PLOT: In 1984, Steve Jobs (Noah Wyle) speaking to director Ridley Scott (J. G. Hertzler), who is in the process of creating the 1984 commercial for Apple Computer which introduced the Macintosh personal computer to an American audience for the first time. Jobs sees the commercial as a poetic statement of consciousness-raising, but Scott is more concerned at the moment with its technical aspects.[1] Flashing forward 1997, Jobs has returned to Apple, and announces a new deal with Microsoft at the ’97 Macworld Expo. His partner, Steve Wozniak (Joey Slotnick), is introduced as one of the two central narrators of the story. Wozniak notes to the audience the resemblance between “Big Brother” and the image of Bill Gates (Anthony Hall) on the screen behind Jobs during this announcement. Asking how they “got from there to here,” the film turns to flashbacks of his youth with Jobs, prior to the forming of Apple. The first flashback takes place on the U.C. Berkeley campus during the period of the early seventies student movements. Jobs and Wozniak are shown caught on the campus during a riot between students and police. Jobs and Wozniak flee the riot, and after finding safety, Jobs states to Wozniak that it is they, not the protesters, who are the true revolutionaries. Despite the spiritual dimension in which Jobs views their work, Wozniak simply sees their computer work in terms of kilobytes and circuit boards. Meanwhile, a young Bill Gates at Harvard University, his classmate Steve Ballmer (John DiMaggio), and Gates’ high school friend Paul Allen (Josh Hopkins) are conducting their early work with MITS, which is juxtaposed against the involvement of Jobs and Wozniak with the Homebrew Computer Club, eventually leading to the development of the Apple I in 1976 with the help of angel investor Mike Markkula (Jeffrey Nordling). The story follows the protagonists as they develop their technology and their businesses. At a San Francisco computer fair where the Apple II computer is introduced, Gates (the then-unknown Microsoft CEO), attempts to introduce himself to Jobs, who snubs him. The film then follows the subsequent development of the IBM-PC with the help of Gates and Microsoft in 1981. Meanwhile, Apple has developed The Lisa and later, the Macintosh, computers which were inspired by the Xerox Alto (a computer which the Apple team viewed during a tour of Xerox PARC during the late 1970s). Gates would later refer to this event when he tells Jobs during an argument, “You and I are both like guys who had this rich neighbor—Xerox—who left the door open all the time. And you go sneakin’ in to steal a TV set, only when you get there, you realize I got there first. And you’re yelling? That’s not fair? I wanted to try and steal it first!” In 1985, Steve Jobs is given a birthday toast shortly before he is fired by CEO John Sculley from Apple Computer. A brief epilogue notes what happened afterward in Jobs’ and Wozniak’s lives.
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