The Apple Archive is a stunning, unofficial tribute to Apple history
- jan
- 15
"Dedicated to the unsung studio designers, copywriters, producers, ADs, CDs, and everyone else who creates wonderful things."
What you need to know
- Sam Henri Gold has completed the creation of his unofficial tribute to all things Apple, The Apple Archive.
- The Apple Archive is a collection of Apple's adverts, photos, obscure clips and more.
- The goal of the project is preservation, and inspiring creativity.
Sam Henri Gold has completed the creation of his unofficial tribute to Apple, The Apple Archive.
"I give the people what they want, and they always want more." Kenya Moore, Real Housewives of Atlanta, Season 9
— Sam Henri Gold (@samhenrigold) January 15, 2020
The world’s largest Apple Archive is now live...again. I’m very proud of it, please enjoy/share. https://t.co/2TuYpNtCqm
The Apple Archive is a collection of all things Apple dating right back to 1977. Each year contains collections of old Apple commercials, videos, press releases and images, spanning 44 years of Apple history.
Speaking to 9to5Mac Sam said:
"The whole project began for me when the EveryAppleAds YouTube channel was taken down in April 2017," Sam says. "I was away in Massachusetts at the time, so I just started by going on YouTube and typing in "apple commercial 1976," downloading whatever I could, and stuffing the videos in an iCloud Drive folder. I only had a hundred or so videos when I started up a YouTube channel. I think it remained up for a whopping six days before my channel was abruptly removed without a trace. Had it remained up on YouTube, I think I would've neglected the archive a lot more than I have."
Now, his collection spans 15,000 files, nearly 1TB of data. It features PDDs, printed ads, WWDC sessions, clips, wallpapers and more. Sam said that through his creation he hopes to preserve Apple's history and inspire future creativity in younger generations:
"I think we've seen what a world without a public archive would look like, a world littered with tiny archive channels, maybe one or two god-awful screen recordings of keynotes with giant UNREGISTERED HYPERCAM 2 watermarks. That's not a world I want to live in. That's not a world anyone should have to live in. When I got my nana's 2006 iMac, I bought iWork solely to recreate Macworld keynotes I had watched on YouTube, right down to the slide transition. I don't know if there are still kids that do that, but I hope this project and the past three years of file management hell I've put myself in will help that kid with their Stevenote re-creation."
Whilst it would be within Apple's power to take this down, hopefully they have no such designs. The archive is a stunning tribute to Apple's work over the last 4 decades, and includes some incredible nostalgia and creations of yesteryear.
But don't take our word for it, check it out for yourself: The Apple Archive