Equity · Friday, August 7, 2026
Jill Lepore references Apple's 1984 Super Bowl ad for the Macintosh as a moment where the promise of better computer technology for democracy was symbolized. She notes that while Apple marketed the personal computer as an instrument of liberation against totalitarian mainframes, it's unlikely they truly believed this, and for users, it was primarily a 'cool tool'.
“You know, I think the moment you would first look to would be 1984, January 1984, that Super Bowl ad that Apple ran for the release of the Macintosh, with the the sort of George Orwell 1984 moment, that Apple was big on the idea that mainframes represented totalitarianism.”
“And the live, beautiful, quick, adorable personal, um, Macintosh would be the axe that destroyed that machine and would usher in an era.”
“I mean, I remember what I got my first Macintosh, certainly wasn't 1984. But, you know, it was really cool, it was really fun, it was really exciting. I did a lot of things on it.”