Steve Wozniak was one of the few people who knew Apple co-founder Steve Jobs closely, and although several filmmakers have tried to tackle the story of how the company came to be, only one of them did the tale justice, according to Wozniak.
Founded in 1976 by Jobs, Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple became the first U.S. company to be valued over $700 billion, and Jobs–who passed away in 2011–became a symbol for the American self-made man, a genius whose ideas blossomed into more than just personal computers. That’s what most people know about Jobs, but Wozniak says he doesn’t feel the films that have been made about him delve much deeper than that.
“I think that there were a lot of weaknesses about the ‘Jobs’ movie, the one with Ashton Kutcher, a lot of weaknesses from the screen writing and all, but I gave it a chance. I was hoping it would be a great movie. Jobs didn’t get into the inner thinking of Steve Jobs, which the movie was about Steve Jobs,” Wozniak said during a press call recently. “That one wasn’t about Bill Gates, but it didn’t get into how he worked inside and how he actually negotiated and worked on people and portrayed his ideas through. It kind of shortened everything. It sort of had the outside Steve Jobs, the frill, the façade and done very well, but I wanted more. I want to really know what is behind this thinking that goes a step further than other people.”
The movie Wozniak feels got it right is actually a made-for-television film from 1999 called Pirates Of Silicon Valley , starring Anthony Michael Hall and Noah Wyle.
“One of the things is, yes, it not only captures inside of Steve Jobs. It’s the events that occurred and what was their meaning in the development of computers and ‘Pirates of Silicon Valley’ was intriguing, interesting. I loved watching it.”
Wozniak revealed some controversial beliefs recently regarding digital privacy and Edward Snowden that got his name in the headlines, saying he believes Snowden is a hero for speaking out against the NSA.
“Total hero to me; total hero. Not necessarily for what he exposed, but the fact that he internally came from his own heart, his own belief in the United States Constitution, what democracy and freedom was about. And now a federal judge has said that NSA data collection was unconstitutional,” Steve Wozniak said.
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