A flawed but intriguing character study of two of the most extraordinary individuals of our modern technological era. The movie is historically inaccurate. Nevertheless, it manages to capture the essence of how much of modern computing came to be: the cluelessness of Xerox about what its own computer scientists were doing; Steve Jobs' artistic vision at Apple; and Bill Gates' ruthless business practices at Microsoft. Chrysler diagnostic tool. And you will be fascinated by how these men got where they are today. The movie isn't very kind to either Jobs or Gates, emphasizing their negative qualities.

Find out where to watch, buy, and rent Pirates of Silicon Valley Online on. Rent, download, or view the Martyn Burke-directed movie via subscription can be. The revolution came when we weren't looking. It happened in a garage. In a dorm room. In countless hours of effort, imagining and intrigue. Apple co-founder.

Steve Jobs is presented as a visionary, but also as a slavedriver and someone who refuses to accept that he's the illegitimate father of a young girl. Gates is portrayed in an even less flattering way--as some kind of outright sociopath who is driven to destroy all those who try to do business with him. Still, as long as you recognize that the portrayals are negatively slanted, you will be rewarded by witnessing the interplay among the famous triangle: Adele Goldberg (not explicitly named in the movie), the leader of Xerox's research team; Steve Jobs, who ripped her off and incorporated those technologies in the new Macintosh; and Bill Gates, who ripped off Jobs and incorporated those technologies in the newer Windows product. The movie does suffer from several historical inaccuracies. I believe that at least some of those inaccuracies were deliberate--attempts to oversimplify the historical record in order to shorten the length of the movie. For example, the movie makes it appear that Apple's first attempt at a computer with a modern graphical user interface--the Lisa--was a tremendous success, when in fact it was a commercial failure. But portraying it as a success made it simpler to explain why Bill Gates got interested in dealing with Apple at that time.

While the movie is long, it would have been even better as a two-day or three-day miniseries. That would have enabled some of the historical record to be explored at greater depth, eliminating the need for this deliberate vast oversimplification. I loved this movie thoroughly. Many people may not 'get' it properly due to their age, unfamiliarity with the characters, or general indifference to computers and stories involving them. For me, however, a computer enthusiast who was born in 1971, this movie is simply awesome!

I was very young in those days but when I watched this movie, it totally brought me back to that time. Although I was young, I remember much of it and it felt right on. I thought this movie was well-written, well-acted, and greatly entertaining. It gave me a thrill to think of being at Apple when it started up. I also loved seeing the machinations that made Bill Gates rich and infamous.

Sure they likely distorted facts and embellished things a lot, but such things are needed sometimes to make historical movies entertaining. I recommend this movie to any child of the 70's, especially if you are a computer fan. I gave it a 10! I recently saw a rough-cut of TNT Originals' Pirates of Silicon Valley.

(It airs in June -- premiere's on Sunday June 20.) It's the story of Steve Jobs (Co-founder of Apple Computers) and Bill Gates (Co-founder of Microsoft) and their competitive rivalry to dominate the computer industry. Sounds boring, right? It's actually pretty cool!

Here's why: Casting Anthony Michael Hall as the world's biggest geek, Bill Gates, was genius. Hall has done such crap in the past few years that we all forgot what a great character actor he is.

His best characters have always been misfits and geeks. In Pirates, he captures everything that's both creepy and sympathetic about Bill Gates. He's totally believable! Noah Wyle's character as Steve Jobs is right on! Here I always thought Apple was the underdog. Turns out -- Apple had it all over Microsoft until the mid-eighties.

Wyle plays Jobs as this power-hungry hippie gone awry. It's a nice change from his do-good doctor on ER. And Wyle makes the jump to full-length film effortlessly. Look for him on the big screen battling aliens any day now. The story is somewhat standard but filled in with cool details that keep it interesting Jobs as a deadbeat Dad; Gates pitching his product to IBM (the IBM guy actually thinks all the money is in the hardware!), and the late-night screaming matches between Jobs and Gates. Here's the thing that just boggles my mind -- these two are pretty average guys especially for their generation.