Pirates of Silicon Valley
This is just a collection of thoughts. Don’t expect this post to be organized or well written. Oh, and SPOILER ALERT!
I won’t review the movie here, since you can always watch it yourself and judge. The only thing I can say is that even if you’re not remotely interested in computers and don’t know your KDE from your GNOME, you will still enjoy this movie. Pirates of Silicon Valley is not about computers, but about two men (Steve Jobs and Bill Gates) who start from nothing and build technology empires that have changed the landscape of technology for ages to come.
Being an open source guy, I was definitely in favour of Apple and Jobs from the beginning. Sure, Apple has contributed nothing much to the OSS community, and has taken a lot from it, but at least Apple is a company which believes in innovation. They believe in elegance, whether aesthetic or technical. Microsoft, on the other hand, will eat your baby if you don’t watch out. In fact, Microsoft has never ever built something that was groundbreaking or innovative. Every single product Microsoft has forced into the market is a either a replica of some other company’s product, or a product they’ve bought out from some small startup. So, Microsot = evil and Apple = good? Bill Gates = unfeeling dictator hell bent on world domination and Steve Jobs = saint aiming for the salvation of the masses? Right?
Wrong.
Steve Jobs has high aspirations, a vision for where Apple is heading. And he is ready to do anything to achieve that vision. This movie shows how ruthless and unfeeling Jobs can be when people don’t do as he says. At the launch of the Apple Macintosh, Jobs actually splits the company into two halves : the Apple Lisa team and the Macintosh team. Both camps literally froth at the mouth as they tear each other apart, and Jobs laughs in the background. The movie shows how Jobs turns Apple into a cult, a religion, with his followers hanging onto every word he says and ready to do whatever he demands of them. I remember there was a guy in the Apple HQ working on the Mac who hadn’t slept for 52 hours. It was sickening to see how he was terrified of Jobs, and followed his every order like a loyal dog.
In another scene, Jobs stands on a platform and throws Frisbees as his “employees” jump about trying to catch them. Like dogs fighting for a morsel of food.
On the other hand, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are just these two guys with a normal office and a normal staff trying to make a mark. Bill Gates is a stereotype nerd, and Ballmer just wants to make some cash so he can go to strip clubs and get laid. Even as Jobs goes around screaming at his employees and making groundbreaking, innovative “art”, Gates is thinking. When the Apple Lisa comes out, Gates is thinking. Even when Apple becomes a multi-million dollar corporation, Gates is deep in thought. Jobs might be a charismatic visionary, but he is no match for the calculative thinking machine that is Bill Gates. Sure, Microsoft was late to the game (as they always are), but they had something that Apple never had, and will never have : certainty that whatever they are going to do will guarantee success.
Bill Gates convinces IBM that they need his operating system for their personal computer. Bill Gates convinces Jobs that Windows is not a copy of the Mac and that Apple and Microsoft are a big, happy family. Jobs’ charisma loses to Gates’ psychological attacks (”… you have to make them need you …”).
A geeky, nerdy guy with thick glasses and a squeaky voice managed to outperform a charismatic artist, innovator and visionary, and became the world’s richest man. Apple has put out innovation after innovation, yet they have not managed to beat Microsoft yet, even though they clearly had the lead in the beginning. Steve Jobs? Visionary? I don’t think so.
It’s interesting to note that even though Apple has a “culture”, Microsoft employees are still much better off than Apple employees. Microsoft treats their employees like people, while to Apple they are simply tools, a means to an end Steve Jobs has envisioned for Apple. It is also interesting to note that Microsoft is a much more open company than Apple.
No matter what innovations Apple comes up with, Microsoft will develop and inferior copy and still be much more successful than Apple. The last I noticed, Microsoft was the biggest IT company, not Apple.
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