Pirates of Silicon Valley 1999

Steve Jobs sits down with director Ridley Scott to talk through the bold idea behind the 1984 Macintosh advertisement, a moment that frames the film’s broader look at how a single vision can collide with the stark realities of making technology consumer-ready. Jobs insists on a larger purpose behind the project, framing it as the birth of “a completely new consciousness,” while Scott remains focused on the practical craft of production and the mechanics of bringing the commercial to life.

The movie then travels forward to 1997, when Jobs returns to Apple and unveils a new alliance with Microsoft at the Macworld Expo. The narration shifts to Steve Wozniak, portrayed by Steve Wozniak, who becomes one of the two central narrators guiding the audience through the story. Wozniak points the audience toward the tension visible on the big screen—an image of Bill Gates during Jobs’s pivotal announcement—inviting us to ask the perennial question of how they got from there to here. This setup leads into a series of flashbacks that trace the early days of the two tech titans and the unlikely paths that brought them to the cusp of revolution.

The earliest memory unfolds in 1971 on the UC Berkeley campus amid a vibrant, unsettled era of student protest. There, teenaged Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are caught in a chaotic riot between protesters and police. In a moment that crystallizes their divergent worldviews, Jobs tells Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak declare, “Those guys think they’re revolutionaries. They’re not revolutionaries, we are.” Wozniak counters with a quieter, more analytic take, explaining how Jobs always saw things beyond the surface—beyond kilobytes and circuitry to the broader meanings of the universe.

As the narrative broadens, the film shifts to the East Coast. A young Bill Gates, along with Harvard classmate Steve Ballmer and Gates’s high school friend Paul Allen, confront early awakenings about computer software and the fledgling Altair machine created by Ed Roberts. This segment juxtaposes Gates’s pragmatic drive with the more design-focused energy of Jobs and Wozniak, underscoring the different philosophies that would define their later competition. Gates’s discoveries and decisions here set the stage for the later showdown with Apple, a clash that will hinge as much on licensing decisions as on technical prowess.

Back in the garage and the workshop of Jobs’s family home, Apple takes its first faltering steps. The trio—Jobs, Wozniak, and the investor Mike Markkula—build a company around the Apple I and Apple II, a sequence of moments that shows the magic of invention colliding with the workhorse realities of business. The film highlights how a single investor’s faith can propel a tiny operation into a larger-stage phenomenon, setting the tone for a company that would redefine personal computing.

The narrative then moves to 1977, when Apple II makes its debut at the West Coast Computer Faire, a milestone that signals the company’s arrival on the wider stage. The partnership between Jobs, Wozniak, and Markkula grows as they push toward more ambitious products, and the film follows the team as they navigate management, production, and the market’s fierce eagerness for the next big thing. The story then pivots to the development of the IBM PC with the collaboration of Gates and Microsoft in 1981, a pivotal pivot that foreshadows the later friction between Gates and Apple.

Central to the personal dimension are Jobs’s complicated relationships, including his involvement with Arlene, the pseudonymous stand-in for Chrisann Brennan, and the strain of acknowledging his parental responsibilities for their daughter, Lisa. The arc of personal life threads through professional milestones: the unveiling of Lisa, the subsequent Macintosh, and the inspiration drawn from Xerox Alto that informs their approach to user experience and interface design.

A crucial turning point arrives at the October 1983 Apple keynote, where Jobs previews the Macintosh and, in a simultaneous move, learns that Microsoft has secured a licensing deal in Japan to bring Windows apps into PCs. The film captures the heated exchange between Jobs and Gates, a confrontation framed as a clash of principles. Jobs accuses Gates of copying Apple’s designs and acting without transparent partnership, while Gates defends it as a contractual and strategic move—an argument that mirrors a broader debate about fair competition and the fate of innovation. The dialogue echoes a familiar refrain about rivals who push the rules to secure advantage, with Gates comparing their actions to Xerox’s earlier missteps and the broader dynamics of a digital marketplace.

The film closes its main arc with a 1985 toast to Steve Jobs on his 30th birthday, just before he is forced out of Apple by CEO John Sculley. It is a moment of both personal humility and professional upheaval, a turning point that pushes Jobs toward a period of reinvention and eventual return. The retrospective intention of the film culminates in 1997, when Jobs returns to Apple after the NeXT era and publicly announces the renewed alliance with Microsoft at Macworld Expo. The closing frames reveal a more settled life for Jobs: he is married, has children, and has reconciled with his daughter Lisa, suggesting a future in which personal and professional upheavals have given way to renewed purpose.

Throughout, the film uses the two narrators—Jobs’s drive and Wozniak’s practical, grounded memory—to balance the mythic arc of Apple’s ascent with the grounded realities of entrepreneurship. The story stays attentive to both the technical innovations that defined the era and the personal relationships that shaped the choices behind every milestone, resulting in a detailed, human portrait of how a vision for a new kind of technology can collide with the everyday force of business, partnerships, and human ambition.