Customer Reviews

Pirates of Silicon Valley

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Pirates of Silicon Valley is a fantastic recount of technological history. Apple vs. Windows. Jobs vs. Gates. Pirates vs. Pirates. Almost similar to spy vs. spy. A must watch for anyone who is a tech geek and loves historical truth or fiction.

The two biggest boys on the planet today are Jobs and Gates. This movie provides a nice inside scoop of how they started in the beginning of personal computers. How different computers would be today if not from their influence. The acting was superb...you will not be disappointed!

Just as with the urban legend there are legends as how Microsoft and Apple came to being. This story based on a book by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, is about the story of two parallel personalities; one wants to make a dent I the universe, the other wants to keep his enemies close.

Many realities and key players were glossed over not to mention the CPM operating system. However if we delve into two may diverse parts of this story we would loose our focus and cohesion.

It is fun to watch the parallel growth of Apple's Steve Jobs (Noah Wyle) and Microsoft's Bill Gates (Anthony Michael Hall). Especially the ability to get into their heads and the many exacerbations or the other guy.

As a previous owner of an Altair, Commodore, TRS-80, and Apple among others this movie had a special interest for me.

If you're looking for a documentary that accurately explains the beginnings of the personal computer industry, then "The Pirates of Silicon Valley" is not it. You'd be better served watching the excellent 1995 PBS documentary "Triumph of the Nerds" instead.

If however, you're looking for an entertaining movie that gets most of the major details right, then you're in luck. The script is pretty bad (it's obvious that this was a TNT-original, made-for-TV movie), but Noah Wyle and Anthony Michael Hall do such a superb job, each *nailing* their roles of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, respectively, that it's worth watching.

This movie is based on the excellent book "Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer". However, that book was published in 1984, and this movie covers events slightly farther in the future. Many of the details are combined, left out, or sometimes fabricated (a.k.a. "creative license"), and I'm told that some of the additional information not in the book came from the director Martyn Burke himself watching "Triumph of the Nerds" (and having his actors watch it, too, to help them get in character).

Still, I'm a high school computer science teacher, and I have my students watch this every year to give them the big picture before following it up with "Triumph of the Nerds" to accurately place the details.

Overall, this is a decent movie, and the whole cast does a laudable job portraying their characters. The story is an interesting one, and despite the generally poor script and often seemingly needless inaccuracies, "The Pirates of Silicon Valley" is a glimpse behind the scenes at the events and personalities that built the computer industry as we know it today.

Very entertaining movie for people who are interested in how PC revolution begins. Showing the big pirates like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs how to build their empires by stealing other's ideas, like the "Mouse" which in fact played a critical factor in this PC revolution. The plot is very similar to the classic well-known Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds. Yet, it adds a alot of movie elements to make it quite interesting and fun to watch, especially the character of cool 'Steve Jobs'. It's a good video for personal collection if you want to enjoy the PC revolution era.

Anthony Michael really nailed his character and impressed me for the first time in a while--reminded me of just exactly WHY he was member of the BRAT PACK. Noah was as solid as always. Follows the paths of the creators of Macintosh and IBM--and their personal battles with one another.

This surprised me. I figured it for one step away from a Lifetime movie of the week, but Noah and Anthony Michael really deliver in their performances.

This movie is becoming a classic to me. It's funny, querky, dramatic at times. I really like all of the key players who have these sil-ICONS down to a T. Jobs is an ass and Gates is a dork but Wylie and Hall make them an endearing ass and dork. This movie is about a recent historical event that to me is uplifting and inspiring and a good notch in human history, an unfamiliar subject to the usual Hollywood crapfest. Put it to a good mix of tunes from the 60's through 80's and you've got a pretty cool movie. I could watch it hundreds of times and never tire of it.

Such a good movie, but too bad they don't offer it on DVD. It's kinda ironic...

The video is brutally honest about how Jobs neglects his daughter and abuses Apple employees. He seems to have had a hard time dealing with his own illegitimacy (he was adopted) It is no coincidence that he shaped the Mac project to be the "bastard" project that tears Apple apart from within. Too bad the movie didn't spend a little more time on this theme. I also loved the climactic scene where Gates and Jobs confront eachother. Although certainly fictional, it sums up the Mac/PC war brillaintly. Jobs shouts about how the Macintosh is a superior product, and Gates, almost whispering, answers "That doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter"

This takes you from beginning to present day.
Shows Paul Allen (who now OWNS the Seahawks and Trailblazers pro teams) Bill Gates, Steve Jobs etc. etc. Dropping out of college to pursue a slow burning fire that would become the personal computer/windows software that we know today.

What is interesting is that it shows who talks and who works. Gates lies a lot, pretty much living by the saying "telling people what they want to hear" while Paul Allen grinds away at making code.

On the other end it's the same somewhat, rogue cannon Steve Jobs handling the business part while we get a sense that Steve Wozniak is a true tech who goes above and beyond Jobs' rantings to produce the final product.

What is so funny is the irony of this movie:

Loan Officer: "Sorry Mr. Jobs, but we don't think the ordinary person will have any use for a computer".

HP: "You think people are interested in something called a mouse?".

Xerox: "We build it and then they can come right in here and steal it from us? It's just not fair, this operating system is a result of our hard work!".

Jobs to Gates: "You're STEALING FROM US!!!"

Assistant to Gates: "Do you realize Apple has a pirate flag over their front door, and they just gave us 3 prototypes of their operating system?"

Jobs: "I don't want people to look at it like a monitor and mouse, I think of this as art, a vision, people need to think outside the box".

Jobs: "You stole it from ussss!" Gates: "No it's not stealing, you see, it's like we both have this neighbor, and he leaves his door open all the time. You go over there to get his TV, only I've gotten their first..and now you're calling me the thief?!".

Just some of the excerpts that make this movie a classic and show you everything that went down when a bunch of college dropouts set out and changed the world in which we live today.