I just recently saw Pirates of Silicon Valley.
I thought it was interesting in that it provided a dramatic stage for my understanding of the whole Jobs/Gates story. I am reading a fantastic book called Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire, and have seen the DVD titled Triumph of the Nerds. So, based on those sources, quite a bit of "Pirates" is based on real events... or at least universally accepted urban legends. 😀
The things that I saw that didn't seem to match "reality" were mostly minor. For instance, there was a scene where Gates was visiting IBM that screwed up some of the details. My understanding is that he purchased a tie at a department store on the way to the meeting... not from a guy in a restroom like in the movie. Also, the scene in the movie looked like it was shot in New York or somewhere. The initial meetings were at an IBM facility in Boca Raton, FL. The movie also sort of made that scene look like gates initiated the contact with IBM. He did not. Big Blue came looking for him. At another point in the movie, Gates runs into Paul Allen's car with a bulldozer. I believe the story was that he almost ran over his own Porsche, not that he hit Allen's car. In the movie, Gates immediately drops out of Harvard to work on the contract at MITS. In reality, I believe he only worked in New Mexico for a Summer before returning to Harvard. He dropped out of Harvard about a year later.
The one thing that "Priates" added to my understanding was how mean Jobs has been at times. There is a scene in the movie where he enters a room while a software engineer is being interviewed for a position at Apple. Jobs berates and embarrasses the man so bad that the poor guy looks like he is about to cry. That scene just sort of made me cringe. Frankly, the movie sort of made me have some second thoughts about buying a Mac (which I have yet to do).
In all fairness, I know that Gates has been cruel to his employees at times. I'm neutral enough on the PC/Mac rivalry to even think that "Pirates" comes across as anti-Mac propaganda. Other than yelling at people, Gates has not been above business moves that sort of screw people over... like buying a DOS system for $50K and turning around and making billions on it... or playing hard ball with MITS or IBM... or using Harvard's mainframe to create commercial products. Microsoft apologists would say it was just good business, but it sure wasn't always pretty. The "Pirates" movie seemed to play down things that made Gates look bad (it didn't include any scenes of his obnoxious youth). For instance, the movie spent alot of time focusing on Jobs' screwed up relationship with his daughter, and didn't really touch on Gates' personal life (other than to show a scene where Steve Ballmer was sort of teasing him about his lack of a personal life).
I would normally be more at home around a hippie (like Jobs) than I would a nerd (like Gates)... but the movie made Jobs look much more like a crazy and abusive megalomaniac. At least, that was my impression.
