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If one thing life has taught me after graduating it is that nerds rule the real world in contrast to the jocks, bullies and other cool people whose life consisted out of partying and having fun. The richest people in the world nowadays were social outcasts during the time they went to school. Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, people who changed the world in their dorms and garages while other people went out partying. How entertaining could the life-story of these people and the companies they built actually be. Pretty much so it seems.
Because the road to success and becoming the richest people in the world as well as creating companies whose products are found in basically every western home is bumpy and filled with lies and deceit this movie is not just a nice document but also very entertaining. Infotainment at its best.
To fully apprehend the magnitude of what these people have accomplished just look at what you’re doing right now: you are probably reading this in Safari or Internet Explorer. and if you’re using Firefox than chances are you’re probably running it on either Windows or Mac OS. Bottom line: the people whose story is being told in this movie have invaded the world with their products.
Made for TV the movie does feel limited to that medium in terms of exposure. While it is an entertaining movie and much detail has been put in sets and keeping the script tightly paced it does feel rather small scale. Then gain these lives were pretty small scale until they made a certain product.
The fun part is to see how things originated from wooden computers with little black and white monitors to computers that resemble the ones we use today. How Bill Gates sold air to IBM and had to buy DOS from somebody for $ 50.000 which he then licensed to IBM who responded to this with: the money is in the hardware anyway. If only they knew. The same goes for companies like Xerox and Hewlett-Packard who have the goose with the golden eggs in their hand and show it to the door laughing as if they need such rubbish.
The characters created and the stories told are for some people revolting. The on stage always friendly and enthusiastic Jobs turns out to be a real megalomaniac as a boss forcing his employees into 90 hour work weeks not even seeing how he is destroying moral and his own company. Bill is less of a surprise, but turns out to be pretty jealous of Steve’s acclompishments as Apple is growing and growing and he’s trying to steal the design of the Mac OS.
The Pirates Of Silicon Valley is infotainment at its best. Anyone with the slightest interest in computer will find this story fascinating, and those who do not will probably enjoy the story just as well.
