At some point of our life – either when looking at the world through ‘Windows’ or working ferociously with the ‘Leopard’ we do tend to wonder as to what conspired to turn these two companies into the corporate juggernauts they are. ‘Pirates of the Silicon Valley’ gives an insight of how they evolved albeit without the complete facts a documentary would provide but with an entertaining package.
The film takes us back to the time of the whiz kids of University of California Berkeley and introduces us to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak on one side and Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer on the other. As the title suggests, the film is about all the geek business that goes around between them. While Wozniak builds the first mass-produced computer, the Apple, the Gates base is busy trying to put an operating system in to the first computer made for general people, the Altaire.
Steve Wozniak is ridiculed when he takes his wooden cased computer to HP whereas when they release their product at a trade show, even Bill Gates is sidelined by the crowds. They want to see the new phenomenon called the ‘personal computer’. From Jobs’s garage to the trade show to people’s home, the Apple had finally made it. But that was just the start.
Apple (the company) then skyrocketed to being the largest personal computer maker company. The film then showcases the sneaky tricks that the corporations employed. Apple got its Graphics User Interface (GUI) from Xerox whereas in the Microsoft camp, DOS also came from an outside source. Microsoft then started exploring and designing its own user interface and thus was born, Windows.
Throughout the film we see the zealousness and the craziness of both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as Steve begins food fights and bulldozes the ground of Redmond Campus. However, critics may feel that the roles played by the actors of their respective characters do not fit in the perfect mould and hence leave something more to be desired. Nonetheless, the film is a great watch, if not for information then foe entertainment.