Wozniak: Facts in Steve Jobs movie look 'atrocious'

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/30/tech/innovation/wozniak-jobs-movie/index.html?hpt=hp_bn5

by mactitan • 13 years ago

120 57 13 years ago

dsr_• 13 years ago

It doesn't really matter. This isn't a biography or a documentary, this is entertainment. Was THE SOCIAL NETWORK true? No, it was entertaining.

The best you can hope for any biopic is that it won't distort positions unrecognizably far from reality, and perhaps it will inspire someone.

sarvinc• 13 years ago

I'm not sure why you draw a distinction between biographies, documentaries and entertainment.

The Social Network was not true. I'm pretty sure we would've been just as entertained by the truth.

The best we can hope for is that we learn something from the truth while simultaneously being entertained by it.

I'm not sure when we decided that we must sacrifice everything but the names, of those involved, at the altar of entertainment

pygy_• 13 years ago

Regarding Jobs, the transition from the kid avid to make a quick buck to the perfectionist product designer, then tech guru/trend setter would have been interesting. From the preview, it looks like they portray Jobs as the latter from the get go.

Edit: dsr_: It seems that most users here have failed to learn the meaning of up and downvotes.

tolmasky4• 13 years ago

I think you can make an even stronger argument in the case of The Social Network that what we got was a less entertaining story because of it. I think the story that was told was a much lazier one, forced to fit old prototypes and thus was simultaneously less entertaining and had less to teach. The story behind Facebook, and the people that participated in it, is probably pretty interesting, but instead we got the tired trope of "ostracized nerd channels social frustration to super ambition - only to find himself alone". The characters were flat and one sided, the lessons were obvious. The story has been told countless times already, it is boring, unrealistic, and doesn't leave much to learn from.

rbanffy2• 13 years ago

What's next? "Steve Jobs, Vampire Hunter"?

ghostDancer• 13 years ago

may be Blade Runner, "retiring" androids. ;-)

donebizkit• 13 years ago

Sure it's not a biography but the issue is that it will be perceived as such by regular movie goers. That's the power of Hollywood as a propaganda machine. People will be referencing events from the movie as if they were 100% accurate. They will make character judgements; and on the long run those judgements will transcend from the movie to reality.

astrodust• 13 years ago

Zuckerberg found The Social Network to be significantly less than 100% accurate, but perhaps a better movie because of it.

danso4• 13 years ago

It's a shame. The truth of their relationship is entertaining and fascinating in itself. I suspect it would be even more so if Woz wasn't such a humble mensch and would rather be polite than talk trash. It's just a shame that he doesn't get more popular respect so that more people aspire to be like him...for every Jobs, we need someone as good as Woz

mactitan• 13 years ago

The more I learn of Woz I'm more impressed. Like listening to him. I agree that he's a good role model But is his personality conducive to driving a business? It seems the tyrants are more successful.

danso4• 13 years ago

I think just about everyone agrees, including Woz, that Woz would still be building calculators at HP if it weren't for Jobs. But Jobs would've never had the necessary early success without Woz's genius.

goostavos• 13 years ago

Just a side note on the subject of "learning about Woz," If you haven't already, I highly recommend his book iWoz. it's a really interesting recounting of his early days as an engineer.

rbanffy2• 13 years ago

Woz is too good an engineer to be a manager.

edouard1234567• 13 years ago

Jobs was the intuitive enabler, Woz was the thinker who almost knows how to dance.

laumars3• 13 years ago

I'd say Woz's role was far more pivotal than Jobs'.

For every salesman, you need several engineers to actually create and build a product worth selling.

huxley2• 13 years ago

Steve Wozniak was working on the prototype Apple I as a hobby and that's all it would have been without Steve Jobs.

Jobs convinced him it could be a business. Jobs had to sell his minivan and Wozniak's calculator to build the first batch of computers to sell at local computer shops. Jobs had to cajole and motivate Wozniak into being part of Apple Computer Inc rather than just an HP employee who gave away circuit board diagrams at HomeBrew meetings in his spare time.

Once the story of the Mac begins, Wozniak was practically retired, working mostly on education and coming up with neat ideas for remote controls. Jobs was motivating and cajoling the generations of brilliant engineers that would make the Mac, the NeXT Cube, the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

Jobs was never a sales guy, he needed other people to do that. He was a motivator and a critic.

sethbannon• 13 years ago

The neatest part of this article is where Woz talks about Aaron Sorkin's upcoming Steve Jobs film, which he is consulting on and says will "play out in three extended scenes, shot in real time, that depict Jobs at three product rollouts: the Macintosh, Jobs' non-Apple product NeXT, and the iPod."

Now that's something to look forward to.

tolmasky4• 13 years ago

Seems strange to leave out the iPhone product announcement, especially since the iPod announcement was pretty low key ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN0SVBCJqLs ), and was not an obvious hit at the event. Compare that to the iPhone announcement where everyone went wild right then and there, and truly felt like the culmination of Steve's vision of what computing should become (the iPod in retrospect seemed more like a side project that didn't really "mesh" with his general philosophy on computing).

samstave2• 13 years ago

I think the iPod is the spark of the Apple that we know today, and as such is momentous.

Given that Apple's stock was ~$9 when the iPod was announced and Apple is now the most valuable company, this really was the first step - and further - we pretty much know the rest of the history after that.

It would not necessarily make sense to skip the iPod and jump to the iPhone as it was an iterative revolution that made them what they are now.

Some of those steps in the iterations were obvious, some predictable, others surprising but all were mind-blowingly successful.

beggi• 13 years ago

Unrelated to this article but more based on what I've read elsewhere - to me, this movie just doesn't seem very innovative, unlike the subject. It feels like the producers wanted to cram Steve's whole life into a one and a half hour film without any compromise. On the other hand, I love the idea of Aaron Sorkin's movie, with three scenes of Steve getting ready for important product announcements. I think that's a great compromise and much more in the spirit of Steve Jobs's work ethic.

Of course, I have not seen the movie, just basing this off of articles I've read :)

artursapek2• 13 years ago

It was clear when it was announced that this was going to be the inaccurate, sexy, mainstream Hollywood version of a Jobs film. It stars Ashton Kutcher for god's sake.

I think everyone on HN is unanimously looking more forward to Aaron Sorkin's film. Most of the mainstream non-tech-world Hollywood-Ashton-Kutcher audience has not seen the actual product announcements nor do they even know they exist. For most people, the iPod announcement was word of mouth and TV ads. Meanwhile a lot of the type of people who read HN somewhat worship the Steve Jobs keynotes. I know I've watched nearly all of them.

In fact I'm sure there will be a spike in "everyone else" watching them for the first time if Sorkin's movie is popular and brings them to the mainstream. For now they've just been a total geek thing to indulge in. :)

philwelch• 13 years ago

Why would we look forward to Aaron Sorkin's film if we don't want an "inaccurate, sexy, mainstream Hollywood version"? Did we forget The Social Network that easily?

artursapek2• 13 years ago

Aaron's won't be that. I don't think his goal is the same as was with The Social Network.

gbog• 13 years ago

"a lot of the type of people who read HN somewhat worship the Steve Jobs keynotes"

I don't. I'm not sure why so many people in this readership should love them. Most probably just don't care.

relic• 13 years ago

"A lot" of people can still like them if you don't. Jobs was, undeniably, a master of presentation, so even if you don't like him, or apple at all, there are still a lot of reasons to respect his stage presence.

TechNewb2• 13 years ago

I will be posting the full video of Woz's very informative and inspiring talk on YouTube with highlights as soon as it gets approved by legal. Hopefully that will be this Monday...

lukifer3• 13 years ago

Please do. I never get tired of listening to Woz speak. :)

TechNewb2• 13 years ago

Here is the full Woz conversation! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIKTes4BzXo

eloisius• 13 years ago

This is like inception misrepresentation. An article about Wozniak condemning the accuracy of a movie, which is itself very misleading.

I was at the talk, and I can say first hand that the tone of the talk never came anywhere near the way this editorialized paragraph would suggest:

> "Totally wrong. Personalities and ... the ideas of computers affecting society did not come from Jobs ... . His idea was to make a $20 PC board and sell it for $40 to help people... build the computer I'd given away ... . [H]e always saw a way to make a quick buck off my designs (this was the 5th time). The lofty talk came much further down the line."

The theme was closer to how he and Jobs were a great team because he would come up with designs and Jobs always had a way to make them money from it even saying explicitly, "...and we'd always split the profit."

Apocryphon• 13 years ago

I'm disappointed in that unlike The Social Network, which had no other film as a reference to compare to, this film already has Pirates of Silicon Valley as a precedent. While Jobs didn't care for the film, Woz thought:

"The personalities and incidents are accurate in the sense that they all occurred but they are often with the wrong parties (Bill Fernandez, Apple employee #4, was with me and the computer that burned up in 1970) and at the wrong dates (when John Sculley joined, he had to redirect attention from the Apple III,not the Mac, to the Apple II) and places (Homebrew Computer Club was at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) ... the personalities were very accurately portrayed." (http://www.woz.org/taxonomy/term/2)

kylec• 13 years ago

Jobs must have liked it somewhat though, otherwise he wouldn't have had Noah Wyle reprise the role in an Apple keynote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIClAanU7Os

laumars3• 13 years ago

Looks to me like Jobs uses the entire exchange as a way of undermining Noah's performance in the movie:

"I invited him here today to see how I really act" etc

elorant2• 13 years ago

As atrocious is Kutcher's performance. The guy will ridicule Jobs legacy with his poor acting. I saw the trailer and it was awful. And the guy they choose to play Woz resembles more Hurley from Lost rather than Wozniak.

lutusp3• 13 years ago

I knew Jobs personally, and I have to tell you, an accurate portrayal of his behavior by an acting prodigy -- or a straightforward documentary using real footage -- would do more harm to his reputation than a shallow script and modestly talented performer.

daimyoyo• 13 years ago

Why do you say that? I think the closer someone could get to portraying Steve Jobs, the better it would be.

JacobIrwin• 13 years ago

Vuze search rendered zero results for "jobs"+"sundance"

However, I was able to find a short clip from the film, here: https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/kutcher-...

Please let me know if you find a source of the full movie, thanks!

Wozniak: Facts in Steve Jobs movie look 'atrocious'

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