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Simpson’s Creator Matt Groening Helps Sell Macs to College Kids in the 80′s

An interesting artifact in tech history comes to light

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Simpson’s Creator Matt Groening Helps Sell Macs to College Kids in the 80′s

As Holy Kaw and Comics Alliance points out, Matt Groening once did a promotional pamphlet for Apple in 1989. It was first posted Reddit, whose users never skip a beat when it comes to pop culture curation.

The brochure is titled “Who needs a computer anyway?” and in 1989, that question was justified. The brochure itself alternates between Groening’s one panel comics and an extended sales pitch as to why you need an Apple personal compter. Here, some of the more boring parts of the sales pitch are left out, but you can see the brochure in its entirety here.

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This is probably the most telling panel of all. In 1989, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) was a big deal. Apple touts something that we now all take for granted with “instead of having to type out a long string of computerese, you can tell Macintosh to do anything-even the most complex procedures – merely by using a mouse to pull down a menu of commands and point to the one you want.”

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Macintosh actually financed their own computers in 1989. It makes a big difference when you are a fresh company trying to get new people to jump in on this whole new “computer” thing, verses people lining up around the block and following rumors months in advance to get their hands on new Apple products.

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What is clear is that Apple tried to market itself to young people and the artistic community from the very beginning. A trend that has paid off well for the company in recent years. Groening didn’t do too bad himself. This was published in the same year that the Simpsons made its network debut. Groening made a little money off that project.

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