I love the 1999 movie "The Pirates of Silicon Valley" which tells the story of the rise of Apple's Steve Jobs and Microsoft's Bill Gates. It was based on the classic documentary "Triumph of the Nerds".
Fabulous performances by ER's Noah Wyle playing Steve Jobs and Dead Zone's Anthony Michael Hall playing Bill Gates helped win the movie a bunch of award nominations.
There is a wonderful scene in which Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniac visit Xerox PARC and see a demonstration of a mouse and a revolutionary new windows-based GUI that they are developing. I've always wondered what that programme was, and today the Microsoft Vista launch and a Wired article provided the inspiration to find it. Well, it's called Smalltalk-80. Have a look at this 1983 demo video and marvel at how surprisingly sophisticated it is and what a revelation it must have been compared to DOS in its day. There is also an interesting back story to the whole Xerox/Apple encounter.
I wonder how it copes with viruses...
Stu ;-)
ps Here's a photo from the New York Times today. I've gotta agree with Seth Godin, doesn't Ballmer and his gang look excited? No! Barely a smile, never mind a "Wow" in sight!
(Pic credit: Ramin Talaie/Bloomberg News)
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