Sculley was initially skeptical when he saw the storyboards, but Jobs insisted that they needed something revolutionary. He was able to get an unprecedented budget of $750,000 just to film the ad, which they planned to premiere during the Super Bowl. Ridley Scott made it in London using dozens of real skinheads among the enthralled masses listening to Big Brother on the screen. A female discus thrower was chosen to play the heroine. Using a cold industrial setting dominated by metallic gray hues, Scott evoked the dystopian aura of Blade Runner. Just at the moment when Big Brother announces “We shall prevail!” the heroine’s hammer smashes the screen and it vaporizes in a flash of light and smoke.

斯卡利最初看到故事脚本时持怀疑态度，但乔布斯坚持认为，他们需要具有革命性的东西。他得以拿到一笔空前的预算——75万美元来拍摄广告。雷德利·斯科特在伦敦完成了广告片的拍摄，为了表现群众如痴如醉聆听老大哥在屏幕上讲话的场面，他找来了数十个真正的光头来拍摄这一幕。女主角的扮演者是一位女子铁饼运动员。广告片以金属灰色调为主，渲染了一种冷漠的工业环境背景，斯科特以此诱发人们联想到《银翼杀手》的反乌托邦氛围。当老大哥在屏幕上宣布“我们必胜！”之时，女主角的锤子击碎了屏幕，一切在一阵光和烟雾中消失。

When Jobs previewed the ad for the Apple sales force at the meeting in Hawaii, they were thrilled. So he screened it for the board at its December 1983 meeting. When the lights came back on in the boardroom, everyone was mute. Philip Schlein, the CEO of Macy’s California, had his head on the table. Mike Markkula stared silently; at first it seemed he was overwhelmed by the power of the ad. Then he spoke: “Who wants to move to find a new agency?” Sculley recalled, “Most of them thought it was the worst commercial they had ever seen.” Sculley himself got cold feet. He asked Chiat/Day to sell off the two commercial spots—one sixty seconds, the other thirty—that they had purchased.

当乔布斯在夏威夷销售会议上展示这段广告时，人们激动不已。于是，他决定在1983年12月的董事会会议上播放这则广告。广告播放完毕，会议室的灯重新亮起来后，所有人都沉默了。梅西百货公司加利福尼亚分公司的CEO菲利普·施莱因（PhilipSchlein）趴在桌子上。马库拉静静地凝视前方，一开始别人还以为他是为这则广告的力量所折服。但接着，他问道：“有谁想另找一家广告公司？”斯卡利回忆说：“大多数人都认为这是自己看过的最差的广告片。”

Jobs was beside himself. One evening Wozniak, who had been floating into and out of Apple for the previous two years, wandered into the Macintosh building. Jobs grabbed him and said, “Come over here and look at this.” He pulled out a VCR and played the ad. “I was astounded,” Woz recalled. “I thought it was the most incredible thing.” When Jobs said the board had decided not to run it during the Super Bowl, Wozniak asked what the cost of the time slot was. Jobs told him $800,000. With his usual impulsive goodness, Wozniak immediately offered, “Well, I’ll pay half if you will.”

斯卡利此时信心全无，他让Chiat/Day公司廉价卖掉已经买下的两个广告时段，一个60秒，另一个30秒。乔布斯为此愤怒不已。一天晚上，沃兹尼亚克溜达到麦金塔办公楼——此前的两年时间里他一度淡出苹果公司，在苹果的工作并不固定。乔布斯逮住他说：“过来看看这个东西！”他找来一台录像机，开始播放“1984”广告片。“我一下子被震住了，”沃兹回忆说，“我认为它是最了不起的东西。”乔布斯告诉他，董事会决定不在“超级碗”大赛中播放这则广告，沃兹尼亚克就开始询问广告时段的价钱。乔布斯说要80万美元。在一贯的善意冲动下，沃兹尼亚克立即提出：“好吧，如果你愿意出一半钱，我就付另一半。”

He ended up not needing to. The agency was able to sell off the thirty-second time slot, but in an act of passive defiance it didn’t sell the longer one. “We told them that we couldn’t sell the sixty-second slot, though in truth we didn’t try,” recalled Lee Clow. Sculley, perhaps to avoid a showdown with either the board or Jobs, decided to let Bill Campbell, the head of marketing, figure out what to do. Campbell, a former football coach, decided to throw the long bomb. “I think we ought to go for it,” he told his team.

不过，他最终根本无须出这一半的钱。广告公司把30秒的广告时段卖掉了，但是出于消极反抗的心理，他们没有出售那个时长60秒的广告时段。“我们告诉苹果公司，60秒的卖不掉，而事实上我们根本试都没试。”李·克劳说道。斯卡利也许是为了避免同董事会和乔布斯摊牌，于是决定由负责营销的比尔·坎贝尔（BillCampbell）来考虑怎么做。坎贝尔曾担任过橄榄球教练，他决定用这60秒的广告间放手一搏。“我认为我们应该努力争取一下。”他告诉自己的团队。

Early in the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII, the dominant Raiders scored a touchdown against the Redskins and, instead of an instant replay, television screens across the nation went black for an ominous two full seconds. Then an eerie black-and-white image of drones marching to spooky music began to fill the screen. More than ninety-six million people watched an ad that was unlike any they’d seen before. At its end, as the drones watched in horror the vaporizing of Big Brother, an announcer calmly intoned, “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984.’”

第十八届“超级碗”大赛中，突击者队和红人队比赛的第三节刚开始，占优势的突击者队就触底得分。但是，电视没有即时重播这一得分画面，相反，全美的电视屏幕突然诡异地黑屏了两秒钟。接着，屏幕上开始出现一幕可怕的黑白画面——一支队伍踩着令人毛骨悚然的音乐前进。超过9600万人观看了这则和以往任何广告都不一样的片子。广告的结尾处，人群惊恐地看着“老大哥”的消矢，此时，旁白平静地念道：“1月24日，苹果电脑公司将推出麦金塔电脑。你将明白为什么1984不会变成《1984》。”

It was a sensation. That evening all three networks and fifty local stations aired news stories about the ad, giving it a viral life unprecedented in the pre–YouTube era. It would eventually be selected by both TV Guide and Advertising Age as the greatest commercial of all time.

这则广告红极一时。当天晚上，美国三大电视网和50个地方电视台都播放了关于该广告的新闻，让它在前YouTube时代获得了前所未有的病毒式的生命力。这则广告最终被《电视指南》（TVGuide）和《广告时代》（AdvertisingAge）评为有史以来最伟大的商业广告。