‘JOBS’ Movie: Slamming Steve v1.0.4 build 41 – By Vincent J. Zuzow

I went to see the movie ‘JOBS’ yesterday with two of my children. It was a matinee showing during a weekday so we were 3 of 12 in the theatre at showtime. The movie has something for everyone; sex – drugs – and rock and roll.  Oh yea, there’s some technology, power struggles, back-stabbing and pop culture thrown in there too.

I am a technocrat now, but grew up in the area of pre-Apple, pre internet, pre-electronic age.  The Apple Mac was the second computer I owned.  The first was a now defunct ‘Kaypro’ running on the CPM OS.  CPM was very DOS-like, but was a predecessor to DOS.  I was amused by the Kaypro 4 with high hopes of working its use into my daily life to help with business-related functions.  I had owned it little more than a year when a soon-to-be life-changing event was about to happen. 

My buddy Cliff came to me one day bursting with excitement over his purchase of an  Apple Macintosh 128. He had just bought and took delivery of one of the first Mac 128s in the world! He showed me MacPaint and MacDraw and MacWrite, and I was intrigued, but generally ho-hum about the tour de force of this new way of computing, and missed the point of where computer graphics were headed.

When I heard a movie about this iconic innovator was opening ‘at a theater near me’, I had to see it.

My general impression was, the film showed Steve in a negative light. It was a story about a man abandon by his parents, willing to step on any one to bring his vision to fruition. The film offers vignettes of Jobs cheating on his girlfriend, getting his GF pregnant then abandoning her, lying to WOZ about the money they made on the first Atari programming project, booting his early adopters out of the company and leaving them with no ‘piece of the pie’ for their troubles.

Later in the film we see Steve refusing to acknowledge his first-born child, Lisa (while he is working on the ‘Lisa’ project, no less) and standing by while his buddy and co-owner ‘WOZ’ fades into the shadows of Apple Computer, and later leaves the company he helped form.

The first part of the movie was slow.  Seeing Ashton Kutcher as Jobs walking around barefoot on campus or in a field did nothing for me.  It didn’t move the story along to any great degree either. Things began getting interesting in the film as the Lisa (predecessor to the Macintosh) was in development.  I remember seeing the Lisa in a local computer store. I was intrigued listening to the salesperson explaining what it could do, but realized I would never spend $10,000 on a personal computer.

Ashton was a good fit for the role of Steve.  There were times when he had an uncanny resemblance to the real Mac man.  Something in the eyes I think.  I don’t know where Ashton got that ‘Jobs walk’ from, but in a few scenes – in a profile view – it had me thinkin’ SJ had a load on, and needed to visit the men’s room…

The chronicle opens with the introduction of the iPod, and leaves us there.  We never see the introduction of the iPhone, iPad or the company-changing birth of iTunes.  All three of these Apple events help crush the PC/Windose grip on the computer world and catapult Apple into the forefront of technology world wide.  Will there be a sequel? My guess is ‘yes’. Maybe they could call it ‘Jobs 2.0.16 build 58′.

If you are any way interested in Apple or Steve Jobs, or the Mac, or how a mega-glogal multi-national business got started in a so-cal garage; this movie is a must see.  If you want to preserve your memory of Steve Jobs as a kind, warm and fuzzy technocrat giving birth to the tech toys of our age; you may want to give it a pass.

Tags: Apple, Drugs, movie reviews, Rock and Roll, sex