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Cringely's take on "Pirates of Silicon Valley"
whitefox writes "Robert X. Cringely gives his two cents on the TNT movie. He makes an interesting point against the sloppy screenwriting and how most people will accept the movie as the truth and never know the "real" history behind the biggest fortune in the world - not like that's ever happened before. "
This always happens when a community starts to embrace its own unique stories. I mean, do you *really* think that Odysseus was really out adventuring that whole decade? (I have it on good authority that he actually spent the better part of those ten years recovering from the party they had after sacking Troy, which rates as one of the top three parties of all time).
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Triumph of the Nerds was a superior piece of documentary work.
Many people (including my mother) watched Pirates and were intrigued. I told them to watch Triumph to get the real (and whole) story, but a non-geek can not seem to commit to a loooonnnnngggg docu about computers. Sigh.
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Anyways, his basic take has been that while they certainly mixed up times and places, they did accurately portray the personalities. He even said that yes, he would skip the meal at those fancy shin digs and go to Dennys later. He didn't know how they knew that. It cracked me up when he said that in the movie, and I busted a gut when I found it it was actually true.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Yes, Woz and steve were portrayed well. Most of us accept that, or acept Woz's statement of that 'cause we all think he's way cool and stuff.
But it was HISTORICALLY inaccurate. They changed a lot of things to make the story work. And Cringely is right to be concerned that people will start to take this version as fact.
While the Apple guys were portrayed accurately, the Microsoft side was both weak and inaccurate. I'm not saying that because I think Bill Gates should have been portrayed as a monster or something. Hell, I like the man -- as long as I don't have to use any of the software his company produces. I respect his business abilities, even though they don't mesh with my personal philosophy on software. I would have like to see more about him and his personality.
Finally, what I felt to be the big moment of the whole thing -- when Bill tells jobs that he too is a thief, is completely baseless since Apple licensed the GUI stuff from Xerox for cash and stock. I could just chalk that up to historical inaccuracy, but when the culminating point of the whole movie is based on something so false it raises concerns.
All in all I think Cringely makes very valid points. Comparing Pirates and Triumph is probably a mistake since they have different intents and different audiences, but it's important for people to understand that they completely warped history to get the ending they wanted. Sure the characters were presented accurately, but things just didn't happen that way.
What I found interesting was the part where he unplugged that guy's computer in the middle of the night. From what i understand it's essentially true, except i think the circumstances were a bit different. I think he pulled the plug on someone's computer who was working on the Liza (or is it lisa?) after he came up with the idea for the mac, killing hours of work, all because he had just come up with the next insanely great thing. IMHO the man is a complete and total nut, who gets a lot of credit for being a revolutionary which he really doesn't deserve. I think the only reason people like jobs and hate gates is because gates won and jobs lost. If things had turned out the other way i'm sure we'd have steve jobus of borg, and the revolutionary bill gates who got cheated out of his work by that big bad apple company. As far as I can tell, woz is one of the few people who actually did anything of importance regarding the technical details, and he gets virtually no credit for his accomplishments.
As for cringely, i think he's just mad that triumph gets no recognition beyond geeks, where pirates was aparently popular among those "normal people." He's just jealous, that's all. And with regards to the historical inacuracies, it's a movie, not a documentary, you know "base on a true story," those types of things are never perfectly accurate. Real life seldom makes a good story, or atleast a good story that can be compressed into a 2 hour (probally more like 1 when you factor out the commercials) period.
-matt
Or if you live in/near San Diego, get it at the Store of Knowledge.
Daniel
'Pirates' was about the personalities behind the PC revolution. My mom spent 10 years working for Apple and being within what she calls the "Apple culture". She has met Woz, Steve Jobs, and all of those CEO's that apple went through. I was able to watch the movie with her and she said that the personalites that were portrayed in the movie were 100% accurate, and that the strange unity/devisiveness within the apple culture was accurate as well.
She was brought aboard apple in 1987 when Apple was phasing(sp?) out the Apple ][ series and trying to convince people to buy these new Macintosh's. Her job was to sell to school districts and to convince them that this was the way to go. Then last year, she was laid off due to the downsizing of the education sales force.
When all is said and done, she says she really liked Woz, that he was indeed a kind human being who was into the art of being a geek, and that Job's was an "arrogant SOB". Plus I got some pretty cool stuff out of growing up in a house where I had lots of cool hardware around me, and going down to the engineers area at the Apple offices was always fun. Plus, I got a dollar bill signed by Woz, which, if you know the story about Woz and $2 bills and the US government coming after him for defacement, it was pretty hard to convince him to sign it. And I got a little nameplate from one of the original Lisa boxes that I have taped to the front of my new G3 (which, incidentally, runs Linux and not MacOS).
-Ben
bensmith@biz1.net
I think for this movie, the atmosphere was much more important than the facts. The producers seemed to be trying to capture the mentality and competitiveness that surrounded these two icons of the computer industry, and I think they did a good job of it. So what if a few of the events were slightly askew or out of order. My mother actually commented to me after watching that movie that she would love to destroy her computer after realizing how much of an asshole both Gates and Jobs are. Although that is obviously overkill, I think it is a important attitude. A lot of people in American society idolize Gates and Jobs (and many others), and to be honest, these guys really are not very good ideals. This movie helps show that.
Two books to read:
(1) "Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing" by Randall E. Stross
(2) "Apple (The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders)" by Jim Carlton
You can check the reviews at Amazon.
It has been mentioned several times that PoSV is meant to be a purely entertaining piece. But I think the real point is not so much the acuracy of its technical details so much as it is the type charcaters it portrays.
Although the "film" is technically inaccurate and has a garbled, misleading time line, it shows quite well the content of the charcaters hearts. Even if the "non-geek" viewers out there think its fact (which they polly don't because most people are smarter than that), they still leave with the sence that these two guys (Gates and Jobs) aren't wonderful people that we should admire. I think that is the real point of the piece and I'll wager that a good number of the "non-geek" community realises that.
Give them a little credit - will ya. Most people aren't that stupid.
For the most part, as of now, this article confused me in that "what the hell is this" kind of way. They guy wanders off point halfway through, and ends up talking about AOL and loans and deals and.....huh?? But the first part that was on subject was interesting in the "oh look, this guy's kind of conceited isn't he?" kind of way. He didn't like the movie because the documentary was better (I gather that he made said documentary, so that may not be the most objective opinion), and because in the movie, Bill Gates went to IBM, while really it was IBM who went to Bill Gates. That was the only reason he gave that I could find. That comment blew me away. It's poetic license! And it's so small that it's hardly worth mentioning. I'm glad that the scriptwriters changed it; I mean, how entertaining would it have been to see the IBM executives running towards their plane on their way to Microsoft with "Synchronicity I" playing in the background? :)
Was the TNT production completely and utterly correct? Probably not. But what is except reality itself? But was it entertaining...? AY! There's the rub. And yes it was. I thought so anyway.
The kryptonite comments in the article just plain threw me off.
"Get out of my way! Can't you see I'm trying to save the world!!" -Xion