Over less than 30
years, a band of shaggy nerds rose to become the richest
people on
Earth. They were the pioneers of the computer industry.
Steve Jobs and Steve
Wozniak were the whiz kids from Berkeley: forever inventing
little devices and gadgets, some for profit, some simply to
annoy people. At Harvard, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Steve
Ballmer discovered a shared passion for technology while running a perpetual poker
game out of their dorm room
While Jobs and Wozniak built the first
mass market personal computer the Apple Gates and Allen
were putting an operating system into the first computer
that had been made available to the general public: the Altaire. The two companies and their central personalities
Gates and Jobs moved ahead like the proverbial Tortoise and
the Hare. At first, Apple was breaking through all of the
barriers. Microsoft seemed like it was standing still. Then
it maneuvered itself into a kingmaker deal with IBM. Gates,
consumed by the hunger to win by any means, stopped at
nothing to be pre-eminent.
While you might think that a story about the creation of
computer companies might be as thrilling as your university
Pascal course, think again. Seeing this history played out
is thoroughly entertaining. Electronics students in the 70s
sneak up and hamstring some of the biggest names in the
field: IBM, Xerox and Hewlett-Packard. There are great
moments: Wozniak plonks his wood-encased Apple computer on
the desk of Hewlett Packard execs; they smirk and chuckle
and send him on his way. But when Apple releases its mass
market model at a trade show, Gates is pushed away from the
display by throngs of fanatics eager to see this new thing
called a "personal computer." Start to finish, its a great
ride.
On the Microsoft side of the tale, the manic extrovert,
Steve Ballmer narrates. In the Apple segments, Steve Wozniak
provides the back-story. On either side of this struggle,
you have two zealous and driven icons. Jobs, played by Noah
Wyle, is a child of the 60s: an advocate of peace and
spirituality who places art on a higher pedestal than
commerce. Jobs' charisma, drive and ideology form a
dangerous cocktail. He pushes Apple designers into such a
frenzy that they work 90-hour weeks and intensely compete
with each another. Anthony Michael Hall does an impressive
job mimicking Bill Gates. Gates is portrayed as obsessed and
impossibly nerdy. As self-possessed as Jobs, Gates' energies
turn to outmaneuvering his competition and tacking small
riders onto every deal riders that were guaranteed to make
Microsoft what it is today. While many stories could have
been told of the heady days of Silicon Valley in the 70s
and 80s, it's this competition that makes for a really good
tale. Under the strong direction and lean scripting of
Martyn Burke, Pirates of Silicon Valley is a most enjoyable
movie, for computer nerds and regular people too.
