Yo-har! Board the garage, men!

The Movie: Pirates of Silicon Valley, directed by Martyn Burke
Recommendation: H
Reason: She's a fan of Noah Wyle and Anthony Michael Hall.

I am a computer geek-person. I like computers, I like playing with my computer, I really like taking it apart sometimes. I highly anticipate working on my fixer-upper computers. Pirates of Silicon Valley is the history of how the two major influences on personal computing rose to power. It's the story of two men driven by a similar dream to achieve great things.

I think that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, as portrayed in the movie by Noah Wyle and Anthony Michael Hall, were played as broad-strokes depictions. I know the reputations of both men, Jobs-as-a-hippie and Gates-as-a-geek, but I don't think that either of them are quite as...'extreme' as they were depicted in the film. I was impressed that the movie didn't really seem to take sides, really attempting to portray an even look at a fairly important bit of history. The film gave a fairly simplistic explanation of the differences in approach of both Jobs and Gates, and how their companies were molded. Jobs wanted personal computers to be accessible to the user. Gates wanted to push the envelope of technology and create something great. I like to think both achieved their vision. In the Apple vs. Microsoft debate, I don't really take a side. I like both Macs and generics for different reasons. I wish I had a Mac for a home computer, but I can't deny I like fiddling with my desktop (currently running XP). I think the world of computing would be very different without both companies.

Liked the film. It wasn't action-packed or very thrilling, but it told an interesting story about two very interesting and different men. I'm interested to see how future generations will learn about this particular bit of history, because the conflict between Gates and Jobs is really one of the cornerstones of the home computer revolution.

-69/365 down, 296/365 to go