The life story of the late Apple founder, Steve Jobs is the subject of renewed interest thanks to an eponymous new biopic written by Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network and The West Wing) and directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire).
Sorkin’s screenplay marks a departure from the more sunny portrayal of the Apple impresario by Ashton Kutcher in 2013’s box-office-flop Jobs. The new film instead chips away at the myth of the great man by shedding more light onto Jobs’ more dysfunctional qualities, which according to many of those closest to him, were abundant.
What if instead of just worshipping his tech and business acumen, we focused on some of Jobs’ many other qualities? Here are some of the lessons we would probably learn:
Don’t deny being related to your own kids
Christen Brennan and Steve's daughter Lisa as portrayed in the new film. Source: Universal Pictures
Jobs’ famously denied paternity of his daughter Lisa, born out of wedlock to girlfriend Christen Brennan when he was just 23. The new film touches on the fact that while his company’s stock was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, his ex-partner and daughter were on welfare, with Jobs denying any responsibility.
Brennan told the Daily Mail that when she told him she was pregnant, “He became ever more unpleasant.”
“‘If you give up this baby for adoption, you will be sorry,’ he said. ‘And I am never going to help you.’ I soon quit the little job I had at Apple and went on welfare and started cleaning houses to make a little more money under the table.”
He did eventually admit to paternity and since got remarried to Laurene Powell, with whom he had three more children.
Don’t hog all the credit
Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs (Source: Universal Pictures) Source: Universal Pictures
Jobs had a reputation as for megalomania, something that the new film focuses on – particularly in regard to his relationship with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
"You're not an engineer. You're not a designer. You can't put a hammer to a nail. I built the circuit board. The graphical interface was stolen. So how come, 10 times in a day, I read ‘Steve Jobs is a genius’. What do you do?" Seth Rogen's Wozniak asks Michael Fassbender's Jobs.
"Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra," Fassbender's Jobs responds arrogantly.
The real Wozniak last year said of Steve in a Youtube interview that “He did not know technology. He wanted to be important.”
See the real Wozniak talk about the movie, in this behind-the-scenes clip below;
Apple's chief industrial designer Jonathan Ive made similar accusations in a 2011 biography of Jobs by Walter Isaacson (from which the new screenplay was adapted).
"He [Jobs] will go through a process of looking at my ideas and say, 'That's no good. That's not very good. I like that one,'" Ive told Isaacson. "And later I will be sitting in the audience and he will be talking about it as if it was his idea.”
Don’t use child slave labour
Source: SBS News
In 2010, Apple came under fire after 11 worker deaths on the job at the Taiwanese technology plant of Foxconn, which manufactures iPhones. An undercover investigation by The Daily Mail that year found underaged workers housed in filthy, cramped dormitories being blasted with work-related propaganda from loudspeakers before working up to 34 hours in a single shift.
In 2012, further labour abuses, including overworking employees by 76 hours a week, were uncovered by an audit of three different Chinese factories which were all producing the company’s sought-after i-products. Previous reports into suppliers conducted by Apple itself have also found evidence of child labour in Chinese plants.
The new biopic, starring Michael Fassbender, portrays Jobs as having little regard for others that pay the price in his strive for perfection. When questioned about confronted about the risks of overcrowding in the audience of one of his presentations, Fassbender’s Jobs responds: “If a fire causes a stampede at unmarked exits, it will have been well worth it for those who survive.”
Don’t steal from the poor to give to the rich
Jobs is often compared to his tech rival, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who is famous for his philanthropy, co-founding the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 with his wife, which, at an estimated value of $43.5 billion, is said to be the largest foundation of its kind in the world with the couple reportedly donating $28 billion of their own wealth towards it, as at 2013.
Jobs meanwhile, in contradiction to his hippie entrepreneur image wasn’t quite so philanthropic. In 1986 after departing Apple, he did found the Steven P. Jobs Foundation, which was then closed down a year later. Upon his 1997 return to Apple, he cut the company’s various philanthropic programs and never reinstated them.
Mark Vermillion, who ran the short-lived foundation, told the New York Times in August 2011 “He clearly didn’t have the time [for philanthropic endeavors]…I don’t know if it was my inability to get him excited about it…I can’t criticise Steve.”
Since his death in October 2011 though, Jobs supporters have suggested that he might not be quite so miserly as suggested, with Apple CEO Tim Cook and famous fundraiser Bono claiming that Jobs actually gave away quite a bit of money – just away from the spotlight.
Don’t be a despot
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Jobs’ allegedly had some rather tyrannical tendencies – something Fassbender brings to life in the new film. "You had three weeks; the universe was created in a third of that time," he tells a subordinate at one point.
Fortune magazine reported that after the lacklustre 2008 launch of email system MobileMe, Jobs gave the team a half-hour long public dressing-down, saying: “Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?” Having received an answer, he continued, “So why the fuck doesn’t it do that?”
“You’ve tarnished Apple’s reputation,” he reportedly said. “You should hate each other for having let each other down.”
Fortune reported that he ended the humiliation by replacing the head of the team on the spot.
Steve Jobs opens nationally in Australian release on February 4, 2016. Watch the trailer below.
