Most of you whippersnappers will be confused by this ancient commercial from Apple, in which a family's Christmas Eve is ruined by the DOS prompts required by their brand new "Multimedia Computer." But trust your Grandma Eve, this is not an entirely inaccurate representation of what things were like in the early days of home computing. Not at all.
Aired by the Cupertino company in 1994, when the Macintosh vs PC battle was just getting into gear, you can watch two parents get increasingly frustrated as they attempt to enter seemingly random strings of letters into their Christmas gift of a PC, insert and remove a CD-ROM (kids, ask your parents), and eventually call their computer company's customer support, which apparently answers the phone on Christmas Eve! Guess that's the one thing the past has got going for it — none of that infernally-useless "instant-message live with support now!" crap.
In the interest of equal Mac/PC war representation (and also because it is kind of cute) here's an IBM commercial from Christmas, 1984. Grandma wants a radio AND writing paper!
