Hacker Cinema
Jobs
2013 · Film · 129 min
Directed by Joshua Michael Stern
The story of Steve Jobs' ascension from college dropout into one of the most revered creative entrepreneurs of the 20th century.
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67 comments on Hacker News
If you actually watched Jobs you would know it has very little to do with how Apple was actually created in real life.
Of course a movie about Steve Jobs is inherently more marketable than one about Qian Xuesen. But one isn't inherently more boring than the other.
> Making a movie about one of the creation of some of one of the most famous companies on Earth is obviously interesting.
That's not what "Jobs" is about. It's the setting of a character-driven dramatization of Steve Job's life and his personality. You do not grow a company like Apple merely by dominating rooms with your personality, dropping oneliners and speaking in absolutes. There's a lot of actual work involved, the details of which would make for a movie rather boring to most audiences.
"Jobs" is a movie about Apple as much as "Inglourious Basterds" is a movie about the US military in WW2.
I really don't think your argument is very convincing. Some of your examples are downright ridiculous? "Jobs" Making a movie about one of the creation of some of one of the most famous companies on Earth is obviously interesting. That's not comparable at all.
> That's mostly because a movie about someone who's an expert at building organizations is boring.
Still issue (seriously).
He might be an expert at building organizations in real life, but there is no rule that a movie about him has to focus on that part. Movies are not documentaries.
Examples: Oppenheimer, A Beautiful Mind, The Imitation Game, Jobs, Social Media, and literally every movie that sells tbh.
Tangentially, if you enjoy The Great Gatsby, you might also enjoy All The King's Men, which is a work of fiction that I think similarly richly described a swath of the American experience.
As for Gatsby, I think it's a great piece of fiction that invites a lot of readings, and everyone's invited to that ownership of the text. I think you can come away with the deeply shallow understanding of "the twenties were cool," and still be enriched by Fitzgerald's writing style.
I don't think anyone has made a good film adaptation of Gatsby and I don't know if anyone will, as long as it's adapted literally. The imagery and iconography of wealthy 1920s America eats so much of anything that tries to adapt it, that they tend to come out feeling shallow, and the writing is so dense that dialogue feels stilted and weird spoken out loud. You'd either need to, in my opinion, lean heavily into both, or abandon both, to make a good adaptation (leaning into both immediately feels like a Wes Anderson movie to me).
I think the best adaptation would be to do something like Jobs, where they just take a few scenes from the book and create a movie out of that.
While it's certainly not one of the finest movies ever made, it is the finest movie ever made about Apple, and a must-see for anyone in tech.
Noah Wyle was perfectly cast as Steve Jobs. In fact, Wyle participated in an amusing Apple prank at MacWorld 1999:
https://youtu.be/watch?v=TIClAanU7Os
What do you think about doing it with a sober friend to control you? I guess you could be alone in a room and they monitor you if you need help.
Also micro-dose. It's funny the movie Jobs 2013 it shows him doing acid and he's in the field, I'm like "Oh if I do acid I can be like Steve Jobs" not serious but was wondering maybe... unlocks your brain somehow.
It's a great movie, and I honestly like it more than the various Steve Jobs movies that came out after his death.
Also, I think the employee #0 is also discussed in Wozniak's biography 'iWoz', which is a great read, can recommend!
I like these shows/movies that chase something like:
* Jobs (2013)
* social network
* halt and catch fire
* silicon valley
* the internship
there's more can't think of right now
I'm looking forward to seeing this when it streams
That's what Steve Jobs did. Got featured in the Ashton Kutcher movie.
When he screams after getting hung up on--that's the 150th call he made that day. They were rude as shit with him. That rejection is too lightly touched on.
And it's like a club for a novat after you ask every girl to dance and nothing, then go ask every girl to dance again. Wander. No validation. Get their contempt.
He didn't add up to shit in the eyes of VCs. Nothing. His resume was just...and he didn't have chapitas, badges of eg graduating from the right schools, and then a smooth up-and-to-the-right career trajectory that had to trace an exponential curve. Dropouts were nothing then, like you could open up a photo booth be a hippie or yes be an inventor--sort of in the late seventies, very limited, not open to everybody by that point like in the 1920's.
VCs only got more open-minded by people like Jobs--him more than absolutely anybody--opening those skulls with the rippling effect of figurative kicks to the ass. Missing out. Getting bounced. And for a few with already open minds, absurd riches.
Work the club.
There was a video I saw a while back of one of these connecting to Google. It took a while but when it loaded it was surreal like wow, this old technology works today.
Also if you like this stuff there's popular channels out there like Adrian's Digital basement or 8bit guy, etc...
Side note: the movie Jobs (2013) was dramatized and all that but it had a cool scene, when those circuits drew something on a screen. I am aware of Xerox Alto and all that. But still the concept of making something so new... idk that's cool would like to be part of that. Also those chips seem more tangible than an i7 or something. You could almost mentally map which chip goes to what part of the screen.
I will say I'm past it though, I don't really covet old tech just because of performance. I do to some degree like old Chromebooks using Linux.
I don't think mellosouls means that those portrayals left Jobs aside. I think they mean we should put the 2013 movie, Jobs, aside (hence their italics).
(Wise, though I personally think Kutcher did a good job with what he was given.)
Jobs very famously liked (or at least whimsically came to terms with) Noah Wyle's amazing portrayal of him in Pirates Of Silicon Valley, getting Wyle to repeat his performance on stage at a a Macworld keynote.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIClAanU7Os
At the time, people thought that was Jobs doing damage control because Pirates made him look like an asshole. At this point looking back, it seems more like part of his self-reflective pivot to what came next.
Either way I am not sure it needs more treatment and more demonisation, but they were all pretty lucky with the care that went into their portrayals in Pirates Of Silicon Valley.
That movie is better than all the movies about Steve Jobs that came out since. It shows the good and the bad.
A better film than "Jobs" is the documentary "Steve Jobs Man in the Machine", free to see at:
https://www.documentarymania.com/player.php?title=Steve%20Jobs%20Man%20in%20the%20Machine
Mentioned in the CNN doc is the trick Jobs played on Woz in their first business deal. Jobs told Woz that Atari had paid them $700 to build the game Breakout and paid him half, or $350. But in fact Atari had paid them $7000, not $700.
Yet even after learning this, Woz continued working with Jobs and later co-found Apple. That says a lot about both men.
I think the ending aged like milk, i.e.: "Steve Jobs capitulating to Microsoft".
First of all, it's simply a mischaracterization, and second, today we interpret that moment very differently to the way it's portrayed in that movie. Steve Jobs turned Apple around spectacularly and went on to create the company with the highest market capitalization in the world, surpassing even Microsoft for many years.
Other than the ending, that documentary does a better job representing Steve Jobs' life than recent biographical movies.
There should be a documentary that covers Steve's life in his NeXT years.
Every kid coming into SF wanted to be Jobs after that movie.
I wish more of them had wanted to be like Woz. I think the "impact" of the world would have been much better.
Anytime Woz comes up, I can't help but think of this sentence that he wrote, way back on Google+, sometime in 2013, after the release of the Jobs film:
"And when Jobs (in the movie, but really a board does this) denied stock to the early garage team (some not even shown) I'm surprised that they chose not to show me giving about $10M of my own stock to them because it was the right thing. And $10M was a lot in that time."
I can give you the names of a handful of books that might be useful. Some are more technical, some less so. Some are more about personalities, some about the business aspects of things, some more about the actual technology. I don't really have time to try and categorize them all, so here's a big dump of the ones I have and/or am familiar with that seem at least somewhat related.
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering - https://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=fred+brooks&qid=1595010976&s=books&sr=1-1
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven-Levy/dp/1449388396/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=hackers+heroes&qid=1595010072&s=books&sr=1-1
The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage - https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espionage/dp/1416507787/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=cuckoo%27s+egg&qid=1595010272&s=books&sr=1-1
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet - https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832674/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2VVOETG6ECK3Y&dchild=1&keywords=where+wizards+stay+up+late&qid=1595008923&s=books&sprefix=where+wizards+%2Cstripbooks%2C192&sr=1-1
Open: How Compaq Ended IBM's PC Domination and Helped Invent Modern Computing - https://www.amazon.com/Open-Compaq-Domination-Helped-Computing/dp/1937856992/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=open+how+compaq&qid=1595009400&s=books&sr=1-1
Decline and Fall of the American Programmer - https://www.amazon.com/Decline-American-Programmer-Yourdon-1993-06-16/dp/B01FKSGVQ8/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=decline+and+fall+of+the+american+programmer&qid=1595011243&s=books&sr=1-1
Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer - https://www.amazon.com/dp/013121831X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=rise+and+resurrection+yourdon&qid=1595011380&s=books&sr=1-1
Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date - https://www.amazon.com/Robert-X-Cringely/dp/0887308554/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2U1MSOCMFGBLX&dchild=1&keywords=accidental+empires+by+robert+x.+cringely&qid=1595011791&s=books&sprefix=accidental+empires%2Cstripbooks%2C216&sr=1-1
Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle - https://www.amazon.com/Softwar-Intimate-Portrait-Ellison-Oracle/dp/0743225058/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=softwar+ellison&qid=1595009420&s=books&sr=1-1
Winners, Losers & Microsoft - https://www.amazon.com/Winners-Losers-Microsoft-Competition-Independent/dp/0945999801/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=winners+losers+and+microsoft&qid=1595009438&s=books&sr=1-1
Microsoft Secrets - https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Secrets-audiobook/dp/B019G2YO7M/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=microsoft+secrets&qid=1595009457&s=books&sr=1-1
The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture - https://www.amazon.com/The-Friendly-Orange-Glow-audiobook/dp/B0777XSZKW/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=friendly+orange+glow&qid=1595009476&s=books&sr=1-1
Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age - https://www.amazon.com/Troublemakers-Silicon-Valleys-Coming-Age/dp/1451651511/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=troublemakers+silicon&qid=1595009493&s=books&sr=1-1
Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire - https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp/0887306292/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=hard+drive+bill+gates&qid=1595009517&s=books&sr=1-1
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture - https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Culture/dp/0812972155/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=masters+of+doom&qid=1595009533&s=books&sr=1-1
The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and The Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer - https://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-Supercomputer/dp/0471048852/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+supermen+seymour&qid=1595009554&s=books&sr=1-1
Bitwise: A Life in Code - https://www.amazon.com/Bitwise-Life-Code-David-Auerbach/dp/1101972149/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=bitwise+life+in+code&qid=1595009570&s=books&sr=1-1
Gates - https://www.amazon.com/Gates-Microsofts-Reinvented-Industry-Himself/dp/0671880748/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=%22gates%22+paul+andrews&qid=1595009629&s=books&sr=1-1
We Are The Nerds - https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Nerds-audiobook/dp/B07H5Q5JGS/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=we+are+the+nerds&qid=1595009644&s=books&sr=1-1
A People's History of Computing In The United States - https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-Computing-United-States/dp/0674970977/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=people%27s+history+of+computing&qid=1595009661&s=books&sr=1-1
Fire In The Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer - https://www.amazon.com/Fire-in-Valley-audiobook/dp/B071YYZJG5/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=fire+in+the+valley&qid=1595009680&s=books&sr=1-1
How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone - https://www.amazon.com/How-Internet-Happened-Netscape-iPhone/dp/1631493078/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=how+the+internet+happened&qid=1595009697&s=books&sr=1-1
Steve Jobs - https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1451648537/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=jobs+isaacson&qid=1595009754&s=books&sr=1-1
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation - https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-Great-American-Innovation/dp/0143122797/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=idea+factory&qid=1595009769&s=books&sr=1-1
Coders - https://www.amazon.com/Coders-Making-Tribe-Remaking-World/dp/0735220565/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=coders&qid=1595010398&s=books&sr=1-1
Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software - https://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-in-Code-Scott-Rosenberg-audiobook/dp/B00AQ5DOCA/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=dreaming+in+code&qid=1595010517&s=books&sr=1-1
The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency - https://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-Brain-Uncensored-Americas-Top-Secret/dp/0316371661/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=darpa&qid=1595010561&s=books&sr=1-1
The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World - https://www.amazon.com/Imagineers-War-Untold-Pentagon-Changed/dp/0804169721/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=darpa&qid=1595010618&s=books&sr=1-2
The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - https://www.amazon.com/Technical-Social-History-Software-Engineering/dp/0321903420/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=history+of+software+engineering&qid=1595010761&s=books&sr=1-2
Also...
"The Mother of All Demos" by Doug Englebart - https://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY
"Jobs vs Gates" - https://www.amazon.com/Jobs-Vs-Gates-Hippie-Nerd/dp/B077KB96MC/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=pirates+of+silicon+valley&qid=1595009886&s=movies-tv&sr=1-2
"Welcome to Macintosh" - https://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Macintosh-Guy-Kawasaki/dp/B00E9Q2GG2/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=pirates+of+silicon+valley&qid=1595009886&s=movies-tv&sr=1-3
"Pirates of Silicon Valley" - https://www.amazon.com/Pirates-Silicon-Valley-Noah-Wyle/dp/B0009NSCS0/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=pirates+of+silicon+valley&qid=1595009886&s=movies-tv&sr=1-4
"Jobs" - https://www.amazon.com/Jobs-Ashton-Kutcher/dp/B00GME2NCG/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=pirates+of+silicon+valley&qid=1595009886&s=movies-tv&sr=1-5
And while not a documentary, or meant to be totally historically accurate, the TV show "Halt and Catch Fire" captures a lot of the feel of the early days of the PC era, through to the advent of the Internet era.
https://www.amazon.com/I-O/dp/B00KCXJCEK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=U6Z2PPRSDD0R&dchild=1&keywords=halt+and+catch+fire&qid=1595009969&s=movies-tv&sprefix=halt+and+c%2Cmovies-tv%2C188&sr=1-1
And there's a ton of Macintosh history stuff captured at:
https://www.folklore.org/
> Ashton Kutcher
The actor?
Did he start becoming involved in the tech scene after working on the Jobs movie?
That isn't Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs wasn't a suave political mover. You had to force him to wear a suit and take a shower (and then be lucky that he was in the mood to do either of those things that day) in the time period the movie is portraying!
"Jobs" may have had a lot of facts turned around, especially in reference to Woz, but at least they were portraying the actual person accurately.
The movie seems interesting, I will see it, the actor playing Jobs doesn't even look remotely close.
It's very easy to see patterns which aren't present. We as humans are quite good at doing this. How might I confirm that this pattern is present?
To start, let's look at movies that deal with "Scientists, Engineers, Doctors, Researchers, Inventors, Explorers and People who do Amazing Things", from http://www.imdb.com/list/ls050940841/ . These include Apollo 13, Fat Man and Little Boy, Einstein and Eddington, Shackleton, Creation, Captain Cook: Obsession and Discovery, Gorillas in the Mist, Temple Grandin, Jobs, and Reach for the Sky.
Of the 31 films (though two are not biographies or based on real-life), 2 are about women (Gorillas in the Mist, Temple Grandin), and the rest are about men. Einstein is certainly high on the list of mythologized people, so mythologization is not limited to women. (Feynman would be another. Infinity (1996) is a biopic about Feynman, but it's not on the list.)
Women appears underrepresented in that list compared to their modern presence in STEM fields. To be fair, the movies include Pasteur from the 1800s, and Harrison from the 1700s. Women were often strongly restricted from doing research in STEM fields during that time.
I saw one non-white person on that list, Vivien Thomas, from the 2004 film "Something the Lord Made".
"Reach for the Sky" from 1956 is "The true story of airman Douglas Bader who overcame the loss of both legs in a 1931 flying accident", and Temple Grandin is autistic. However, since 1956 is rather a long time ago, it does point out the need for a baseline - if the percentage of movies about disabled people has been stable, then it's not a growing pattern. As another example of someone who 'received the mythology treatment', consider "Helen Keller in Her Story" from 1954.
(Howard Hughes, in 'The Aviator' (2004), may also fall into the mentally challenged category, due to his obsessive-compulsive disorder which was present already by the 1930s. I haven't seen the film to see if it touches on his mental illness.)
Films about gay people would have been restricted under the Motion Picture Production Code, so not really seen in films from the 1930s to 1968. That would make it hard to establish a long term pattern. Still, as about 2% of the US adult population (1.2 to 5.6 according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States ) identifies as LGBT, then about 2% of the films about famous people in STEM should concern someone LGBT.
It should not be hard to come up with an evaluation technique, like "all biopics about people in STEM done as movies/made-for-TV movies in the US from 1970 to the present", and redo this same evaluation to see if there is a pattern.
The tricky part is to normalize it. If 2% of the population is homosexual, then what percentage should we expect to see portrayed as they are in movies? If 51% of the US population are women, and 27.9 percent of the PhDs in the physical sciences are women, what patterns should we expect to see in films?
Otherwise you might just be seeing the secular trend that more women are getting involved in STEM, that policies like the ADA make it easier for people with disabilities to get advanced educations, etc.
How have you done the analysis to determine if the patterns you see are due to the expected shift in population distribution of people in STEM, vs. any special sort of mythologization?
Being an engineer myself, I agree with you absolutely. Not having seen "Jobs (2103)", but based on the clips, it looks horrible how Wozniak was presented there.
There's that general problematic trend in modern societies:
http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/i30/Media-Portrayal-Scientists.html
"The public figures of society today are actors, singers, sports figures, top models, and so-called famous people. This fashion is strongly imposed by the media. In film, scientists are often presented as nerds or as evil."
> There's no movie about the iPhone team.
At least here a lot of engineers tell what they did:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/and-then-steve-said-let-there-be-an-iphone.html
However it's still clear that a lot of what was done was directly decided by Jobs. So he is rightfully credited as the designer of the iPhone, in the sense of "the final result of all the smaller inventions."
> Steve Jobs kept trying to invent the next big thing.
What did Steve Jobs invent actually?
He was just the marketing guy who got all the innovation credit. Still does actually... There's no movie about Woz (in fact they made him look like a bumbling idiot in the first run, and now a comedian will play him in the second run). There's no movie about the iPhone team. Nobody knows who did the real inventing behind anything Apple.
Moments like this from Woz give an insight to how some of the greatest engineering geniuses tick.
~~
Great moment showing Woz's genius and humanity:
> In 1973, Jobs was working for arcade game company Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California.[10] He was assigned to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout. According to Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50 by using RAM for the brick representation. Too complex to be fully comprehended at the time, the fact that this prototype also had no scoring or coin mechanisms meant Woz's prototype could not be used. Jobs was paid the full bonus regardless. Jobs told Wozniak that Atari gave them only $700 and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.[11] Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak
($5,000 USD in 1973 --> $26,805.29 USD in 2014 -- Jobs gave Woz $350 USD in 1973 --> $1,876.37 USD in 2014, about 7%)
yup, an absolutely amazing read, having recently finished reading it, I have even more respect for the guy and his work. I am really hoping the new jobs movie puts him in better light than what the last movie did.
Doesn't surprise me. I don't think anyone with mainstream popularity will take this role. It's been beaten to death. Pirates of Silicon Valley, Jobs, and countless documentaries. Bill Burr has some poignant thoughts on the topic too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmbwR9J6-Yw
> This really makes me lose a lot of respect for Mr. Jobs.
Jobs was a player. Look at how he played Wozniak, the mother of his daughter, & his daughter.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/tech/innovation/steve-jobs-movie/
This little story is great. It's anecdotes like this (and on the linked URL) that I would have liked to see in that Jobs movie. Paint a very interesting picture of Jobs, with fresh perspectives.
"Elon Musk made the electric car cool.
Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook.
Ashton Kutcher portrayed Apple founder Steve Jobs in a movie."
Which one of these things is not like the others?
This is the history of Technology Industry in movie form.
Pirates of Sillicon Valley... a direct to TV movie that is becoming a classict tells the early history of Microsoft and Apple. my personal favorite.
-----------< I would like to have a movie about the Dot.com bubble... but don't know of anyone representative >
Then the Social Network... to see the founding of Facebook
JOBS... the new movie about Steve Jobs is my least favorite, but gives an idea of the departure of Jobs and his return.
The first step to wisdom is calling things by their proper name. This is not elitism, simply stating facts. He wouldn't be called "Surgeon" if he were to advise a manufacturing company on how their tools should look nicer.
What you're witnessing in this thread isn't elitism as much as it is people who've ruined their eyes wanting to set the record clear.
Furthermore, that "Jobs" movie will probably appeal to most people because it's probably not accurate. It's probably a movie that will portray Steve Jobs as that genius who knew the future before everyone else, who've seen how Apple would be 20 years before everyone else. Anyone with more than 2 neurons knows it's a bunch of crap. You can't know how the end result will be designing a really small thing, let alone an empire.
In addition, it's "Cinema", not History nor Journalism. Want to read a good book? Read "Masters of Doom". That's how you get multiple opinions from people involved in the story, not some kind of lame movie based on the only authorized biography of a person, as brilliant as that person may be.
And lastly, come on, attacking Woz? If someone manages to get the respect of Engineers, you can be sure it's not because of his wits or Reality Distortion Field. Last time I checked, this is Hacker News. If there is any place elitism is the de facto constitution, it's in the Hackerdom.
Isn't his accusation true? I think Woz is an advisor on the other Jobs film that Srokin is working on. That doesn't make Woz a bad guy.
He's just a guy with some opinions
And not even very good ones at that: http://www.businessinsider.com/ashton-kutcher-fires-back-at-woz-2013-8
He actually now has a colorful history of saying and doing douchey things like this.
Edit: particularly the douchey thing here was him lying and attacking woz: ("He’s a brilliant man and I respect his work, but he wasn’t available to us as a resource, so his account isn’t going to be our account because we don’t know exactly what it was. We did the best job we could. Nobody really knows what happened in the rooms [...] Woz is being paid by another company to support a different Steve Jobs film."-- an outright lie; woz got back to them, and kutcher et al. didn't like making changes at odds with their preconceived narrative of how Jobs would be presented as the main hero as both a tech guru and frontman).
"Woz" would be a better title for a movie than "Jobs" anyway.
"Woz" would be a better title for a movie than "Jobs" anyway
Unlike "The Pirates of Silicon Valley", "Jobs" was painful to watch and it was not only because it was a bad movie but because I've already red the biography by Isaacson.
It felt like somebody was lying to me to things I know that are not that way. It was like a creationist teaching me the evolution theory.
I don't claim that The Pirates of Silicon Valley is completely accurate but but Jobs(movie) was out of line. It's not just that it got many facts wrong or lacked very important events, it felt so wrong on many levels, especially the way characters were portrayed.
Since I've written so much about this topic now and gotten carried away I will say that for someone new to the field of Steve Jobs Studies, the best introductory sources are the Isaacson biography and Pirates of Silicon Valley (movie) in my opinion. In fact I could order them like iTunes does for genres of music:
Essentials: Books: Steve Jobs (Isaacson), General Apple Narratives Movies: Pirates of Silicon Valley, JOBS (Kutcher movie - haven't seen)
Next Steps: Books: The Second Coming of Steve Jobs (Deutschman), From Pepsi to Apple (Sculley), iWoz (Wozniak) Movies: Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview; Famous Keynote Moments
Deep Cuts: Books: My 500 Days at Apple (Amelio), A Regular Guy (Simpson), The Bite in the Apple (Brennan) Movies: 1984 Mac Introduction, 1985 NeXT Brainstorming Documentary, NeXT Videos, Other Long Form Interviews, 1997 MacWorld Fireside Chat, More Obscure Keynotes
In the field of Steve Jobs Studies we're so lucky to have several pivotal figures write books (Simpson, Brennan, Wozniak, Sculley) but for the genre to really shine we still need a more comprehensive professional narrative. It's time someone wrote a purely business book set from 1976 through 2011 that didn't get sidetracked on outside-of-work personal issues. It would probably need to be about 1000 pages!
Just saw the movie "Jobs" where some time is spent on the features of the power supply. Having not heard of this before, I went searching and found this page. It is older and associated with the release of the original book biography, but still interesting. Figured others might share a curiosity about this facet of the story...
I know it sounds bad, but some "penalty" (adding a rating system for lies?) should exist for plain lies and fake revisionism in films. The extreme of this in another context are the laws against Holocaust denial: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial we can't obviously compare the Steve Jobs film with it, but the cinema has a long tradition of modifying historical facts without the typical disclaimer.
This is probably just a side effect of the legacy that led to this film being made in the first place... the mythology surrounding Jobs.
Kind of OT, but a little sad thing I noticed in the "Jobs" movie trailer (at least the version they are showing in Brazil) is that while the images are clearly showing Woz showing what he did (Apple I) and then he and Jobs working together all the time, the text was saying "It only takes one person... ...to start a revolution".
WTF?! One person? I am not even making any moral judgement here, I am just shocked of how schizophrenic it is. People don't even bother about coherence any more? And them the movie goes on to show another people joining, two more engineers, a investor. It was just weird...
No one's personality is the same throughout their life. As we each experience new things, we change to take them into account.
In this case, Woz is saying that the movie portrays Jobs as being a lot more focused, capable, and charismatic than he actually was as a young man. Letting the present color our view of the past is an easy story-telling trap to fall into.
Please. Woz's answer to the top thing wrong with the movie was that it overglorified Jobs as too much of a personality. But later he says Jobs was the best technology leader of our time.
This may not be a good movie and I believe that Woz believes what he says, but like any eyewitness I also believe his memory is colored heavily by his own POV.
Keep your mind clear and don't worship Jobs or Woz.
But a movie isn't just a movie. Every movie has a narrative that makes a point, and that makes it valuable.
If what we are hoping to learn from 'Jobs' or The Social Network is "How did this guy do it? What personal qualities can I emulate, what situations can I apply the same approach in", then it is only valuable if it is accurate.
After all, if the narrative is something the writer more or less made up (i.e. he's missed out the bit where Jobs goes into the wilderness and comes back another person), then what the movie teaches us is coming from the writers head. The writer didn't build a leading company, so I am not really interested in what he thinks about how to do it.
True. It's a good excuse, but still doesn't fly in my books. I do understand that fact based movies need to introduce some drama that requires some nips here and some tucks there, but not to the extent that Wozniak has claimed.
And he being there in person has some weight to what he says.
Jobs worship was already out of control during his second stint, with success of iproducts, but to revise the history to such an extent that it takes credit away from pretty much everybody who worked towards making Apple a successful company is not entertainment.
What really burns me is how the "Jobs" people treated his criticism as being motivated out of money. From Ashton Kutcher:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/mac-os-x/22659/jobs-ashton-kutcher-hits-back-woz
> "Woz is being paid by another company to support a different Steve Jobs film. It's personal for him, but it's also business. We have to keep that in mind."
Seriously? Woz is the guy who gave his Apple stock shares to co-workers he felt were slighted in the IPO. Hello, he's the guy who wanted to give his groundbreaking engineering behind the Apple away for free.
Woz is an engineering legend...but if there were a Hall of Fame for generosity and integrity, he'd be in there too. Shame on the "Jobs" people and it's great to see the lukewarm/negative reviews roll in for their shit sandwich of a biopic.
I love Woz's honesty. I actually think the issues he brings up would have made for a better film - because they illuminate all the ways Jobs failed early in his career... and ultimately learned from his failures to realize the success of his later iYears. Real conflict and real resolution. But that's a different film, it sounds like. (The one I wish they'd made).
Some would argue that one of the biggest things wrong is that this movie exists at all, and there's not one for people who had a much bigger influence on the world:
On the one hand, I can imagine where the computing world would be without the work that Jobs did and the people he inspired: probably a bit less shiny, a bit more beige, a bit more square. Deep inside, though, our devices would still work the same way and do the same things. On the other hand, I literally can't imagine where the computing world would be without the work that Ritchie did and the people he inspired. By the mid 80s, Ritchie's influence had taken over, and even back then very little remained of the pre-Ritchie world.
Taken from https://plus.google.com/112218872649456413744/posts/dfydM2Cnepe
I have the understanding that this movie was made in Hollywood, and therefore, Steve Wozniak complaining about the accuracy of the movie is irrelevant. Steve's main point is that the movie doesn't accurately portray Jobs in the early days and that he evolved into the character Ashton Kutcher plays. It's Hollywood, and its different perspectives. I think usually movies are 'based on a true story' not exactly a true story.
Woz has his own fame, so I don't see this as a jealous rant, but I do see it as a guy waving his arms screaming to the public "HEY HEY, I AM STILL HERE! PAY ATTENTION TO ME!"
EDIT ---- Yeah down vote me, my bet is you didn't watch the whole video.
The trailer for the social network was amazing and people were anticipating the movie.
I don't think anyone wanted to watch Jobs after seeing the trailer.
For what it's worth, The Social Network as a movie was very well-received by critics [1]. Jobs, not so much [2].
[1] http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the-social-network/
[2] http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jobs/
People had similar things to say about The Social Network. It was wrong about history, but it was also a good movie on its own. We will see if "Jobs", as a movie, can stand on its own.
Something that people forget about Steve Jobs was he was also a film producer. The films he produced at Pixar were in retrospect in the "timeless classics" category that appealed to a broad audience. On the flip side the Jobs film is more of a "story of the moment" that was rushed out quickly to capitalize on our recent memory of his death. And that to me is a very cheap thing, which is very un-Jobs like. Although in reality I suspect he wouldn't have taken the film too seriously if he were still alive judging by his good humored reaction to the Pirates of Silicon Valley film.
I saw an early screening of the movie. Here were my general thoughts:
1. Kutcher did a fantastic job as Steve Jobs. I was extremely pleasantly surprised by how well he portrayed the role and adopted Steve's mannerisms. You can even see his gait and speech evolve over the course of the movie.
2. My fundamental problem with the film was that it tried to cram so much into two hours that a lot of scenes felt fake and over-simplified to the point of being insulting. Extreme examples of this include the "I'm going to sue Bill Gates" scene and the Jony Ive scene.
3. The beginning is stupid and irrelevant. Also, Jobs's transition from idealistic hippy acid-dropper to steely-eyed businessman is portrayed in a manner of seconds and does not feel realistic whatsoever.
4. I still enjoyed the movie and would watch it again if it were on television. It certainly had emotionally moving scenes, and I wouldn't say it was a poor movie.
My summary from reading several reviews is that it's not high art, but it would be fine for a TV movie. It actually sounds like the criticisms are very similar to those for the Isaacson Jobs bio: serviceable but not insightful.
I'm not paying theater prices for it, but I'll probably see it on DVD.
Woz had a bit more to say later.. http://gizmodo.com/5978777/woz-says-kutchers-steve-jobs-movie-scene-never-happened
From the trailers & preview material I was worried the movie might be deceptive. Specifically the scenes with Woz and Jobs in the parking lot and later in the office. In an interview Wozniak said the parking lot conversation never took place and got the underlying feelings incorrect. That made me jump to the conclusion that the preview's portrayal of the office scene where Woz leaves Apple would be equally misleading. In context it is actually much more believable.
I was surprised by the technical accuracy (ha, what do I know?) and so I feel much better about recommending it to people who show interest.
There were parts that I enjoyed more than Pirates of Silicon valley, but also times when it felt long. Music was used to okay effect, but also drawn out.
Movie Spoiler: There is no recent history portrayed in the film.
Edit: A couple more thoughts. Contrary to the inaccuracies between Jobs and Wozniak mentioned above (and as noted in the linked article) the movie did accurately give Wozniak credit for doing the engineering on Breakout (and getting shortchanged in the process) which I felt was important.
The movie only really covers Jobs at Apple, a bit of University and family, so if you are interested in NeXT/Pixar/etc. you may be disappointed.
Just got back from watching the movie. Kutcher does a really good job channeling Jobs. A couple of scenes were over-dramatized, but overall it was a very watchable movie. It got off to a slow start, but after that it was well-paced and kept my interest. I enjoyed it and will probably see it again.
> I consider him an expert.
What do you make of this Wozniak's comments [1]:
"It's so awful and atrocious," said Wozniak, who said he got access to a copy of the movie's script. "Unlike the way Steve and I really dealt with each other.
"I didn't want to have much to do with that movie."
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/30/tech/innovation/wozniak-jobs-movie/index.html?hpt=hp_bn5
news.yc discussion of [1]:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5157396
semi-related: I saw the trailer for Jobs before Pacific Rim and it was cut to be laughably bad, like a Daily Show or MADtv sketch. I have low hopes for the movie, but the trailer seemed almost intentionally terrible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nryTz9iBqEI
Ashton Kutcher plays Steve Jobs in the new movie and did a crazy amount of research for the role.
He listened to hundreds of Steve's talks, studied art & topics that influenced Jobs, read Jobs' favorite books, obsessed over him for months, ate Jobs' diet, even learned to walk like Jobs (who has an odd gait, likely due to years of walking barefoot).
I got to see a screening of the movie yesterday with subsequent QA by Kutcher. Even though he's humble and doesn't claim to be an expert, it was borderline freaky how well Kutcher seems to understand Jobs. At least, from the point-of-view of someone who wasn't friends or family.
I consider him an expert.
Related: I like when RapGenius branches out from rap. I wonder if it will always be called RapGenius for non-rap content, or if they'll come up with a more general brand name. I think it'd be neat if RapGenius became as broad as Wikipedia.
Ashton Kutcher is portraying Steve Jobs in an upcoming movie.
I'm honestly not sure how I feel about this. My profession aside, I thought it looked hilarious because I'm a huge fan of both Owen Wilson, and Vince Vaughn. But on the other hand, as a professional in that general field, I also feel like it's just mocking the tech industry to some degree. I feel like it also "cheapens" the Google brand, or maybe it does the opposite by making them more relatable to non-tech users? None the less, I'm interested to see how this pans out compared to other movies somewhat similar like "The Social Network", and "Jobs".
Also, did anyone else notice that B. J. Novak (Ryan from The Office) was playing some sort of Google recruiter in the clip? Sort of funny because he makes a joke about that in an episode of The Office. Kind of funny, if they did that on purpose.
I think I disagree.. The rise of the "brogrammer" is proof that nerd culture is not only on the rise, but actually revered as the new "cool".
Look at television for example.. Asthon Kutcher is the highest paid actor on TV, and he basically stars as himself on Two and a Half men. Ashton is a product evangelist + angel investor. He makes nerds look awesome
Another example from (popular culture/TV) is Big Bang Theory. "Toward the end of its run, Friends was topping out around 20 million viewers, meaning Big Bang is now standing shoulder-to-shoulder with one of network TV's biggest and longest comedy successes."[1]
Movies like The Social Network + jOBS will further push the perceived nerdiness for Google into a good thing, not a negative thing. Our culture is shifting.
[1]- http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2013/01/big-bang-theory-ratings/60625/
Expect to see more of them together when the new Steve Jobs movie featuring Ashton comes out.
Cool photo although my favorite gates/jobs photo is from the Macintosh dating game in the early 80s
For those interested, here's the actual quote from Woz:
Totally wrong. Personalities and where the ideas of computers affecting society did not come from Jobs. They inspired me and were widely spoken at the Homebrew Computer Club. Steve came back from Oregon and came to a club meeting and didn't start talking about this great social impact. His idea was to make a $20 PC board and sell it for $40 to help people at the club build the computer I'd given away. Steve came from selling surplus parts at HalTed he always saw a way to make a quick buck off my designs (this was the 5th time).
The lofty talk came much further down the line.
I never looked like a professional. We were both kids. Our relationship was so different than what was portrayed. I'm embarrassed but if the movie is fun and entertaining, all the better. Anyone who reads my book iWoz can get a clearer picture.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5978777/woz-says-kutchers-steve-jobs-movie-scene-is-totally-wrong?tag=apple
I'm critical of Ashton, not the movie. He is a terrible actor. Terrible acting ruins movies. His tech savvy has no bearing on the movie. He isn't running apple, he is just playing Steve Jobs.