 2005 grad­u­a­tion talk where he dis­cussed his approach to liv­ing and urged the young grad­u­ates to â€śStay Hun­gry, Stay Fool­ish.” So far as com­mence­ment speech­es go, it’s hard to beat this one.

Both video men­tioned above appear in our Cul­tur­al Icons col­lec­tion — a media col­lec­tion that fea­tures great artists and thinkers speak­ing in their own words.


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  • Excuse me for repost­ing this from The Whole Earth Cat­a­log Online: The “Bible” of Steve Jobs’ Gen­er­a­tion com­ments… If it’s not accept­able please remove my post.

    Hel­lo every­one,
    Just want­ed to share my sto­ry with you..

    I’m a musi­cian from Rus­sia. Three months ago we record­ed a song inspired by Steve Job’s com­mence­ment address at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. This song means a lot to us, it was our first song record­ed and it lit­er­al­ly made the band. And now it has much big­ger mean­ing…

    2 weeks ago we e‑mailed Steve ask­ing to give his per­mis­sion to use his words as our lyrics. But we had no answer…

    Writ­ing the song we want­ed peo­ple to be inspired by Steve’s mes­sage — fol­low your hearts, don’t be afraid to do things your way, keep search­ing and don’t set­tle until you find what you real­ly love…

    Here is the song:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NywbS3FVqck

    Thank you if you find it inter­est­ing,
    Fedor

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