"Jobs" could have been "insanely great" but instead gives a lackluster glance at the highlights and low lights of Steve Jobs' life.
While the film is factually accurate from the events cited and statements Steve Jobs made down to the realism of the characters appearances, it lacked character development and a cohesive story. It is well cast and well acted. However, with major events being presented in the film like news headlines, there is no story justifying their existence. Steve Jobs is portrayed giving repeated quoted monologues instead of engaging in real dialog between himself and his co-workers to illustrate the chemistry of their relationships that lead to their success.
Since 1982 I spent most of my adult life using Apple's products, writing thousands of lines of code on the Apple II computer and reading every news story about Apple. The film fails to capture the grueling work and the pride programmers and engineers feel for designing cutting edge hardware and software to create Apple's superior computers and software.
For such a prolific inventor and complex man that Steve Jobs was, I am surprised that a veteran director like Ron Howard or Steven Spielberg didn't direct this. I really wanted to know how Steve Jobs' father-in-law inspired him and instilled in him his drive for perfection. I wanted to learn how Steve started iTunes and invented the iPod. These were not in the movie.
There are many key events in Apple's history the film omitted that were crucial to understanding Apple's success. Steve's idea for the Mac originated with his engineer, Jef Raskin, showing him a prototype bitmapped GUI of Alto computer at the Xerox PARC think tank in 1979. It had the first personal desktop interface of windows, icons, menus and a mouse, a major advancement over the millions of existing command driven PC's in the market using green screen monitors with mono-spaced fonts of 40 characters by 24 lines. Jobs was immediately convinced the Alto interface is the direction Apple Computer must go, so he bought it from Xerox and designed the Lisa and, later the Macintosh on this concept. The film omitted this visit to Xerox.
There was fierce competition in the personal computer industry. A decades-old storied rivalry between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs began in 1985, one year after the Mac debuted. Except for one scene in the film, this rivalry was completely omitted from it. Jobs' was irate that Gates stole Apple's graphic user interface (GUI) from the Macintosh but the film fails to show how this happened. Jobs previously went to Microsoft to hire Bill Gates to write business software (Word, Multiplan, etc.) to enable Apple to sell its new Macintosh computer. In doing so, Microsoft learned how Apple's GUI worked, reverse engineered it and created a similar interface for Microsoft's new Windows operating system to work on the existing millions of IBM computers running Microsoft's Disk Operating System (MS DOS). Microsoft would compete directly against Apple Computer. Though the film does portray Steve Jobs as a disciplinarian, a perfectionist and temperamental, it never shows why he was this way.
The film was remiss of major events and details needed to explain Apple's success story. Jobs got his start in electronics working for Hewlett-Packard after calling founder William Hewlett on the phone at his home. Jobs met Wozniak at HP. And, Jobs used "The HP Way" as a blueprint for starting Apple Computer. Steve Jobs' miraculous turnaround of Apple from near bankrupt to profitable in three years and to the world's largest company in 13 years, business leaders consider the biggest ever success story in the history of American business. How the film could leave out this turnaround (inventing the highly successful iMac, PowerPC, iPod, iTunes and iPhone) is astonishing. Even before coming back to Apple, Jobs re-invented Pixar animation after buying The Graphics Group from George Lucas, revolutionizing animated movies for Disney that were created on NeXT graphics workstations (the most advanced in existence) that Steve Jobs invented. This, too, was omitted from the film.
In one of his biographies, Steve Jobs explains succinctly how the iPod epitomizes Apple Computer, "it combines Apple's incredible technology base with Apple's legendary ease of use with Apple's awesome design." This is the premise upon which "Jobs" should have been based. I recommend the film but with reservations.
Chris Kaufmann
While the film is factually accurate from the events cited and statements Steve Jobs made down to the realism of the characters appearances, it lacked character development and a cohesive story. It is well cast and well acted. However, with major events being presented in the film like news headlines, there is no story justifying their existence. Steve Jobs is portrayed giving repeated quoted monologues instead of engaging in real dialog between himself and his co-workers to illustrate the chemistry of their relationships that lead to their success.
Since 1982 I spent most of my adult life using Apple's products, writing thousands of lines of code on the Apple II computer and reading every news story about Apple. The film fails to capture the grueling work and the pride programmers and engineers feel for designing cutting edge hardware and software to create Apple's superior computers and software.
For such a prolific inventor and complex man that Steve Jobs was, I am surprised that a veteran director like Ron Howard or Steven Spielberg didn't direct this. I really wanted to know how Steve Jobs' father-in-law inspired him and instilled in him his drive for perfection. I wanted to learn how Steve started iTunes and invented the iPod. These were not in the movie.
There are many key events in Apple's history the film omitted that were crucial to understanding Apple's success. Steve's idea for the Mac originated with his engineer, Jef Raskin, showing him a prototype bitmapped GUI of Alto computer at the Xerox PARC think tank in 1979. It had the first personal desktop interface of windows, icons, menus and a mouse, a major advancement over the millions of existing command driven PC's in the market using green screen monitors with mono-spaced fonts of 40 characters by 24 lines. Jobs was immediately convinced the Alto interface is the direction Apple Computer must go, so he bought it from Xerox and designed the Lisa and, later the Macintosh on this concept. The film omitted this visit to Xerox.
There was fierce competition in the personal computer industry. A decades-old storied rivalry between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs began in 1985, one year after the Mac debuted. Except for one scene in the film, this rivalry was completely omitted from it. Jobs' was irate that Gates stole Apple's graphic user interface (GUI) from the Macintosh but the film fails to show how this happened. Jobs previously went to Microsoft to hire Bill Gates to write business software (Word, Multiplan, etc.) to enable Apple to sell its new Macintosh computer. In doing so, Microsoft learned how Apple's GUI worked, reverse engineered it and created a similar interface for Microsoft's new Windows operating system to work on the existing millions of IBM computers running Microsoft's Disk Operating System (MS DOS). Microsoft would compete directly against Apple Computer. Though the film does portray Steve Jobs as a disciplinarian, a perfectionist and temperamental, it never shows why he was this way.
The film was remiss of major events and details needed to explain Apple's success story. Jobs got his start in electronics working for Hewlett-Packard after calling founder William Hewlett on the phone at his home. Jobs met Wozniak at HP. And, Jobs used "The HP Way" as a blueprint for starting Apple Computer. Steve Jobs' miraculous turnaround of Apple from near bankrupt to profitable in three years and to the world's largest company in 13 years, business leaders consider the biggest ever success story in the history of American business. How the film could leave out this turnaround (inventing the highly successful iMac, PowerPC, iPod, iTunes and iPhone) is astonishing. Even before coming back to Apple, Jobs re-invented Pixar animation after buying The Graphics Group from George Lucas, revolutionizing animated movies for Disney that were created on NeXT graphics workstations (the most advanced in existence) that Steve Jobs invented. This, too, was omitted from the film.
In one of his biographies, Steve Jobs explains succinctly how the iPod epitomizes Apple Computer, "it combines Apple's incredible technology base with Apple's legendary ease of use with Apple's awesome design." This is the premise upon which "Jobs" should have been based. I recommend the film but with reservations.
Chris Kaufmann