It was conceived by Steve Hayden, Brent Thomas, and Lee Clow at Chiat/Day, produced by New York production company Fairbanks Films, and directed by Ridley Scott.

The ad was a reference to George Orwell's noted 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which described a dystopian future ruled by a televised "Big Brother".

[2] In the US, it first aired in 10 local outlets,[3] including Twin Falls, Idaho, where Chiat/Day ran the ad on December 31, 1983, at the last possible break before midnight on KMVT, so that the advertisement qualified for the 1984 Clio Awards.

In 1995, The Clio Awards added it to its Hall of Fame, and Advertising Age placed it on the top of its list of 50 greatest commercials.

[11] The commercial opens with a dystopian, industrial setting in blue and grayish tones, showing a line of people marching in unison through a long tunnel monitored by a string of telescreens.

As she is chased by four police officers (presumably agents of the Thought Police) wearing black uniforms, protected by riot gear, helmets with visors covering their faces, and armed with large night sticks, she races towards a large screen with the image of a Big Brother-like figure (David Graham, also seen on the telescreens earlier) giving a speech: Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives.

The commercial concludes with a portentous voiceover by actor Edward Grover, accompanied by scrolling black text (in Apple's early signature Garamond typeface); the hazy, whitish-blue aftermath of the cataclysmic event serves as the background.

Ridley Scott (whose dystopian sci-fi film Blade Runner had been released one and a half years prior) was hired by agency producer Richard O'Neill to direct it.

Less than two months after the Super Bowl airing, The New York Times reported that Scott "filmed it in England for about $370,000";[3] In 2005 writer Ted Friedman said the commercial had a then-"unheard-of production budget of $900,000.

[16] Scott later admitted that he accepted brutal budget constraints because he believed in the ad's concept, outlining how the total cost was less than $250,000 and that he used local skinheads to portray the broken, pale "drones" in the commercial.

[17] Steve Jobs and John Sculley were so enthusiastic about the final product that they "...purchased one and a half minutes of ad time for the Super Bowl, annually the most-watched television program in America.

"In March 1984 Michael Tyler, a communications expert quoted by The New York Times, said "The Apple ad expresses a potential of small computers.

"[3] In 2004, Adelia Cellini writing for Macworld, summarized the message:[8] "Let's see—an all-powerful entity blathering on about Unification of Thoughts to an army of soulless drones, only to be brought down by a plucky, Apple-esque underdog.

'"[3] The estate of George Orwell and the television rightsholder to the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four considered the commercial to be a copyright infringement and sent a cease-and-desist letter to Apple and Chiat/Day in April 1984.

[27] The commercial was also prominent in the 20th anniversary celebration of the Macintosh in 2004, as Apple reposted a new version of the ad on its website and showed it during Jobs's Keynote Address at Macworld Expo in San Francisco, California.

[28] And the ad has also been cited as the turning point for Super Bowl commercials, which had been important and popular before (especially Coca-Cola's "Hey Kid, Catch!"

featuring "Mean" Joe Greene during Super Bowl XIV) but after "1984" those ads became the most expensive, creative and influential advertising set for all television coverage.

[39][40] In May 2010, Valve released a short video announcing the release of Half-Life 2 on OS X featuring a recreation of the original commercial, with the people replaced with City 17's citizens, Big Brother with a speech from Wallace Breen, the agents of the Thought Police with Combine Soldiers, and the nameless runner with Alyx Vance.