Sinclair QL TV advertisement 1985

In this commercial Sir Clive Sinclair leaps over IBM PC, Apple Macintosh and Acorn BBC computers to promote the Sinclair QL. The makers of Micro Men, the 2009 BBC4 docudrama, used this original TV ad as a plot for their Sinclair QL TV ad scenes. The legendary QL was launched on Jan 12th 1984 which was 12 days before Steve Jobs launched the Apple Macintosh. Targeting the (semi-)professional and educational market the QL offered preemptive multitasking, bundled Office suite, an outstanding BASIC and coloured hi-res windowing. While the Mac did it in the long run and is a mainstream product in the present and future, the QL went into dust. Before leaving the field, the QL inspired many experts and influenced today’s products in one way or another. Most prominent example is Linux, where its creator Linus Torvalds was a QL hacker back in the 80s. Learn more about the Sinclair QL’s history and 25th anniversary: Trivia: The Englishman Sinclair called the American Macintosh, Mackintosh. Very British! ;-) This vid is longer than the one I uploaded way back in 2007 and has the original audio track. It was quite a hard job to get my hands on this one.