PIRATES OF SILICON VALLEY

PIRATES OF SILICON VALLEY

 Reflection Paper

This movie is actually more of a documentary about the men behind the birth and rise of two of the famous computer technology legends - Apple and Microsoft. The story revolves around the experiences and struggles faced and the actions made by Steve Job and Steve Wozniak in Apple Computer Corporation and Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in Microsoft Corporation with the founding of the companies to what they are now. Basically the film makes an effort in comparing the operations of the two firms and their founders. Several events mostly happened with misadventures in college, the circumstances where the actors had made attempts in building electronic gadgets like the computer, writing its first program, involving it entrepreneurial and advertising schemes of their inventions, that led into pirating schemes and the like.

There were lots of great things that lead to the achievement of Steve Jobs. First is that he loves what he is doing or simply he has an enthusiasm in his field of being an inventor and computer techno-preneur. One cannot attain something when one doesn’t love that something. Because sometimes you just have to have that little inspiration for you to move on and strive harder. Steve Jobs even at times when he was younger; he never gets tired of exploring, learning and discovering new things from pieces of scratch. He always thought that small things always have a greater impact when it is studied and concealed. As what his friend Steve Wozniak (who soon became the co-founder of Apple) says, “Steve always saw things differently”. Though there were so many times that he had been rejected and experienced failures, he never once gave up on the things that he loved to do. His enthusiasm pushed him to become innovative and creative. It also became his bloodstream that keeps him alive and continues to move on.

The second man of the Silicon Valley is no other than Bill Gates. Who wants to compete with other companies and wants a triumph. We saw Bill Gates in the story to be a classic businessman. But not only a businessman, a successful businessman. Truly, I like the arrogance of Bill Gates in comes of work. But the only thing you will hate on him is his self-indulgence. He made an offer to IBM with no assurance on his hand. He takes his own menace in making an agreement on Steve Jobs that he will work for Apple Inc as a developer. You will see Bill Gates in the movie to be a person with no other things on his mind but to compete on Apply and win the competition. This is the Bill Gates I know. The person that faced many cases because of his business. But I know Gates is a good man. He is just obsessed on matching what Apple does have at that time. But overall in the movie, Bill Gates is a reasonable man. 

What was really amazing about the film was that the two contenders actually worked together until Steve Jobs realized that Bill Gates developed Windows using the software that Apple had programmed for their computers. The movie is really interesting for it caters the audience not only the development of the two largest computer companies but also the curious students specially students studying computer-related courses. The character of Bill Gates was quite hard to understand and I just kept seeing him as that nerdy kid who is nuts about computers but the characters of Steve Jobs and Bill.