Pirates of Silicon Valley is a 1999 film based on the book Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine. It is a made-for-television docudrama written and directed by Martyn Burke which documents the rise of the home computer (personal computer) through the rivalry between Apple Computer and Microsoft. The film stars Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates and Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs.
In 1984, Steve Jobs (Noah Wyle) is speaking to director Ridley Scott (J. G. Hertzler), who is in the process of creating the 1984 commercial for Apple Computer which introduced the Macintosh personal computer to an American audience for the first time. Jobs sees the commercial as a poetic statement of consciousness-raising, but Scott is more concerned at the moment with its technical aspects.
Flashing forward 1997, Jobs has returned to Apple, and announces a new deal with Microsoft at the '97 Macworld Expo. His partner, Steve Wozniak (Joey Slotnick), is introduced as one of the two central narrators of the story. Wozniak notes to the audience the resemblance between "Big Brother" and the image of Bill Gates (Anthony Hall) on the screen behind Jobs during this announcement. Asking how they "got from there to here," the film turns to flashbacks of his youth with Jobs, prior to the forming of Apple.
The first flashback takes place on the U.C. Berkeley campus during the period of the early seventies student movements. Jobs and Wozniak are shown caught on the campus during a riot between students and police. Jobs and Wozniak flee the riot, and after finding safety, Jobs states to Wozniak that it is they, not the protesters, who are the true revolutionaries. Despite spiritual dimension in which Jobs views their work, Wozniak simply sees their computer work in terms of kilobytes and circuit boards.
Meanwhile, a young Bill Gates at Harvard University, his classmate Steve Ballmer (John Di Maggio), and Gates’ high school friend Paul Allen (Josh Hopkins) are conducting their early work with MITS, which is juxtaposed against the involvement of Jobs and Wozniak with the Homebrew Computer Club, eventually leading to the development of the Apple I in 1976. At a computer fair, Gates, the then-unknown Microsoft CEO, attempts to introduce himself to Jobs, who snubs him.
The film then follows the subsequent development of the IBM-PC with the help of Gates and Microsoft in 1981. Meanwhile, Apple has developed The Lisa and later, the Macintosh, computers which were inspired by the Xerox Alto (a computer which the Apple team viewed during a tour of Xerox PARC during the late 1970s). Gates would later refer to this event when he tells Jobs during an argument, "You and I are both like guys who had this rich neighbor—Xerox—who left the door open all the time. And you go sneakin' in to steal a TV set, only when you get there, you realize I got there first. And you're yelling? That's not fair? I wanted to try and steal it first!"
In 1985, Steve Jobs is given a birthday toast shortly before he is fired by CEO John Sculley from Apple Computer. A brief epilogue notes what happened afterward in Jobs' and Wozniak's lives.
In 1997, Jobs returns to Apple after its acquisition of NeXT, and Bill Gates appears live via satellite at a MacWorld Expo, during Jobs' first Stevenote keynote address, to announce an alliance between Apple and Microsoft. That alliance immediately crumbles as the first copies of Microsoft Windows hits the streets overseas, solidifying Bill Gates as the leader in personal computers. It notes at the end that Gates, at that time, was the richest man in the world.
If you all want to know the history of Apple and Microsoft, you should watch this film, a rivalry between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
In 1984, Steve Jobs (Noah Wyle) is speaking to director Ridley Scott (J. G. Hertzler), who is in the process of creating the 1984 commercial for Apple Computer which introduced the Macintosh personal computer to an American audience for the first time. Jobs sees the commercial as a poetic statement of consciousness-raising, but Scott is more concerned at the moment with its technical aspects.
Flashing forward 1997, Jobs has returned to Apple, and announces a new deal with Microsoft at the '97 Macworld Expo. His partner, Steve Wozniak (Joey Slotnick), is introduced as one of the two central narrators of the story. Wozniak notes to the audience the resemblance between "Big Brother" and the image of Bill Gates (Anthony Hall) on the screen behind Jobs during this announcement. Asking how they "got from there to here," the film turns to flashbacks of his youth with Jobs, prior to the forming of Apple.
The first flashback takes place on the U.C. Berkeley campus during the period of the early seventies student movements. Jobs and Wozniak are shown caught on the campus during a riot between students and police. Jobs and Wozniak flee the riot, and after finding safety, Jobs states to Wozniak that it is they, not the protesters, who are the true revolutionaries. Despite spiritual dimension in which Jobs views their work, Wozniak simply sees their computer work in terms of kilobytes and circuit boards.
Meanwhile, a young Bill Gates at Harvard University, his classmate Steve Ballmer (John Di Maggio), and Gates’ high school friend Paul Allen (Josh Hopkins) are conducting their early work with MITS, which is juxtaposed against the involvement of Jobs and Wozniak with the Homebrew Computer Club, eventually leading to the development of the Apple I in 1976. At a computer fair, Gates, the then-unknown Microsoft CEO, attempts to introduce himself to Jobs, who snubs him.
The film then follows the subsequent development of the IBM-PC with the help of Gates and Microsoft in 1981. Meanwhile, Apple has developed The Lisa and later, the Macintosh, computers which were inspired by the Xerox Alto (a computer which the Apple team viewed during a tour of Xerox PARC during the late 1970s). Gates would later refer to this event when he tells Jobs during an argument, "You and I are both like guys who had this rich neighbor—Xerox—who left the door open all the time. And you go sneakin' in to steal a TV set, only when you get there, you realize I got there first. And you're yelling? That's not fair? I wanted to try and steal it first!"
In 1985, Steve Jobs is given a birthday toast shortly before he is fired by CEO John Sculley from Apple Computer. A brief epilogue notes what happened afterward in Jobs' and Wozniak's lives.
In 1997, Jobs returns to Apple after its acquisition of NeXT, and Bill Gates appears live via satellite at a MacWorld Expo, during Jobs' first Stevenote keynote address, to announce an alliance between Apple and Microsoft. That alliance immediately crumbles as the first copies of Microsoft Windows hits the streets overseas, solidifying Bill Gates as the leader in personal computers. It notes at the end that Gates, at that time, was the richest man in the world.
If you all want to know the history of Apple and Microsoft, you should watch this film, a rivalry between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
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