This film made Steve Jobs out to be terrible.

Even his *authorized* biography shows him to have character flaws - "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson. Is it available in the UK? I really recommend it. Unauthorized biographies like "iCon" by Young & Simon reveal flaws too. At first I was upset to hear of the flaws, because before that I really idolized him, but they helped me through the grief of his death. If he really was a perfect saint, I'd have spent the entire rest of my life crying over the death of someone I never even met! He's still a genius, but the full picture gives you some balance. So I think it's beneficial to us fans to know that he did have a few flaws. It doesn't mean you can't like him anymore.

If anything, the movie left out one of the sleazier episodes from Job's early career. How he screwed Woz out of his share of the profits on a job where Woz actually did all the work!

Before Apple existed, before Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I computer, Steve Jobs was tasked by Atari with building a circuit board for the video game Breakout. He knew little about circuit board designs, so he asked for help from his friend Woz, offering to split the fee between them. Jobs explained that Atari needed the number of chips on the board lessened. Woz, thrilled to be working on a real video game, worked around the clock for four days straight to finish the project as fast as possible. His finished circuit board wowed Atari’s engineers by cutting down the number of chips by 50 — an astonishing achievement at the time.

The problem was, Jobs had lied to Wozniak about almost the entire project. Unknown to Woz, Atari had offered Jobs a $100 bonus for every chip he could eliminate on the circuit board. Jobs instead told his friend that Atari had offered a flat pay rate of $700, so upon its completion, Jobs paid Wozniak just $350. When truthfully, Atari had paid them $5,000, meaning Jobs had cheated his friend out of more than $2,000. He’d also imposed an artificial deadline on the project, because Jobs was planning to go out of town in four days.

The kicker is that Jobs never told Wozniak about what he’d done. It was ten years later before Woz found out the truth, and he wasn’t even told about it. He read it in a book that detailed the history of Atari. Wozniak was never angry or bitter about it, though he admits to crying after reading about it in that book. He also says that he would have given it to Jobs, if he’d told him the truth and said he needed the money.

Yup.. Sorry everything I have read on Jobs has made him out as a bad person in his younger years riding his staff and people under him. Its even evident in the official bio. But what isn't thought of is this film aside from the ending coda only covers Act I of the saga.

After Jobs ousting, starting NeXt Jobs was humbled and did mellow a bit.. Much as Gates was brought down in the 90s by the DOJ and the threats of breaking Microsoft up.

Who they are now.. Or were respectfully, is not something we see in the film. Even at the end of the film is pre- well almost ANYTHING we think of when we think of the company now.

I would love to see a series of 3 or so more 2 hour films.. Covering the three more significant time periods.

1. The early mid 80s from ousting to Jobs return to Apple.. During which we have the Mac clones the rise of Windows PCs.. Etc

2. Pick up RIGHT where the original left off.. MS embroiled with the DOJ.. launch of the iMac

3. Mostly Apple centric as Gates steps down, Ballmer flounders.. Vista, 7.. While apple launches iPod, phone, pad...

At the end of the day, Jobs was just a shrewd businessman. Not the Messiah that Apple fanboys make him out to be. Gates was no better, but at least he redeemed himself with philanthropy.

I read all of the bios. Jobs was a pathological egotist and narcissist, I don't think this is even in question anymore, but a lot of hard driving geniuses who established empires were like this, more or less, in the end they are judged more by what they brought to society than by their personality. I dislike Jobs and the Apple elitist mentality but Jobs brought a lot to the world, more by his vision and drive than by any technological ability, but his vision really shaped the face of modern technology and made it human and accessible, which was no small thing.