Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates
A few months back, I noticed a bunch of folks tweeting about the 1999 made-for-TV-movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley.” I remember hearing about the movie just as I was moving to Silicon Valley that year, but never got around to watching it. I had heard mixed things about the movie, and its accuracy, but the tweets seemed pretty positive, so I decided to rent it and see for myself.
It exceeded my tremendously low expectations. Though as far as factual accuracy, it’s hard to say where truth ends and creative license takes over. The movie hits some of the high points of the emerging battle between Microsoft and Apple as told through the stories of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. And narrated by their wingmen: Steve Wozniak and Steve Ballmer.
There’s an amusing scene, about 20 minutes in when Wozniak and Jobs walk out of the famed Homebrew Club in 1976, having triumphantly demonstrated a version of their personal computer:
Jobs: “IBM is going to be loading in their pants!”
Wozniak: “Steve, I don’t think IBM even knows who we are.”
Jobs: “That’s okay. Because they’re the enemy.”
And later, in a conversation with John Sculley:
Sculley: ”Steve, I’m worried. About what’s happening. All the “them versus us” stuff. Macintosh versus Apple II.”
Jobs: “You don’t understand, John. People need a cause.”
Creative license aside, back in the late 1970s, and the early 1980s, Jobs had enormous power and the ability to impose his will. If you wanted to play with Apple, you did things Jobs’ way. And he wasn’t afraid to define his enemies and go after them (IBM, Microsoft). That is, until he was ousted in 1985 and Apple began its long, slow decline. And even after Jobs’ return in 1996, Apple was just happy to still be around, even striking a deal with Microsoft to invest to keep it going.
Apple’s clout has grown steadily over the past decade, thanks to the success of the iPod and the iPhone. With the iPad announcement a week behind us, it seems the the gadget itself may turn out to be less interesting than some of the things it tells us about the state of Steve Jobs and Apple. With the iPad, it appears that Jobs is confident that he’s once again in a position to dictate terms and define the opposition in a way he hasn’t been able to since the early days depicted in Pirates of Silicon Valley.
You could feel this renewed swagger when Apple announced it recent earnings. Jobs said in a press release:
“If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company,” Jobs said. “The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”
That was a not-so-subtle reminder of Apple’s financial strength. Consider that Apple has closed the gap in terms of market capitalization with Microsoft. This is from Silicon Valley Insider last November:
“In May 2000, Apple’s market capitalization was $17 billion. Today it’s $182 billion. Meanwhile, Microsoft was around $356 billion in May 2000. Today it’s around $261 billion.”
By the way, Google’s market cap is $171.73 billion as of mid-day Wednesday.
Since the release of the iPad and iTunes, Apple has had the music industry under its thumb. And with the iPhone, Apple was able to change the balance of power between device makers and phone companies. But with the iPad, let’s look at the new ways Jobs is flexing those growing muscles:
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