Unseen Apple TV commercial footage from 1983 surfaces

A series of clips made for an abandoned TV commercial from Apple, made way back in 1983, have now been posted publicly on YouTube by former Apple team member Andy Hertzfeld, who now works at Google.

On the first day of the 2012 Summer Olympics, NBC aired three new Apple television ads, each featuring an unnamed male Apple "Genius" trying to help people with problems on their Mac products. The TV ads were slammed by critics and Apple quickly stopped airing the commercials, although their advertising agency later claimed they were always designed to be run only on the first weekend of the Olympics.

Now clips from a previously unseen Apple television commercial have found its way on the Internet, except the clips were made way back in 1983. Andy Hertzfeld, who was one of the original creators of the Macintosh and now works at Google, posted up the video on YouTube.

Technically, the video is not really a full commercial, but clips of interviews with various Apple team members, including Hertzfeld. They are all talking about how the Macintosh PC, which had not been released yet, was basically going to change the world.

In a post on his Google+ page, Hertzfeld says of the video, "It never aired because Apple deemed it too self-congratulatory, although it was used in some promotional materials sent to dealers." Instead, Apple released the "1984" TV ad that ran during the Super Bowl that year. Yes, there is nothing "self-congratulatory" in that clip.