The Fall Of An American Icon

The year was 1984. Apple Computer Inc. was the Magic Kingdom. It was the hip, young heart of Silicon Valley--the place where America was showing the world how the combination of technology and entrepreneurship could make a revolution. Apple created the legend of two kids in a garage inventing a computer--and then building a New Age company where the old corporate rules were scrapped. No dress codes, no formal meetings--nothing to get in the way of what really mattered: creating computers that, Apple promised, would change the world. In a building flying a pirate flag, co-founder Steven P. Jobs had spent three years with his engineers bringing such a computer to life.

On Jan. 22, 43 million Super Bowl XVIII viewers got a glimmer of what Jobs was up to. A single 60-second commercial, which cost $1.6 million and was shown only once, crystallized the phenomenon that was Apple. The infamous Big Brother spot was a teaser for the launch of the Macintosh two days later. It showed an athlete bursting into a drab auditorium packed with corporate drones watching a figure on a huge video screen. She hurls a hammer, smashing the screen. The message: A rowdy, anti-Establishment crowd was coming to liberate Corporate America with computers for "the rest of us"--with easy-to-use graphics and a push-button mouse. It was disturbing, in-your-face. And, yes, it was the product of Apple's well-oiled image-making machine. But it captured our collective imagination.