Thirty years ago this month, a little-known company with an unassuming name began to transform the world. The company was Apple Computer and the signal event was a television advertisement broadcast during America's Super Bowl. The advertisement announced Apple's introduction of a new product in two days.

The commercial break came in the third quarter of the Super Bowl, the National Football League's annual championship game. The television screen filled with gray-blue images of a woman running with a sledgehammer, chased by riot police, interspersed with shots of workers marching together in single file or sitting in front of a video screen that projected images of Big Brother exhorting them to think together.

The woman stopped in front of the screen, spun three times and unleashed the sledgehammer, shattering the screen. At that moment, words scrolled across the video and a voice announced that "On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984.' "