Pirates of Silicon Valley

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Pirates of Silicon Valley
Image:Movieposterposv.jpg
Directed by Martyn Burke
Produced by Leanne Moore
Written by Paul Freiberger,
Michael Swaine,
Martyn Burke
Starring Noah Wyle
Anthony Michael Hall
Joey Slotnick
John Di Maggio
Josh Hopkins
Distributed by Turner Network Television
Release date(s) June 20, 1999
Running time 95 min.
Language English
IMDb profile

Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) is an unauthorized made-for-television docudrama written and directed by Martyn Burke. Based on the book Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, this film documents the rise of the home computer (personal computer) through the rivalry between Apple Computer (Apple II and the Apple Macintosh) and Microsoft (MITS Altair, MS-DOS, IBM PC, and Windows).

The central story of the film begins in the early 1970s and ends with a birthday toast in 1985 to Steve Jobs shortly before he was fired by CEO John Sculley from Apple Computer.


Contents

[edit] Interviews

  • Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are the true revolutionaries of our time. Not the students who occupied the dean’s office in the late ’60s. Not the anti-war marchers who were determined to overthrow the establishment. Jobs and Gates are the ones who changed the way the world thinks, acts and communicates.

– answer to the question: "Why did these two 'nerds' become icons?" in an interview with the director of the film, Martyn Burke [1]

[edit] Soundtrack

The soundtrack consisted largely of 1970s and 1980s classic rock and disco.

[edit] Select songs

[edit] Fact vs. fiction

  • Steve Wozniak, on his personal website, has commented on the film through a series of replies to emails from fans [2]. On the issue of accuracy, Wozniak states:
The personalities and incidents are accurate in the sense that they all occurred but they are often with the wrong parties (Bill Fernandez, Apple employee #4, was with me and the computer that burned up in 1970) and at the wrong dates (when John Sculley joined, he had to redirect attention from the Apple III, not the Mac, to the Apple II) and places (Homebrew Computer Club was at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) ... the personalities were very accurately portrayed

– [3]

  • During an August 4, 2006 interview with Studio 360, former Director of the Xerox PARC research center, John Seely Brown, was shown the clip of Pirates of Silicon Valley in which Bill Gates tells Steve Jobs, "You and I are both like guys who had this rich neighbor—Xerox—who left the door open all the time. And you go sneakin' in to steal a TV set." After viewing the clip, Brown stated that it was not entirely accurate as Steve Jobs was invited by PARC to view their technology in exchange for Apple shares [4].
  • In an interview of director Martyn Burke located on the official T.N.T. Pirates of Silicon Valley website, Burke states that he chose not to interview either Bill Gates or Steve Jobs when making the film:
I did not want to do an "authorized biography" on either Microsoft or Apple, so we made the decision going in that we would not talk or meet with them. With a team of Harvard researchers, I embarked on a seven-month research project that encompassed virtually everything we could find on the history of both companies, including old technical magazines from the '70s. I intended every scene to be based on actual events, including such seemingly fantastic moments as Bill Gates' bulldozer races in the middle of the night and Steve Jobs' bare feet going up on the board room table during an applicant's job interview. I have two or more sources that verify each scene

– [5]

  • Because Steve Wozniak was an employee of H.P. with a contract giving the company first right of refusal on his inventions, Wozniak first offered the Apple I to H.P. In the film, Wozniak is depicted as hoping H.P. would refuse the product so he and Jobs would be able to independently develop and sell the computer. But according to his biography, iWoz, Wozniak tried quite hard to convince H.P. to take his design. H.P. still declined.
  • In the movie it is depicted that Microsoft owns a part of Apple. In reality, the shares owned by Microsoft were non-voting and later Microsoft sold these shares back to Apple after two months.

[edit] Trivia

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes


[edit] External links

cs: Piráti ze Silicon Valley de: Die Silicon Valley Story es: Piratas de Silicon Valley fr: Les Pirates de la Silicon Valley it: I pirati di Silicon Valley pt: Pirates of Silicon Valley (filme) ru: Пираты кремниевой долины (фильм) sv: Pirates of Silicon Valley zh-tw: 微軟英雄

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