Steve Jobs Introduces the Macintosh (1984)

Steve Jobs unveiled the Macintosh at Apple's shareholder meeting in the Flint Center in Cupertino on January 24, 1984, and the demo still lands four decades on. The machine runs its own slideshow of scrolling lettering and screenshots, then speaks in a synthesized voice: "Hello, I am Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag!" The theater is fun, but the lesson is what it was selling. The mouse and the graphical screen from the Engelbart era are pitched here to ordinary buyers as the whole point of the computer, not as a laboratory curiosity. Watch it right after the 1968 demo and the sixteen-year gap between the two becomes the story.