Two things about Darren Rovell's CNBC.com story about the famous Apple Macintosh Super Bowl ad shocked me:

• That it aired for the first and only time (at least as an ad, not a cultural icon) 25 years ago today, during the broadcast of Super Bowl XVIII (when the Los Angeles Raiders crushed the Washington Redskins, for you sports fans); and
• That the Super Bowl was once played as early as January 22.

The NFL season has slowly gotten longer and longer, hasn't it? Anyway, Rovell has an interesting interview with Mike Murray, Apple's marketing manager for the then-brand-new Mac. The best thing to come out of the interview was the fact that Apple's board of directors hated the completed ad, which was inspired by George Orwell's novel 1984, and never wanted it to air. But they couldn't sell back their 60-second spot and had nothing else to put there.

So, basically, a lack of productivity on the part of Apple's marketing department allowed us to see what became the most famous Super Bowl ad ever. You can see the ad after the jump.