Review of Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) by Ken B — 04 Jun 2010

A bi-biography. Its' scenes are selections from 1971-1996 of dueling anecdotes from the lives of Bill&Steve. Jobs is presented as someone always looking for identity: he experiments alot, defines himself as employee 0, makes the cult of Apple, etc. Gates is shown as silver-tongued and socially disconnected: he's able to negotiate all the deals he makes to his benefit, soothe the ego of raging Jobs, yet doesn't empathize, has trouble wooing women, etc.

The presentation demands a verdict: who's better? What's the better way to live?

SPOILER ALERT.

Socially they're successful in different ways: Jobs gets along better with the ladies but abandons his baby, wanting her to have the orphan experience he did. Seriously, I don't know why he leaves his chick and the movie makes it enough of a plot point the exploration feels insufficient. But the movie is better for the ground it covers and would be boring if it deeply defined only a few aspects of these men rather than going through the many situations it does. Bill is introduced as the man who most wins at poker: which blends luck, the ability to hide/mask your self, how well you read others, and knowing the game.

We see how adaptable and imitative people are. Jobs goes from being a hippy type to a suit: the very sort of enemy he hated. When in a position of authority he behaves as he thinks men in positions of authority do: bullying subordinates. Likewise, Bill goes from a fan and submissive to boastful, mirroing Jobs' personality.

Jobs' is the better fleshed out character because the movie covers his personal life. Bill's family and romance are left out. There's a scene where I think the President (formerly of Pepsi) implies Jobs hired him b/c he mistook the man for his blood-father.

Business-wise, Bill's better. An investment placed in Apple's lap the funding they need yet they lose ownership. In the long run, it's always better to own what you invest in lest its' control be wrested from you. For all his bravado, Jobs is shown as cowardly: he sells to people while Bill sells to IBM, a power Jobs hates but doesn't approach. In another example of reproducing personalities: Jobs is to Gates as Xerox was to Apple. Though the engineers/programmers at Apple saw what those at Xerox had invented, did they get copies of the source code? B/c that's what Jobs sent microsoft.

If the movie's accurate (and it leaves a lot of questions I'ven't been interested enough to investigate yet) then Gates didn't steal the OS as much as the start of it was given to him and he had the work finished.

The movie ends with Bill Gates victorious but in real life Apple may triumph yet. Oh nevermind, since they're owned they're just a sub-brand of MS.

Apple fans somehow misinterpret it as proof Macs are better than PCs that 1 Steam game's available for Macs (all are available to PCs). With the iPod, iPhone and iPad Apple has moved away from computers into other forms of entertainment: music, phones, and books. The Sony PSP already allows handheld movie viewing yet when the iWatch comes out folks'll swear it's way better.