earthling-00301
I've watched my share of movies, loved many of them, feel changed and awed by many of them; I look for reviews from the pros and amateurs alike, looking for other opinions to confirm or challenge my own. But this is my first ever review.My spouse just happened to find this gem on Netflix last evening, and once it got started, I was completely enthralled. An intimate interview like this gives those of us of only average aspiration a powerful glimpse into the workings of one truly great innovator. I have heard Mr Jobs had a reputation, among those who worked closest with him, as being extremely difficult to like. So I started watching this interview with a pre-jaundiced perspective. I am pretty sure you don't compete in the world in which Steve Jobs dominated without being hard to please sometimes, almost pathologically so.But it is important to put those impressions aside, and just listen to the man talk as if you didn't know who he was or what he was yet to do. He freely acknowledges the auspiciousness of his natural skills nurtured by the environment in which he grew up. He speaks candidly of his mistakes. He talks about his infatuation about computing machines, and the importance of learning a computer language because it forces you to learn how to think in new ways. He gets emotional about being forced to leave Apple (incredible and ironic that he hires the person that would lead the Board to oust him, and subsequently dismantle Apple). His ability to think back to formative experiences of his much younger self, and relate them to his leadership style and decisions is nothing less than profound. He can talk about old widowers from his childhood, a Scientific American article about living things and kilocalories/kilometer efficiency, ordering his first shipment of 100 printed circuit boards for the Apple I, Bill Gates, what he learned from two brief visits to Xerox (a lot!), what "diseases" infect large established companies, process versus content, what "taste" means, and why it's so important, and much more. He relates the story of his uninhibited 12-year-old self calling Bill Hewlett (of Hewlett-Packard!) to ask questions about computer technology. Back then, everyone was just in the phone book! He speaks off the top of his head in completely coherent logically formed paragraphs as if he had been reading from an essay he'd been working on for weeks.If you're at all curious why Steve Jobs was "Steve Jobs"; why his name is synonymous with edgy brilliance; why YOU almost certainly have an Apple product somewhere (and why you, even begrudgingly, appreciate it), do not wait to flip on this movie.
gavin6942
A conversation with Steve Jobs circa 1995 as he was running NeXT, the company he had founded after leaving Apple.Now, maybe it's just me, but it seems like Steve Jobs was a key figure for the second half of the 20th century. Maybe just even the last quarter. But such a big part of our world today. I am not a fan of Apple, but there is no denying the power they have. And having grown up in the 80s and 90s, I really appreciate how candid Jobs is when he speaks about the history of computing. This is the third or fourth Jobs film I've watched, and I feel like I learn something new each time.And I love how he believed that without blue box, there would be no Apple. I was never a hacker or a phreaker, but I was aware of it, and was involved in BBS culture. So I can completely understand how the computer revolution came out of hacking culture and from clever young people who were reverse engineering bigger technologies and finding their weak spots.
Desertman84
In 1995, during the making of his TV series Triumph of the Nerds about the birth of the PC, Bob Cringely did a memorable hour-long interview with Steve Jobs.During that time of the interview,Jobs was running NeXT, the computer company he had founded when he got fired from Apple after a bruising struggle with John Sculley, the CEO he had brought into the company.The whole hour long interview was presented in it after it was found by the series director,Paul Sen.I enjoyed the interview thoroughly.In it,Jobs was at his charismatic best explaining his rise and fall as founder of Apple by narrating the early days when he and Steve Wozniak built the Apple I in a garage, and unknowingly invented cell phones by rigging it to send a telephone call around the world to ring the pay phone next door a minute later. As I quote him,"We realized we two could control billions of dollars in infrastructure!".He also remembers them and his one time experience of calling the Pope and hanging up when they realized they'd actually gotten through.Aside from that,he was frank about John Sculley,the CEO at Apple he hired from Pepsi especially after he drove him out of the company he started.Besides that,he was clearly a visionary as he stated of things to come in the computer industry after visiting Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) in the 1980's. He was simply witty and outspoken.Most of all,the was simply a visionary who proves himself to be ahead of his time when it comes to computer industry especially with things to come like the internet,mobile devices,computers,software,networking and many others that exist today after coming back as CEO of Apple in the late 90's when he mentioned them when the interview took place. Overall,this is one excellent interview that an Apple device owner should watch.
Steve Pulaski
If there's one entrepreneur that deserves a seventy-two minute theatrical interview, it's Apple's Steve Jobs. Whether or not you like or support the infectious company, it is no doubt that Jobs was an incredible man of business, craft, and personality, one who provided shock treatment to Apple when bankruptcy was looming and one of incredible enigma and intelligence.In 1995, filmmaker Robert X. Cringley sat down with the legendary Jobs a decade after he departed from Apple after contentious, power-hungry relations with John Sculley. At seventy-two minutes, a lengthy interview with Jobs was exceptionally rare due to the fact that he stayed out of the limelight and rarely let his true charisma and insight be revealed to the public. During this time, Jobs was the founder of his self-made company, NeXT, which he would then sell to Apple in 1996 to become the CEO of the company, producing a number of gadgets and time-savers that would eventually morph into things people seemingly couldn't live without. He makes very clear in the interview that he wants to make each generation better and better with a new and consistent line of technology. It's 2012, and we have already met such works as the iPod, the iPhone, the iTouch, the Mac computer, and the iPad, so it's needless to say that Jobs had hastily worked to make that vision a reality.The interview was filmed, some of it was spliced into Cringley's PBS series Triumph of the Nerd, until the entire thing was reportedly lost after being shipped from New York en-route to London. Not long after Jobs' death, it was discovered on VHS and released theatrically in very limited theaters and is now currently on several video on demand services before its official DVD release later this summer.During the interview, the loquacious, attentive, and always engaged Jobs talks in great lengths about his humble beginnings and fascinations with computers, how he researched at Hewlett-Packard, his friendship with Steve Wozniak, and gives a meticulous account of his vision for the future, his bold ideas, and continually presents himself with his unconditional charm and insights on his life and interests.One of Jobs' many metaphorical references to his life is how, when he was young, he assisted an elderly man with chores that lived on his block, despite his ominous appearance and vibes. One day, the man showed him a rock-tumbler, where he put in ugly-looking stones, some liquid, and some grit-powder. He told Jobs to come back the next day, and when he did, the stones were shiny and polished, from the intense liquid bath and the friction they created from rubbing against each other. Jobs states that humans are the same way when put in a situation together that tests them intellectually. They will have to clash with other people, share different ideas, maybe argue a little bit, before creating something that is unique and impressive.One of the final questions brought up by interviewer Cringley (who is heard, but never seen) is what are Jobs' views on Microsoft as a company. "Microsoft is McDonalds," Jobs replies. He states how they have a great success story and model, but have no creativity or substance behind their relatively bland products - strangely harsh words from a man so close with Bill Gates. But the interview itself it full of these kinds of surprises.Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview can't be called a film, for as it is one long, static shot of Steve Jobs, occasionally interrupted by a freeze-frame and a voice-over of Cringley wording the questions he remembers asking, and begins with a very brief introduction explaining the origins of this interview by Cringley himself. The only problem in sight with the interview is it neglects to provide the viewer with more context or history leading up to this point in Jobs' life. The filmmakers were probably riveted to find the lost footage and anxiously impatient to show it to the public as fast as possible. Nevertheless, the raw footage we get is compelling and intriguing and could brew a new documentary on Jobs in and of itself.Starring: Steve Jobs and Robert X. Cringley. Directed by: Paul Sen.