Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine

I find it funny that a documentary detailing Steve Jobs’ life would be the follow-up to Alex Gibney’s excellent scientology doc Going Clear. After all, what is Apple besides the world’s most successful, friendly, all-inclusive tech cult? And the late Steve Jobs its seemingly benign and boyish head master? While the company cares zealously about its products, what always separated it from the competition was its seductive approach to marketing them. Steve Jobs always had a genius for marketing. He was more a tech Ray Kroc than a modern-day Tesla, and the fact that people still believe the latter is only the most enduring symptom of the former. His genius can be seen in the name: Apple. Apples are friendly, all-American things. And IBMs and Microsofts of course are not.But apples can also be a little rotten at the core, and that’s the impression Gibney leaves us with at the end of Man in the Machine, Along with the feeling that we will never again trust a computer corporation lightly—which is probably a good thing.What starts out as a story about a man of myth ends in a story about the power of mythmaking itself, with our hero being uncovered as a tragic hero disguised as the century’s greatest success story. Jobs attained a status that only a handful of people have ever reached. He impacted the world on a seismic scale, changed forever the way we interact with one another, and accomplished more in his life than many did in centuries. But he never found the peace he expected from it and died sans the enlightenment of his Zen masters. He was also kind of a jerk.Like any “Great” man, Jobs personified the word contradiction. In contrast to many critics, I don’t believe that Jobs was a bad or amoral person, though he did many terrible things, most memorably in concern to his horrendous lack of support for Crissann Brennan and his daughter Lisa, who were both on welfare while Jobs raked in a steady 200 million dollars a year. Ouch. But Jobs could at times also be humane. In one moving scene from the biography Becoming Steve Jobs, not mentioned here, Jobs instantly shot down Tim Cook’s offer to have his liver when in need of one for an immediate operation. An amoral person wouldn’t have thought twice.The difficulty with making a biography of Jobs is separating the man from the work. That’s because Jobs’ life was work. Separating Jobs from Apple is like separating King Tut from Egypt, Napoleon from France, or, as the film implies, a Buddhist monk from his monastery. But still, who was the man behind it all? What drove Jobs’ obsession for perfection? Was it his need to make the world a more harmonious place? His abandonment from his parents? His prickly ego? The answer is most likely all of these things and more. Like Walter Issacson’s biography, this documentary leaves me with a strange mix of repudiation and fascination for Jobs. Though I will never respect Jobs as a person, it’s hard not to be mesmerized by him and all of his darknesses—I can see Brennan’s initial attraction. He was not the greatest man of our generation, though he did great things, but like Aaron Sorkin’s Zuckerberg, he might be the most intriguing personification of it. There's a lot we can learn from Steve Jobs, but many of the lessons won't be found in inspirational message boards. Jobs was a sobering guy, and the lessons his life has to teach us about western ideals of success and ambition are just as disillusioning.

There really was a sadness to this movie. Not just the character (he was a character). But his view of how to bring people together didn’t even come close. Ted may have been bonkers, but he wasn’t totally wrong 😢

The hagiographids are starting to wane, and serious studies of the hysteria-driven social phenomenom that was Steve Jobs are emerging. It's about time that reality finally prevailed over PR stunts.( Speaking of, I actually less than 3 hours ago walked right past the Palo Alto Apple store where Tim Cook was presiding over the release of a new generation of Iphones.The press had reported the line of customers as huge, with many camping overnight. In fact, only a handful camped overnight and the line was less than 300 persons at its peak, of whom at least 80% were teenagers or very young adults. Nevertheless, the propaganda machine continues to crank out its shrill and tinny fanfare)This is a sensible and well-crafted documentary , professionally executed and , in its presentation, very conscious of its mission to present a honest, judicious and informed analysis of it subject matter. To achieve this, the very dark, manipulative and dishonest side of Jobs inevitably must be exhibited. When it does, the viewer recoils in disgust but at the same time is drawn deeper into fascination of this remarkably driven and fundamentally amoral individual. The added pathos of his lingering death on the public stage, renders this man's life almost into a perfect classic Greek tragedy.The compelling and haunting tone that pervades is only slightly diminished by a tempo that could have been played at a slightly smarter trot. At 2+ hrs., those with a prevailing interest in Jobs and a previous knowledge of his personal and business histories will remain attentive; others may find the examination of Jobs concludes successfully too early on to justify the documentary's length.This film, despite its plethora of revelations, was not designed to be provocative, and only the emotionally-driven Apple diehard will cry foul. A certain atmosphere of forlorn regret settles in as the unambiguous evidence, impartially presented, irrefutably redefines the historic perception of the man and his tainted triumphs and follies.All in all,a revealing, fixating and melancholy exercise in the telling of a flawed human.

An amazing man of pure genius and a complicated life he himself had trouble understanding. To lose such genius at a relatively young age is devistating. This is a portrayal of the good and bad, the complexity and simplicity, the innovation and control but above all how personal his vision of what the world could be and how he could make it happen.It does not paint a flattering picture at times and it showed how he was a dichotomy to those that knew him and worked with and for him. He was difficult but had a resolve that endeared him to people and a loyalty to those that stood by him. It also shows that he could be tyrannical, almost evil in his approach to those that seemingly betrayed him. What I got out of this was the emotion that Steve Jobs brought to everyone he met and everything he created. You didn't have to like him to respect him and you didn't have to agree with him to admire him. Though he died too early, he made the things we take for granted today our own personal experiences. The movie starts and finishes with the same question, why did the entire world stop and cry when this man died? My personal opinion is that through the amazing devices be created that gave everybody easy access to the world it also enabled us to look within ourselves and see the person we always dreamed we could be. Awesome documentary and well worth viewing.

Excellent documentaire avec nombre de vidéos inédites

We really enjoyed this DVD. True to life and historical. What a story.

Great insight into the man

EXCELLENT