MovieChat Forums > Steve Jobs (2015) Discussion > Well done movie, however I prefer Pirate...

Well done movie, however I prefer Pirates of Silicon Valley

posted 8 years ago by realitycomments
3 replies | jump to latest

An important aspect to the whole icon technology of PC's being so user friendly is the fact that both Apple and Microsoft stole it.

In this Steve Jobs movie, we hear Jobs confronting Gates over the phone and accusing him of stealing their technology when in fact Jobs/Apple stole it as well.

That technology was developed at what was once known as Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. In fact, Xerox attempted to sue Apple in the 90's because of it. Xerox lost because the Exec's were stupid at the time and didn't know what they had or had the vision to properly scale down what they had to market it affordably. They opened the doors to Apple and Microsoft giving them a free tour of the facility.

That was missing from the movie and although I know it was about Steve Jobs the man, the script should have included for historical purposes where that breakthrough technology came from. It leaves the viewers and Job worshippers believing that Apple was the genius behind PCs as we are familiar with them today.

That is really my only big beef with the film.

[–] TheRedViper 8 years ago

In this Steve Jobs movie, we hear Jobs confronting Gates over the phone and accusing him of stealing their technology when in fact Jobs/Apple stole it as well.

You're confusing this film with the 2013 biopic with Ashton Kutcher, where this scene occurred. Nothing of the sort happens in the 2015 version.

That technology was developed at what was once known as Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. In fact, Xerox attempted to sue Apple in the 90's because of it. Xerox lost because the Exec's were stupid at the time and didn't know what they had or had the vision to properly scale down what they had to market it affordably. They opened the doors to Apple and Microsoft giving them a free tour of the facility.

That was missing from the movie and although I know it was about Steve Jobs the man, the script should have included for historical purposes where that breakthrough technology came from. It leaves the viewers and Job worshippers believing that Apple was the genius behind PCs as we are familiar with them today.

Actually, in the 2015 film, it is pointed out that they stole from Xerox, when Woz angrily confronts Jobs and says "the interface was stolen from Xerox PARC." It's a quick line, but it's there.

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Delicious - http://imgur.com/50eSH9o

[–] snowleopard 8 years ago

Jobs didn't "rip off" Xerox, that's a fallacy that keeps getting repeated for some reason so many times, people think it's true. Gates didn't rip them off either.

PARC was/is an R&D wing of Xerox, not much more. Jobs was struggling with the next step after the Apple II, and PARC was fairly well known in silicon valley circles in the late 1970's when he requested, and got a tour. While Xerox was not smart enough to see the potential in their GUI, Jobs was. But he absolutely did not steal their idea. Shortly after his tour, in 1979, Steve brokered deal with Xerox in which Apple would license concepts from PARC, in exchange for Xerox being able to purchase stock options in Apple. Xerox agreed.

Xerox eventually did try to sue Apple, but that was after the potential was flushed out, and they knew they had missed the boat and were kicking themselves. They lost the suit, because of the licensing contract they agreed to. It also doesn't take a computer historian to see differences between PARC's Alto computer, which used the proprietary BCPL language, and the Macintosh. The Mac was not a clone, Apple put a lot of effort into making it their own.

Keep in mind that after Xerox essentially closed down the Alto wing of PARC, Bill Gates hired some of the PARC staff to work for Microsoft. But just the same, Windows wasn't a clone of Alto either. Jobs and Apple hired PARC staff as well.

Niklaus Wirth, spent time at PARC, went back to Switzerland, and built his own computer very much like the Alto, he called Lilith, before the Macintosh (or Lisa). He didn't have the connections, business or marketing savvy to have it take off though.

David Liddle and Charles Irby were two PARC leaders who formed Metaphor Computer Systems, but they too didn't have what it took to get the project going, and were outpaced by Jobs and Gates as well.

This is the nature of business. If senior management had the vision Jobs and Gates did, we'd all be using computers made by Xerox and IBM. Or really, from Bell Labs.

[–] jessthehuman 8 years ago

Yeah - I really enjoyed this movie; but I enjoyed it *as a movie*, not as a historical piece.. I suspect there were a whole lot of inaccuracies, but I definitely enjoyed watching it.

Pirates of Silicon Valley is a classic. And I don't think a better movie about those early days is ever likely to be made that is more on the money as to how *beep* actually went down.. I think too much time has passed now.