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Countdown to Pirates (6/10/99)
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There's only just over a week to go before TNT debuts its long-awaited Steve Jobs/Bill Gates biopic, "The Pirates of Silicon Valley," and the AtAT staff is getting restless. Sure, we've been through the web site and taken the Silicon Quiz, played the little Shockwave versions of all those classic games like "Pong" and "Breakout" (ah, the misspent hours of our lost youth...), etc., but we're just itching for the actual televisual experience-- we're still kicking ourselves for sleeping instead of channel-surfing a couple of weeks ago when TNT aired it unannounced and in the middle of the night so it could qualify for the Emmys.
So we're grateful that MacWEEK posted a fairly in-depth review of the movie, which discusses lots of what happens on-screen. It looks to be a pretty entertaining ride, all told, and we're not exactly sure that it's a valid criticism to say that the movie makes Jobs look bad. Whether it actually does or not is beyond our judgment at this point, but if it was a directorial choice to vilify Jobs, hey, we're game-- it's all in the name of entertainment. However, if the director is in fact guilty of having "left out so much of Steve's vision and confused his charisma with brutish management techniques," that's a different story. (We're pretty sure we read somewhere that both Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs had given semi-reluctant "thumbs up" ratings for the movie, so apparently if it does make Jobs look like a jerk, well, even Jobs thinks it's somewhat accurate.)
Or maybe it's ER's Noah Wyle that had a tough time capturing the magic that is Steve. Nothing against Noah's talent, of course; we imagine it must be darn close to impossible to portray a man with a Reality Distortion Field and to do it without making the character look like a psychotic. The good news is, whether he succeeds or not, either result is likely to be fun to watch. Start the countdown!
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SceneLink (1597)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 6/10/99 episode: June 10, 1999: The reason for the $1299 Sears iMac comes clear, as the phenomenal "sale price" of $1199 is revealed. Meanwhile, the consumer portable may have to share the Macworld Expo spotlight with another star, and "Pirates of Silicon Valley" is rapidly approaching-- gear up by reading the early reviews...
Other scenes from that episode: 1595: Playing The Sale Game (6/10/99) Not that this comes as any particular surprise, but Sears is playing the classic retail game when it comes to pricing the iMac. You know the one; jack up the "regular price" of an item, so you can then offer a lower "special sale price" that, coincidentally, just happens to be the regular price everywhere else... 1596: Two Stars, No Waiting (6/10/99) As usual, Apple Insider's got the fun dirt, though of course we couldn't even begin to speculate about whether or not it's really true. They've finally shed some light on the cryptic reference to a "sidekick" that popped up in their latest report on the upcoming consumer portable, virtually guaranteed for a Macworld Expo introduction next month...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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