Posted on 03/16/2015 9:21:55 AM PDT by Swordmaker
Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine Still - H 2015
The Bottom Line: A convincing, but perhaps unnecessary, primer on Steve Jobs's flaws and misdeeds
Venue: South By Southwest Film Festival, Headliners
Director: Alex Gibney
Breaking: Steve Jobs was no saint.
Alex Gibney begins Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine with a first-person voiceover, marveling at the global outpouring of emotion that greeted the Apple leader's 2011 death. "I was mystified," he recalls, at the tears shed over someone who was not a pop star or beloved author but merely a man who sold us things. As an iPhone user, Gibney understands there's more to it than that. But Machine is his two hour-plus corrective to uncritical idolatry of the tech legend, a film that roots around in his misdeeds and mean traits, not in search of a complete portrait, but in the spirit of a Judgment Day prosecutor who knows damn well the defendant was not a holy man.
Those who pay attention to the tech world (or just to Apple specifically) will know much of what they encounter here, and disinterested lay folk will be puzzled by the mostly negative focus on someone they've heard is our generation's genius. As for those people who put candles outside of Apple stores, one assumes they'll dismiss it as sour grapes or worse.
The doc merits seeing it on its terms and should generate plenty of buzz in this Apple-obsessed world, but word-of-mouth may not be kind. Gibney moves chronologically through Jobs' life, more or less, making note of some high points but usually digging in only when he has a negative anecdote to tell — as when, according to Steve Wozniak's account, Jobs swindled him out of 90% of his share of payment for work they did on Atari's Breakout game. (This, we're told, is the "original sin" committed even before that famous apple came around.) An exception to this slant is the long stretch in which the film investigates Jobs' brilliance at selling the concept of the "personal computer" — his insight that people could fall in love if they thought a computer was not a tool for them, but would actually be part of them.
The film will return to this idea occasionally, especially once the iPhone rolls around, but it can't devote enough time to the intertwining of personal identity and consumer electronics to say anything new on the subject. And even an audience that goes out of its way to see Gibney's film seems disinclined to grasp this kind of criticism: Within 90 seconds of the director's funny observation that his hand gravitates to the phone in his pocket like Frodo's toward the ring, the woman in front of me mechanically pulled hers out to check email.
There are many directions one could have gone in a film examining the societal impact of the gizmos and related philosophies Jobs shepherded into the world — one could, for instance, highlight the paternalism of a company that doesn't trust its customers to use whatever software they like on the devices they've bought. But despite his quick nods to these issues, for Gibney it's personal.
We hear how Jobs threw a tantrum when his high school girlfriend got pregnant; we're told that around the time Apple's IPO made him worth $200 million, Jobs lied in order to deny his paternity and was angry about paying $500 a month in child support. We hear how he alternately cajoled and bullied the tech reporters who were given a misplaced prototype of the iPhone 4, then pushed law enforcement to retaliate by breaking into a reporter's house and taking crates of possessions. We're walked through illegal and/or unseemly maneuvering to do with backdated stock options and profits hidden from the taxman.
Gibney is convincing on every front. And while Apple (big surprise) refused to cooperate — meaning that key players like Jony Ive and Tim Cook are all but invisible in this story — he gets enough of Jobs' collaborators on camera to lend emotional color to the portrait. Friend and early employee Daniel Kottke speaks to his spiritual pursuits; engineer Bob Belleville explains how he used workplace chaos as a tool (and tears up while addressing his mixed emotions about the man); iPhone team member Andy Grignon recounts the Godfather-ish "half-hour mindf—" he received when he said he was leaving the company. No episode in The Man in the Machine is the kind of minor indiscretion that shouldn't be included in a historical figure's biography. The film isn't petty or mean. But after making his name by digging into world-rattling catastrophes like Enron and sex abuse in the Catholic church, after daring to joust with Scientology's lawyers, what about this project demanded Gibney's attention?
I dismissed an idiot who makes it clear that they reject the concept of integrity.
The liar knows individual music files were marketed to an audience large enough to frighten the RIAA nearly ten years before Apple even had an iTunes store. But still promotes the pathetic lie that Apple introduced the concept.
The term for that liar isn’t “knowlegable”. The correct term is “dishonest”. It doesn’t matter one whit what a person with no integrity knows. Because what they say strictly reflects what they wish rather than what is true.
You throw up blathering walls of text that do nothing to hide your inherent prevarications.
Apple was a latecomer to the individual music file sales market. No matter how much you lie, denigrate, agitate, whine, throw tantrums, and generally act like a four year old denied a toy... Apple still did not introduce the concept.
Yeah, I kind of suspected you were the kind of guy who found reading books WAY too much trouble. Ignorance is SO much easier.
I have tried to keep my responses to you short-and-sweet but you will not let me do that: ;-)
“I maintain the Apple Ping list for over 700 of our Fellow Freepers who have asked me to do so. . . and they also expect me to correct the false claims with the truth.”
BINGO! ;-) Bias, zealotry, tunnel-vision and an avid Mac user. How can you expect to be objective? You simply can’t be objective. Have you ever used a PC or even considered using a PC? In addition , while you have written or copied/pasted pages and pages of information, you have not given any citations or sources for that information so that I have to treat all of that as opinion. ;-)
“I had a very good friend who developed a product used by almost everyone who had an MS-DOS PC.”
On the other hand, I knew someone who was a one-man operation. He wrote little apps for Windows XP. Microsoft bought him out. I do not know the dollar sum which he received from Microsoft. What I do know is that Microsoft immediately tried to hire him. He said, and I quote, “No, I’m retired!” Apparently the sum that they gave to him was sufficient to let him retire in his mid 30s. He travels the world now. Those apps were incorporated into Win2K3 Server and have been included in all versions since. They are still available for download from the Microsoft site but are mainly for admins/developers. Those apps are on the MSDN pages. The individual apps as well as the ‘package deal’ still carry/s my acquaintance’s name. Imagine that! Microsoft, the evil bully-giant who kicks around everyone and every computer company or who they see as their ‘competitors’, still giving the original programmer who is no longer connected to Microsoft in any way the ‘credit’ for his work! Quite amazing, wouldn’t you say!?
See? There are two sides to every coin. Now you are going to ask which apps/package deal, right? You have not given to me any information about ‘your friend’ have you? ;-)
“True, that later on Gates invested millions in Apple stock that helped Apple get over a near bankruptcy.”
There is where you agree with me that “Gates bailed out Apple”. If Gates, apparently in your mind, had ill feelings toward Apple then why didn’t he simply let them sink in the Marianas Trench? Would not that have ‘settled’, for all intents and purposes, and negated all of the ‘lawsuits’ that Apple had against Microsoft? Apple then would not have had the millions of dollars necessary to continue the lawsuits because they literally would have been out of business and out of money. ( Maybe common sense will cause you to open your eyes to that one but I doubt it. ) Would not Gates have then had the whole market to himself? He did not want Apple to die because, in the background, Jobs and Gates were friends. Was that a shock to the personal computer world? Of course it was because the personal computer world had no idea that Jobs and Gates were friends because, as you know, the MSM does their best to sell ‘conflict’ stories. They hauled in an awful lot of advertising dollars on the so-called ‘conflicts’ between Apple And Microsoft, didn’t they? Maybe, just maybe, you and others of your ilk have read and believed the media and not I! I remember the press conference vividly. Jobs and Gates on the stage sitting in chairs. Some idiot MSM journalist asked Jobs about the relationship between him and Gates. He replied, jokingly, “We have been married for 10 years but kept it a secret.” Does that sound like there were ‘conflicts’? ;-)
Both Jobs and Gates were/are, respectively, cut-throat businessmen. That is why they are/were both successful in addition to being in ‘cahoots’ with each other! Shock of shocks, huh? As I understand it, Mac has ~5% - ~10% of the market. PCs have the other ~90% - ~95% of the market. Those numbers have remained solidly in that range for over 20 years.
Because I am lucky enough to work on both PCs and Macs what I have found over the years is the following:
PCs are much more flexible in both hardware and software although Mac is becoming more flexible in the hardware area. PCs are much cheaper than Macs but perform the same tasks equally well. PCs last just as long as Macs. Replacement parts for Macs are much more expensive. Having to call a repairman for a Mac is much more expensive which is a boon to me! PCs and Macs do the same job equally well. Initially, Macs had good graphics presentations with their video but, again, PCs caught up with them.
Note: Please keep in mind, if you can, that Microsoft is not in the PC manufacturing business. They are in the software business unless you want to include things like mice, joysticks and keyboards. They do not manufacture desktop computers. Mac sells computers, software, trinkets that will eventually die on the vine, like iPod, iPad, iPhone and i( whatever ) else. While there is a very limited competition between the two corporations, they are essentially not even in the same business.
As far as Gates being ‘evil’ because of his donations to left-wing organizations, I happen to think that he is conservative as well as maybe having Asperger’s or maybe just a very severe case of ‘tunnel-vision’. Prior to his marriage he never ‘gave’ a dime to any organization and I would not blame him if he never gave a dime to any organization. That blond witch on NBC goaded and embarrassed him into ‘donating’ on national TV by asking, “Don’t you think that you should ‘give something back’?” She is lucky that she did not ask that question to me. My response would have been, “Give what back to whom?” Unfortunately for him, he married a bleeding-heart socialist. Because of his probable Asperger’s and/or ‘tunnel-vision’, she influences him, has him by the family jewels in private and leads him around by the nose in public. ;-)
How much did Jobs “donate’? ;-)
I think that we have reached the conclusion of our discussion. You are not going to sway because of your bias, zealotry, tunnel-vision, being an avid Mac user and defending Macs ‘to-the-death’ anthem while I still maintain objectivity because I am lucky enough to work with and on both systems.
Have a nice life in your illusion and please stop the speeches until such time as you can forget the bias, zealotry, tunnel-vision and being an avid Mac user. No offense meant because, as I said, I do not have a dog in this hunt. I have PCs and Macs that I use on a regular basis. ;-)
I only read books.
I have not owned a television in twenty years.
Books can not change reality.
And the reality is that not only was MP3.com selling individual song files in the 90s, they were doing so well at it, and at promoting foreign acts and independant artists that they scared the crap out of the RIAA.
I was one of their customers.
There was no iTunes store.
There were no ipods yet.
The RIAA sued to shut MP3.com down.
As part of their tactics in the legal procedings the music industry tried to put materials they owned to copyright on up on MP3.com, but thorough policing helped by customers who reported such material rendered the tactics useless. Not only was the bogus copyrighted material taken down, the litigants got caught. You can see that referenced in the judge’s decision.
You keep whining that I won’t accept your book.
Pretty funny from a guy who won’t accept a calendar.
MMP3.com was founded in 1997. iTunes store wasn’t founded until April 2003.
I stand corrected, as you have the facts and details. I did say Jobs pulled Apple back from the brink, and Gates money had nothing to do with that. Just not as eloquently as you. What I had read is that before Jobs came back, they only had enough cash flow for a few months of operation. Once Jobs came back, he restored them to profitability. The stock purchase came later. I didn’t know the specifics of the purchase of stock by Microsoft - thanks for the update.
I never said any such thing, never that Gates bailed them out, that's your words. What I said is that Apple wasn't doing so good before Jobs came back to Apple. Jobs came back and restored them to profitability. I did say that Gates purchase of Apple stock had nothing to do with Apple's return to profitability. That was all Steve Jobs. Don't twist my words to aid your particular arguments (that are baseless).
Huh? roadcat? How did you get into this conversation? With reference to “Gates bailed out Apple”, my response was to something that Swordmaker said, unless you said it, too. Sorry for the confusion. ;-)
Because in your reply #32 you responded to Swordmaker as if he said that, when it was my statement earlier to you in reply #18, that was taken out of context. I got nailed by both of you for my inelegant phrasing. What was true about my statement, is that Apple was in trouble before Steve Jobs returned; Steve Jobs returned Apple to profitability; the stock purchase helped Apple by having better cash flow to put into new products. The part that was false about my statement, is the wording “Gates invested millions in Apple stock that helped Apple get over a near bankruptcy”; the wording was inelegant as the “near bankruptcy” had come and passed long before the stock purchase so there was no helping them get over anything of the sort, that’s what Swordmaker corrected me on - incorrect verbiage.
OK, no prob. Thank you for the clarification. I shall have to reread some of the posts. I do not recall ‘nailing’ you, sir. ;-)
I assumed that only Swordmaker and I were in the ‘discussion’.
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