Apple Promotional Video, Fall 1984

Here are three videos made available on YouTube by mickeymoosf. They were taken from a late 1984 laserdisc intended to be running at an Apple dealer’s store. It apparently had touchscreen capabilities, as at one place the notice comes up about touching the screen to select a topic.

This is the first part of the of three-part video series:

It focuses on an introduction to the expandability of the Apple IIe; using the ProFile hard drive with the Apple IIe, with Quark Catalyst to install protected software onto that hard drive; the Apple Numeric Keypad; the DuoDisk; the Apple Mouse II; the “Apple II Family” (which, likely to the chagrin of Apple III fans, includes the Apple III Plus); a mention of special Christmas 1984 coupons and the Apple credit card; the Apple III Plus as a “business solution”; and the portability of the Apple IIc (in 1984 terms, having a computer small enough to put in your briefcase and carry elsewhere was portable, even if it was not useable away from a desk and monitor).

This is the second video:

It discussed the Apple IIc in greater detail, including home and office use; the Apple Scribe printer; the Monitor IIc; an introduction to Apple and its products in general; the ease of use of the Macintosh and Lisa (at this point, the focus was firmly on the Mac, with the Lisa mentioned only insofar as it was compatible with the Mac); the Macintosh in more detail, including its ease of use and 512K of RAM; the expandability of the Macintosh, looking at printers, modem use, external numeric keypad, its “portability” (sorry, but you would never have caught me putting a Mac on a bicycle and riding in traffic, with or without a case!), and its compatibility with the Lisa 2/10.

And finally, the third video:

Now, it is hard for a die-hard Apple II user like myself to still not bristle just a little bit at the grandiose descriptions of the power and ease of use of the Lisa and Macintosh as the first couple of clips in this video try to point out. If Apple had used back then the same terminology that they use today, the Lisa and Mac would be more accurately a “hobby”, as Steve Jobs described the Apple TV. There is no question that the more mature Apple IIe/IIc and even the Apple III were faster to use than the early Macs and Lisa were. So we who were using the Apple II loved to point out then how much could be done with our old computers compared to the newer non-color computers. Anyway (end soap-box mode), this video also promotes the Apple Daisy Wheel printer, Apple ImageWriter, and Apple Color Plotter; the Apple Modem 300 and Apple Modem 1200; the Apple credit card; AppleCare carry-in service plan; and Apple leasing.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.