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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 wonder if anyone will shed tears when thevWoz dies?
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Will any one shed tears when Bill Gates shuffles off this mortal coil.
“Will any one shed tears when Bill Gates shuffles off this mortal coil.” Only those who make their living sucking off his foundation teat. Jobs was no doubt a flake but he took a company that was on the brink and turned it into the world’s most valuable company.
Not me ... :-) ...
Without a doubt, Bill Gates is the Antichrist. /s
Probably exaggerating a little. :)
The Internet wouldn't be where it is today if it weren't for the PC. And especially if it had to rely on Apple.
Just my two cents.
"Jobs was no doubt a flake but he took a company that was on the brink and turned it into the world’s most valuable company with $15,000,000 of Bill Gates' money who bought that much in non-voting-stock.".
I simply do not get the fascination with Jobs. He employed companies in China where people commit suicide while on the job because of the long hours and deplorable work conditions. The companies put nets outside of the windows to catch people who try to jump to their deaths!
Gates and his wife donate millions to people in need and other foundations and yet Jobs is wonderful and Gates is the anti-Christ.
It boggles my mind! ;-)
I agree. Aside from co-inventing the single-board PC(and forever changing the world forever), and single-handedly inventing digital publishing (and thereby changing the world forever), downloadable music by the song (and thereby changing the world forever), directing the invention of a Unix (NeXTSTEP - one with plug ‘n drivers, etc.) that is useful on PCs at his Next, Inc. company (and thereby changing the world forever) , inventing the iphone, ipod, and ipad (and thereby changing the world forever), and saving Disney by having his Pixar company merge with (actually subsume) Disney, Steve Jobs didn’t do squat.
Reference: “Jobs” by Walter Isaacson
I will. Whenever I’ve seen The Woz interviewed he always seems like a nice guy: witty, jovial, no-BS, unpretentious...the kind of guy I’d love to hang out at Denny’s with.
The kind of guy I’d love to hang out with at Denny’s.
Hmmm...there’s really no good way to write that!
Ed
Downloadable music by the song was marketed long before iPple got into the game.
Sure, if you count pirating. But Jobs convinced the moguls of the music world to do it legally and invented the infrastructure to collect the money and distribute the songs.
Stop linking to unresearched liberal press articles.
The original MP3.com sold singles as well as albums, primarily from indie artists and overseas acts seeking a broader audience way back in the late nineties.
The RIAA was terrified and spent far more money trying to shut them down than they did trying to get Napster shut down.
You might visit the judge’s statement slapping the RIAA down in the MP3.com case. Bottom line is that there was no Apple music store online in the nineties, but you could buy individual songs from artists that were real innovators.
You might correctly say that Apple (while nearly a decade late to the party) was able to get the legacy music publishers to release a lot of old acts into the mix, but in no way is that even close to being a pioneer.
Pretty much the same story as their late forays into the digital music player and phone markets. What Apple brought to the party was hype, and legions of fans. They left out features common in their competitors offerings to achieve stability and miniaturization, then claimed to have invented an already maturing product category.
Boy are your wrong. It was a LAWSUIT SETTLEMENT in which Micosoft essentially admitted wrongdoing by taking the brunt of the costs by paying Apple to dismiss the lawsuit.
Later testimony in the United States v. Microsoft case revealed that, at the time, Apple was threatening Microsoft with a multi-billion dollar lawsuit over the allegedly stolen code, and in return Bill Gates was threatening with the cancellation of Office for the Mac. [2] [3] In August 1997, Apple and Microsoft announced a settlement deal. Apple would drop all current lawsuits, including all lingering issues from the "Look & Feel" lawsuit and the "QuickTime source code" lawsuit, and agree to make Internet Explorer the default browser on the Macintosh unless the user explicitly chose the bundled Netscape browser. In return, Microsoft agreed to continue developing Office, Internet Explorer, and various developer tools and software for the Mac for the next 5 years, and purchase $150 million of non-voting Apple stock. The companies also agreed to mutual collaboration on Java technologies, and to cross-license all existing patents, and patents obtained during the five-year deal, with one another. [4] [5] [6]<
Years later the three interlocking contracts settling the suit and setting up the cross licensing were finally unsealed, and it turns out that Apple got Microsoft's IP for free for the life of the patents and copyrights while Microsoft was obligated to pay top dollar for Apple's Patents and Copyrights and the licenses expired at the end of the five year period. In addition the $150 million was a down payment on the licenses for the infringed patents and copyrights in suit, and Microsoft had to keep paying an undisclosed amount for the term of the five years of the contract. Forensic accountants have determined that Microsoft paid Apple almost $2 BILLION for their mis-appropriation of Apple's intellectual property over those five years, money that apparently went to fund the research that helped develop the iPod and IMac line.
At the time of your so-called settlement, Apple had had three profitable quarters, after posting one quarter with a $64 million loss, had over $2 BILLION in liquid assets, and was no where close to "bankruptcy." It was only a year later that the FUD started being spread about the $150 Million being a "bailout!" Companies do not put that amount of money in a company they are "bailing out" without getting voting rights and a seat on the board of directors. Microsoft got neither. It was not a bail out.
That's your interpretation. Microsoft and Apple were intertwined in each other's affairs from the beginning.
Apple helped Microsoft along when Microsoft was stumbling. Jobs bundled Microsoft's Applesoft Basic into Apple II computers, keeping Microsoft solvent as Apple II computers sold by the millions (Gates own confession). Microsoft then sold the Microsoft Z-80 SoftCard for Apple II computers, which made them a bundle of money (I bought one myself in the early 1980s to run CP/M code on my Apple II). There were a number of software and hardware products Microsoft sold for Apple products. Jobs then allowed Gates to inspect Macintosh code, which led Gates to copy it and create Windows.
True, that later on Gates invested millions in Apple stock that helped Apple get over a near bankruptcy (caused before Jobs came back to Apple and rescued the company). But Gates himself admitted that the tremendous profits made on the stock was a fantastic deal for him - because of Apple's tremendous growth. Just keeping it real.
Lest you misconstrue my comment after yours, I noted the company was near bankruptcy before Jobs returned. It was headed that way, and Jobs pulled Apple back from the brink. Gates money had nothing to do with that.
Well, try reading “Jobs” by Walter Isaacson if you don’t like my links.
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