Thursday, September 05, 2013

Review of the Jobs Movie: Will There Be a Jobs 2 Movie?

I finally got a chance to see the Jobs movie, starring Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple (AAPL). I thought the movie was well done and covered a lot of historical information about the founding and history of Apple Computer, along with the rise and fall and rise again of Steve Jobs.

Anyone who has read the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson knows that there is an extensive amount of information about Steve Jobs that could have been included in the movie, but the book is over 650 pages long, and if everything in the book was put into the movie, the movie would have been 20 hours instead of two hours.

Kutcher did a fantastic job portraying Jobs, getting down the Jobs walk, talk, and look. Dermot Mulroney as Mike Markkula, and Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak, were also outstanding.

There were a couple issues in the movie. I wouldn't call them flaws, but I would consider them incidents that were left out that prevented a clear picture of other issues. A perfect example is when Jobs discovers that Microsoft (MSFT) had 'stolen' the graphical user interface with drop-down menus, then proceeds to give Bill Gates a severe tongue-thrashing over the phone. What wasn't mentioned in the movie was the fact that back in 1997, Bill Gates agreed to bail out Apple to the tune of a $150 million investment and even agreed to develop Microsoft Office for the Mac.

I realize the movie can include only so much, but this bail out by Gates and Microsoft shouldn't have been left out.

By the way, Steve and Steve got the idea for a GUI operating system, icons, and even the mouse from Xerox, which were developed for Xerox's Star computer, long before the Macintosh. These ideas were later put into the the Mac OS.

The movie ended at the time the iPod was announced. I'm wondering if there is going to be a Jobs 2.

Anyway, if you are looking for a great way to spend a couple hours, I highly recommend Jobs. And if you haven't read Steve Jobs, I recommend it also. (It makes a great gift for Apple fans.)

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