Desertman84 Pirates Of Silicon Valley is a great TV movie about the computer age and its two visionaries namely: the late Steve Jobs and Bill Gates,two men who who made the world of technology what it is today;their struggles during college;the founding of their companies; and the ingenious actions they took to build up their global corporate empires.The film also shows how computers came about,its history and development.Aside from that,it tells the history of Apple Computer Corporation and Microsoft.Pirates was an adaptation of the book,Fire In The Valley.The story opens with the creation of the 1984 commercial for Apple Computer, which introduced the first Macintosh.Steve Jobs is speaking with director Ridley Scott, trying to convey his idea that "We're creating a completely new consciousness." Scott, however, is more concerned at the moment with the technical aspects of the commercial.Then,it flashes forward to 1997 as Jobs, who has returned to Apple, is announcing a new deal with Microsoft at the 1997 Macworld Expo. His partner, Steve Wozniak, 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 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 of the film 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. They flee and after finding safety, Jobs states to Wozniak, "Those guys think they're revolutionaries. They're not revolutionaries, we are." Wozniak then comments that "Steve was never like you or me. He always saw things differently. Even when I was in Berkeley, I would see something and just see kilobytes or circuit boards while he'd see karma or the meaning of the universe."Using a similar structure, the film next turns to a young Bill Gates at Harvard University, in the early 1970s, with classmate Steve Ballmer and Gates' high school friend Paul Allen. As with Wozniak in the earlier segment, Ballmer narrates Gates' story, particularly the moment when Gates discovers the existence of the MITS Altair (causing him to drop out of Harvard).Gates' and Allen's early work with MITS 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 with the help of angel investor Mike Markkula. The story follows the protagonists as they develop their technology and their businesses. At a San Francisco computer fair where the Apple II computer is introduced, Gates,attempts to introduce himself to Jobs, who snubs him.Then follows the consequent 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. The main body of the film finally concludes with a birthday toast in 1985 to Steve Jobs shortly before he was fired by CEO John Sculley from Apple Computer.It also includes a brief epilogue, noting what happened afterward in the lives of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. The movie ends with Steve Jobs returning to Apple after its acquisition of NeXT Computer, and Bill Gates appearing live via satellite at a MacWorld Expo in 1997, during Jobs' first Stevenote keynote address, to announce an alliance between Apple and Microsoft.The movie has great acting especially by Noah Wyle who played the late Steve Jobs convincingly.The story was well written and the direction was not boring that you could watch it over and over again.I own the new DVD release version.I consider it one of my favorite movies considering I am Engineer in the computer industry.This is TV movie is not only for engineers and computer enthusiasts but people who want to know more about Gates and the late Steve Jobs.

vm_postitnotes Let's get one thing out of the way: real life does not make for good film. We are all aware of this. With that out of the way, I'd like to get to the real point: that this story records the history that really matters for the next generation. The creation of the personal computer and how it echoes into the future is what is detailed in this film.The Steve Jobs and Bill Gates featured in this film are not quite the real life Jobs and Gates, but they stand as what will be remembered - their efforts to create a system for the average person, and to build a financial foundation to continue to do so.It also highlights the flaws in Jobs' vision that caused his downfall: that he was willing to do so at the expense of his employees. His treatment of Wozniak and of his programmers, the feud between Apple II and Macintosh: this is real. It really happened. So was Gates' purchasing of CP/M and turning it into the operating system that ran PC compatibles for decades.And this movie highlights it in the format of a biopic that does not bore and does not dress up characters in clothes that focus on their virtues at the expense of their vices. Jobs and Gates are both shown, scars and all, in their battle for superiority in the world of computers, and if you care about computers at all (and you must or you wouldn't be reading this), you'll be caught up in it all.I would suggest at least giving this a rent if possible.

pyroboy1080 This movie is likely the best documentary of all time, and is quite entertaining as well. I thoroughly enjoyed the way that the actors portrayed their real life counterparts, and am completely satisfied with the direction and writing of this movie... Please ignore the remaining text, as it is required for my submission to reach ten lines. Bill Gates sucks. His company with their many billions of dollars cannot even write an operating system that remotely competes with that of Linux. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. You will get this output if you type =rand(1,2) into Microsoft word 2003 on a line, and then type an enter. This will make word do some sort of visual font test in which you can see "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." I hate censorship, as it won't allow users to type less than ten lines, and that it believes that a small opinion is one better off not having. I wish that this would be revised. Thanks for reading this entire thing if you have : ]

Ali Akbari The subject is very interesting. I love both Steve and Bill. However unfortunately the film could not conduct the hard efforts they put in their professional and personal lives. I saw the film once but I think some scenes were redundant and could have been left out and replaced with Bill or Steves' inspiring actions or competitions. I think the film should have been maybe 3 hours and of course more in details. The context music is wonderful and really impressing. Actors make up was splendid. Bill, Steve, Ballmer and others look like their real characters. Also they played very natural and close to their real counterparts. Nice job overall.