Pirates of Silicon Valley

Even for TNT, this is a great movie. Could have been cut around the edges with scenes like the kid's birthday, Jobs' relationship with his daughter that never connected with his role as the founder of Apple, and Xerox's ignorance in the triumph of both Microsoft and Apple. The entire movie is filled with 'monsters' if you are the anti-businessman. Then again, most of the movie's audience is businessmen or computer freaks. Hall's performance is outstanding. HE makes Bill Gates love-able and hate-able at the same time.

I loved this movie thoroughly. Many people may not "get" it properly due to their age, unfamiliarity with the characters, or general indifference to computers and stories involving them. For me, however, a computer enthusiast who was born in 1971, this movie is simply awesome! I was very young in those days but when I watched this movie, it totally brought me back to that time. Although I was young, I remember much of it and it felt right on. I thought this movie was well-written, well-acted, and greatly entertaining. It gave me a thrill to think of being at Apple when it started up. I also loved seeing the machinations that made Bill Gates rich and infamous. Sure they likely distorted facts and embellished things a lot, but such things are needed sometimes to make historical movies entertaining. I recommend this movie to any child of the 70's, especially if you are a computer fan. I gave it a 10!

This is definitely a must-see for any IT person or anyone just wanting to see a great movie. The cast is incredible, the acting is incredible, the story is also incredible. I wish that this had been released on dvd, I would be first in line to purchase it. It is basically the story of how Apple Computers grew, and how Microsoft grew, they met up, and Microsoft took over. Im not sure how historically accurate this is, however I do know the basic jist is correct. The real life "Woz" validated on his website the correctness of this movie. He also said that the way people are portrayed is how they were. Noah Wyle is excellent as a heartless and cruel Steve Jobs. Anthony Michael Hall is equally great as a geeky Bill Gates. I hope TNT replays it at some point in time, in case it does, RECORD it. I believe its also available for rent. SEE THIS MOVIE.

This is an engaging historical-fiction look at the development of the famous computer companies Apple and Microsoft. The performances are terrific, but the film suffers from trying to handle several main characters and cover a lot of historical events. It is also unfortunate that there are three main characters all named "Steve."

The story is told from the perspective of Steve Wozniak (Joey Slotnik), who is portrayed as a gentle head and caring foil to Noah Wyle's brilliant but cruel portrayal of Steve Jobs, Wozniak's Apple co-founder. Anthony Michael Hall obviously has a wonderful time playing the weaselly Bill Gates.

The title is a pun referencing both the buccaneering style Jobs celebrated at Apple, and the idea of unethically 'pirating' the computer developments of other engineers. The film's main point is that both Apple and Microsoft gained their key functionality, the image-based screen display of a computer system (GUI) and the 'mouse' pointing device, by 'pirating' the ideas. Apple swipes them from Xerox, then Microsoft swipes them from Apple.

This is a personality study and not a technical review, and while that may make it more accessible the film doesn't make it entirely clear why Jobs provides so much access to Gates and his crew (presumably Gates is supposedly modifying his computer language, BASIC, to work on the Apple?)

I'd have to know a lot more about Wozniak, Jobs, and Gates before judging them from this film, which is especially hard on Jobs. Wyle portrays him as a selfish and arrogant adolescent, exploiting and manipulating friends and subordinates. Altogether the film is worth watching, but bittersweet and possibly slanted.

I think this is the best movie about Steve Jobs. I love how Noah Wyle and Anthony Michael Hall captured the characters through their voices. Great!