Nothing To Lose
Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot
Being intimately familiar with the history of technology, this movie appealed to me as a documentation of the world-changers of my generation.
Anthony Michael Hall and Noah Wyle are perfectly cast as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, respectively. Both actors perform their characters flawlessly, giving life to Gates' megalomania and Jobs' neuroses.
The plot details the simultaneous machinations of these two giants from their meager origins. Jobs and Wozniak building the first PC's in a garage, and Gates providing the operating system for the first microcomputers. Big Brother Bill's business savvy is apparent in his first negotiation, where he frankly tells a manufacturer that his hardware is nothing without the OS, and demands that his royalty fee be nearly doubled. Jobs shows his instability from the point he comes on screen as a drugged-out hippy.
From there, we are moved on to the historic non-meeting of the two at a computer convention. Gates looks on at the Apple display that Jobs is ringmastering, while all the attendees swarm away from the hardware he has written the code for. The envy is clear on his face as he is waved away by Jobs. It is interesting to imagine what might have happened if those two had teamed up at that early date.
From there, we get to to piracy: Jobs raiding the mouse from Xerox, and Gates pitching a DOS he didn't even have yet to IBM. Gates, of course acquired the program for $50,000 the next day from an anonymous programmer who was ecstatic to get the cash. (Gates recently threw this guy a couple million in gratitude.)
From there, Gates steals the mouse concept from Apple and secures his dominance over technology. The rest of the movie details the decline of Apple down to the final disgrace - which is where the movie opened: Steve Jobs gracefully accepting Gates' generous merger...
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