Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Strong and Moving!

Let's be realistic.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Pirates Of Silicon Valley is a great TV movie about the computer age and its two visionaries namely: the late Steve Jobs and Bill Gates,two men who who made the world of technology what it is today;their struggles during college;the founding of their companies; and the ingenious actions they took to build up their global corporate empires.The film also shows how computers came about,its history and development.Aside from that,it tells the history of Apple Computer Corporation and Microsoft.Pirates was an adaptation of the book,Fire In The Valley.The story opens with the creation of the 1984 commercial for Apple Computer, which introduced the first Macintosh.Steve Jobs is speaking with director Ridley Scott, trying to convey his idea that "We're creating a completely new consciousness." Scott, however, is more concerned at the moment with the technical aspects of the commercial.Then,it flashes forward to 1997 as Jobs, who has returned to Apple, is announcing a new deal with Microsoft at the 1997 Macworld Expo. His partner, Steve Wozniak, 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 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 of the film 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. They flee and after finding safety, Jobs states to Wozniak, "Those guys think they're revolutionaries. They're not revolutionaries, we are." Wozniak then comments that "Steve was never like you or me. He always saw things differently. Even when I was in Berkeley, I would see something and just see kilobytes or circuit boards while he'd see karma or the meaning of the universe."Using a similar structure, the film next turns to a young Bill Gates at Harvard University, in the early 1970s, with classmate Steve Ballmer and Gates' high school friend Paul Allen. As with Wozniak in the earlier segment, Ballmer narrates Gates' story, particularly the moment when Gates discovers the existence of the MITS Altair (causing him to drop out of Harvard).Gates' and Allen's early work with MITS 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. 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,attempts to introduce himself to Jobs, who snubs him.Then follows the consequent 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. The main body of the film finally concludes with a birthday toast in 1985 to Steve Jobs shortly before he was fired by CEO John Sculley from Apple Computer.It also includes a brief epilogue, noting what happened afterward in the lives of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. The movie ends with Steve Jobs returning to Apple after its acquisition of NeXT Computer, and Bill Gates appearing live via satellite at a MacWorld Expo in 1997, during Jobs' first Stevenote keynote address, to announce an alliance between Apple and Microsoft.The movie has great acting especially by Noah Wyle who played the late Steve Jobs convincingly.The story was well written and the direction was not boring that you could watch it over and over again.I own the new DVD release version.I consider it one of my favorite movies considering I am Engineer in the computer industry.This is TV movie is not only for engineers and computer enthusiasts but people who want to know more about Gates and the late Steve Jobs.

I will make this very short: "Great TV movie with outstanding performances by Noah Wyle and Anthony Michael Hall!"I loved watching the "fights" between Steve Jobs (Apple) and Bill Gates (Microsoft) and also showing that Steve Jobs was not always a very human / kind person in his early years makes this movie believable and watchable.Please make a sequel: I wish they would consider making a sequel showing the period from 1997 until now for the world to see what Steve Jobs actually accomplished after returning again to Apple (in 1997) after he was more or less kicked out by the board of directors in 1985!!!

This quite efficient docu-drama is on its way to become a cult movie for those who are interested in the history of hi-tech. Realized by the end of the 'bubble' i.e. the period when computers and networking companies seemed to develop endlessly and made of their nerd or hippies or both founders riches it succeeds to catch the attention by using up to the verge of confusion the same kind of techniques used when telling about the times of the hippies. It does not matter that much that the super-gifted engineers and the capitalists in jeans were very different kind of characters than the flower-power boys and gals, the trick works quite well. The film survived well the almost decade since its making because it has pace, because it focuses on the characters of the founders of Apple and Microsoft and tells well the story of their ascension and of their conflict and because that conflict was really an important step in the hitech saga and remains to a large extent actual until today. Some of the historical details and timeline may not be accurate, but this is after all not the most important thing in the genre, what is important is to catch the essence of the true story and to tell it well on screen. This happens here and works pretty well.

If you want to watch this film to shape your opinion on both Jobs and Gates, I suggest you create your own opinion first on the other sources. But while you already know whom you hate and whom you love, you'll be thrilled with that movie. Imagine a film, which you feel from the very beginning, a film that makes you forget about the ugliness of world, a film that provide you the whole range of emotions, a film that makes you think, a film that makes you feel stunningly and magically wonderful.. If you are a kind of a person capable of feeling above mentioned emotions, there should be no point for wondering whether "Pirates of Silicon Valley" are worth watching. Just start watching it. You will move in the age of cheerful 70's and 80's in a such gentle and instant way you won't even realize that you were living in the 21st century. The atmosphere of the times is rendered flawlessly and perfectly just to switch off your PPC mental CPU and use the good old 68k. The outstanding and incredibly honest performance of Noah Wyle will create a 'hard-copy' of a picture of the real Steve Jobs in you mind for ever.