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Early Apple Employees Talk Memories of Steve Jobs, Thoughts On New Movie
Nerval's Lobster writes "Daniel Kottke and Bill Fernandez had front-row seats to the birth of the personal computing industry, as well as the most valuable technology company in the world. Both served as employees of Apple Computer in its earliest days: Kottke working with the hardware, Fernandez developing the user interfaces. Both have some strong opinions about the new feature film Jobs, which dramatizes the personal and professional escapades of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and his more technically inclined partner, Steve Wozniak. Kottke consulted on early versions of the script, attended the movie's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in February, and is currently planning to see it again shortly after its release on August 16. Fernandez, on the other hand, hasn't seen it and doesn't intend to, because he considers it a work of fiction and thinks it will upset him. In this lengthy interview with Slashdot, both attempted to distinguish the facts and longstanding geek legends from the instances of pure creative license exercised by the filmmakers."
I think it will be funny and entertaining to see if they make him into the second coming. If nothing else it should be entertaining.
Metacritic and Rotten don't seem to be encouraging this movie.
"For a man whose singular vision alienated many – a point illustrated by Kutcher's straight-talking, temper-riddled reading of Jobs – those closest to him are barely given time to voice their concerns, let along develop as characters. Jobs's Apple co-founder, self-taught software whizz Steve "Woz" Wozniak (Josh Gad), already a vocal critic of the film, is presented as a mere backdrop. We learn little about Woz: where he came from, how he met Jobs, or what happened after he quit Apple, dissatisfied with the direction in which the company was heading."
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jan/28/sundance-festival-jobs-first-look-review
Heres a link to info about the film itself: Jobs (film).
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Oh, those were the days. We used to laugh, and then he would deny us stock options, and then we would go to a bar and drink, and then he would curse at us and fire us. Oh man, were those great times!
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
The one true geek character in the entire Apple saga. Well that is enough for me to not bother with it.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Woz is the legend. Jobs was the PR machine.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
For balance here is comedian Bill Burr talking about Jobs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iGm4dl0Ys4
Bill Burr - Night of Too Many Stars 2012
Sounds like Daniel Kottke would be a great person to know. Let him roll about those days. Thanks!
Let's face it, most of us are scoffers. But moments before zero hour, it does not pay to take chances.
I sympathize with Bill Fernandez saying he won't see the movie.
Would Steve Jobs please come back to life so they'll stop eulogizing him. I can't believe they made a movie about him. I haven't seen any about Tesla. He was a good product design guy and made some money. 'nuf said. He's dead. Who cares?
apple greybeards slowstroking to memories of a benevolent leader. the man is more of a pop culture consumer electronics icon than he ever was a tech mogul, and the jobs film will see to it the legacy remains intact. it will pander heavily to fanboys and moviegoers alike as it eschews fact for fiction in the pursuit of product placement and marketing tie-ins. We'll ignore guys like Jonathan Ive, who were basically instrumental in making the iPod pretty. the throngs of coders and UI designers and engineers will go unsung as a christgod is made whole in the pursuit of ensuring jobs is to our world as Stark was to his.
TL;DR: apple enjoys a 90 minute infomercial.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It really amazes me how badly some people want history to read that Apple started the computer revolution. If there is any one group responsible for starting the home computing boom, it was the Homebrew Computer Club and the advent of the Altair . Please stop trying to make Apple history happen differently than it happened. If anything, Jobs and Gates were douc^H^H businessmen and acted as such trying to screw everyone else over in order to gain wealth and power.
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Wish more Silicon Valley histories were told in this fashion. Fantastic reading.
Woz gave St Jobs pancreatic cancer by spiking his yoghurt with polonium.[*]
[*] Payback for the breakout ripoff of 1976. Just you wait, it'll come out after Woz is dead. OK, I'm wrong about the polonium being the mechanism, that's just not correct. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
it's not "pure creative license," it's revisionist history.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
He's already been reincarnated as a celestial warrior-philosopher.
http://www.dmc.tv/pages/en/Where-is-Steve-Jobs/20120822-The-Hereafter-News:Steve-Jobs-where-is-he-now-Part-1.html
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Good piece. Did any of you read TFA?
Doesn't seem to match the comments. I don't usually read it, I just crap on it like everyone else does, but you should read it.
Maybe they could let these two guys go through it and edit out the crap like they did with Phantom Menace :)
People don't want "the real story" of Apple or even of Jobs.
They don't care about Woz's tech wizardry making Apple computers what they were or the other people (or institutions, *cough*PARC*cough*) that made Apple what it is.
They want a story about a hero, a guy who through sheer force of personality made an iconic computer company and then came back and "saved it" and made it even better than it was, creating the iPhone, etc.
A story about a narcissist who serially manipulated people, refused to support his pregnant girlfriend, and relied on the achievements of others to promote himself and his company and created an image as the guy who was responsible for all of it isn't what people want in a story.
(You could also take a Chomesky-esque view, and say that this is what the corporate power structure wants -- people to believe that CEOs are singular geniuses, alone responsible for a company's success...)
Hired in the summer of 1979 and working in the Bandley Iii bullpen... Woz's was always what the company was all about... The color production trick, the state machine trick, the integer basic, and the playful hard-working attitude made my time at apple a joy. Jobs was a prick who for example told Wendell sanders where exactly on the motherboard to put the ill fated and single sourced national semiconductor clock chip and denied a friend who now works at oracle the PRE iPod stock option that jobs personally promised earlier "you should have reminded me". Jobs, what a dick
I hate to break it to you, but without Woz it is highly likely that nobody would even have heard of Jobs.
And without Jobs it's pretty unlikely most of us would have heard of Woz. It was a partnership and while it lasted a pretty remarkable one. Woz was a technical genius and Jobs was a sales/design genius. You need both to be successful, especially in a startup.
I was a low three-digit employee (engineer). I met jobs and knew all the players including Dan Kottke.. Dan was the most modest and happy early-timer I knew at Apple. Andy H. was happy but he was always baked so it was hard to tell. I didn't know until years later that Dan was employee twelve from the garage days, he was that self-effacing.
Admission after thirty years: I took the diagonal cutter with the gumby green handle from Woz's office and never returned it. I still have it. Who knows what role it played in building the earliest apples. I guess I should send it back to him with an apology. Nah, he would track me down and prank me.
According to the reviews I've read the movie isn't very good. It's an amateurish portrayal where they never really delve all that deeply into Jobs' life. They want to glorify Jobs as an incredibly driven innovator, but while trying to humanize him manage to make him quite an unlikeable character. Aston Kutcher is as bad as everyone expected him to be; he's over-the-top and none of it feels authentic. It's like he's ticking off a checklist of tics, expressions and reactions.
Apparently, the writer of The Social Network is working on his own portrayal of Jobs. The expectations are that it will be a far better movie.
In reality, Steve wasn't that nice a fellow. Actually he was quite a douche much of the time. Reality doesn't fill a theater.
I can empathize with Bill F. not wanting to see it. I'd prefer to enjoy the "fond" memories privately, without influence by fictional scenes added to make the movie more interesting to the 20-30 yr olds.
the way that mr. fernandez comes across in the interview, it sounds like there is a single definitive history that only he knows about and resistant to share. it's not like movies are used as definitive pieces of history, it's essentially folklore at best.
Does this movie even mention Lisa? Or the Apple Lisa?
First Kutchner punks Charlie Sheen, now this. fookin' hipsters with their whitewash hipster movie can fook right off.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You never know .... but from everything I've read about the man, I don't think his ordering Apple to end donations to those programs was necessarily something he did out of hatred?
Most companies do this primarily for the sake of getting tax credits and publicity. Considering there's little record of Jobs making donations to charities on even a personal level, I'd say it's as likely as anything he simply found it distasteful to donate non-anonymously?
When you have the type of income he had, it becomes a disadvantage not to give to charities, really. You have to find ways to reduce taxable income, sometimes, or at least you come out ahead by maximizing the tax write-offs possible by doing so.
So, is this a Slashdot article about a Slashdot article? News must be slow today.
- I stole your sig.
Jobs was a salesman. Wozniak is the engineer.
I refuse to pay $10/ticket to watch a two-hour-long commercial for Apple.