Jan Brehm
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2022–2025
4:16 · 9.9M views · Mar 29, 2013
A short vintage clip introducing Microsoft Excel in 1990, widely known for its elevator-themed commercial. It shows how spreadsheet software was pitched in that era.
Cited as a famous 90s Excel ad and as a benchmark for how clear a product ad can be.
3 comments from Hacker News
Completely understand the sentiment, but it doesn't apply here, because what's being generated are formulas! Standardized 3-statement models in Excel are designed to be auditable, with or without AI, because (to only slightly simplify) every cell is either a blue input (which must come from standard exports of the company's accounting books, other auditable inventory/CRM/etc. data, or a visible hardcoded constant), or a black formula that cannot have hardcoded values, and must be simple. If every buyer can audit, with tools like this, that the formulas match the verbal semantics of the model, there's even less incentive than there is now to fudge the formula level. (And with Wall Street conventions, there's nowhere to hide a prompt injection, because you're supposed to keep every formula to only a few characters, and use breakout "build" rows that can themselves be visually audited.) And sure, you could conceivably use any AI tool to generate a plausible list of numbers at the input level, but that was equally easy, and equally dependent on context to be fraudulent or not, ever since that famous Excel 1990 elevator commercial: this video At the end of the day, the difference between "they want to see this growth, let's fudge it" and "they want to see this growth, let's calculate the exact metrics we need to hit to make that happen, and be transparent about how that's feasible" has always been a matter of trust, not technology. Tech like this means that people who want to do thin
Yeah, I'm kinda getting into these vids from the seventies and eighties. “Introducing The Amazing Compact Disc, 1982” [LINK] — “You can pick it up and move around, even shake, and nothing happens”, yeah sure bud. “Introduction to Microsoft Excel, 1992” this video “Susan Kare explains Macintosh UI ergonomics on the Computer Chronicles, 1984” [LINK] — the control panel is just astounding by modern standards, especially seeing as for me the control panel is a litmus test of an OS interface. Also one of my favorite music-making tutorials is the three-part, three-hour series ‘Intro to Synthesis’ from sometime in the early 80s: [LINK] — instead of going through all the terminology in ten minutes and one second, the guy takes his time twiddling knobs and showing what each one does.
That guy looks lazy and bad at his job. Compare that ad to this famous Excel ad from the 90s. this video The guy in the Excel commercial comes off as cool, confident, and skilled at using Excel. Both ads show off the speed of the tool in high stakes scenarios, but the Apple one makes the user look like an idiot. Also the Apple ad shows everyone with macs, so he has no advantage over everyone else.