Posted on 10/04/2015 5:15:13 PM PDT by dennisw
A new movie is reopening a debate over the Apple Inc. co-founder’s legacy.
Mr. Jobs’s allies, led by his widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, say the film “Steve Jobs,” and other recent depictions, play down his accomplishments and paint Mr. Jobs as cruel and inhumane. Ms. Jobs repeatedly tried to kill the film, according to people familiar with the conversations. She lobbied, among others, Sony Pictures Entertainment, which developed the script but passed on the movie for financial reasons, and Comcast Corp. ’s Universal Pictures, which is releasing the $33.5 million production on Friday.
“A whole generation is going to think of him in a different way if they see a movie that depicts him in a negative way,” said Bill Campbell, a longtime Apple board member and friend of Mr. Jobs. Mr. Campbell hasn't seen the film.
The movie’s creators say it is within the bounds of artistic license.
The film is based on a best-selling biography of Mr. Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Mr. Jobs cooperated with Mr. Isaacson while he was writing the book, but some friends and former colleagues, including Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, have criticized it in recent months.
Asked about the movie by “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert recently, Mr. Cook said, “I think a lot of people are trying to be opportunistic and I hate this.”
People behind “Steve Jobs” say they offered to include Ms. Jobs in the film’s development, but she declined.
“She refused to discuss anything in Aaron’s script that bothered her despite my repeated entreaties,” producer Scott Rudin said in an emailed response to questions from The Wall Street Journal. He said Ms. Jobs “continued to say how much she disliked the book, and that any movie based on the book could not possibly be accurate.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Hollywood libs vs Cupertino libs. The popcorn is popping!
It’s sort of Sunni vs Shiite.
http://entertainment.time.com/2011/10/28/steve-jobs-and-joan-didion-the-untold-story/
“You ought to buy it,” he said. She couldn’t afford it. They left. He didn’t buy her the dress. “I felt a bit strange about it,” she says. Seems like Jobs could, his high standards as a technologist aside, have striven a little harder for excellence as a boyfriend.
Elsewhere on the web:
“Steve knew that Walter was a credible biographer and that he’d get to the truth—and that’s precisely why Steve chose him,” says Andy Cunningham, a consultant who was Jobs’s public relations handler during his early years at Apple and at his second startup, NeXT Computer. “I don’t think Steve ever denied his faults. He knew what kind of person he was.”
To a great extent, so did everyone else. It has been reported many times that soon after co-founding Apple, Jobs lied about the paternity of his eldest daughter Lisa, claiming in court documents that he couldn’t be the father because he was infertile. (He later accepted responsibility, and she spent much of her childhood living with Jobs). There were countless stories of his poor treatment of employees during his early years at Apple, as well as the public humiliation of his ouster from the company in 1985. Add to the list Jobs’s participation in the backdating of stock options more than a decade ago, which turned out to be far more onerous than backdating by executives at other companies who were forced to resign or even sent to prison.
Hopefully he left them something after he died, or at least his wife did something for them. Steve Jobs was a disgusting lying cheat. He claimed credit for Wozniack's work when they worked at Atari and Steve accepted bonuses, promising to split them with Woz, and never did. He only got worse since then. What a scumbag.
The mother of his daughter sure did not care for Steve Jobs after he abandoned both.
1st Amendment, anyone?!
...
No, it was not. . . The stock options to Jobs were not onerous at all, they cannot be, They had been authorized at a Board of Directors' meeting in August but we're not actually issued to Jobs until sometime in December, after the end of the current Fiscal year, which ended on the last Saturday in September. The Board's authorization became null and void at the end of that fiscal year and would require another Board meeting to re-authorize the warrants under the new Sarbanes Oxley laws.
It was decided by the Board Treasurer and the Company controller to merely backdate the issue date and the strike price—which was actually higher than had they kept it at the strike price of the original December date, meaning Jobs would have to pay more for the stock when he exercised the grant, making less money on the spread—to the Monday before the end of the fiscal year. Jobs was not involved in the decision at all. Four Board members including the Board secretary made a Board minutes entry which showed a telephone Board meeting and vote "re-authorizing" the issuance, and back-dating which used to be a common practice prior to SOX, which never took place.
The only effect such a stock warrant grant has is a dilution of the already outstanding shares when and if dividends are paid. Apple did not start paying dividends to stockholders until after Jobs' death in 2011. In addition, the minuscule dilution such a warrant grant issued to Steve Jobs p, who took a $1 a year salary, considering the immense value he was responsible for adding to the company is a picayune reward.
The Stock grant in question was never exercised by Jobs, since at his request, that warrant grant was voided well before its five year maturity was reached and replaced by another, properly dated, of another type with a higher strike price even yet. Jobs was not driven by money. I have gone over this time and again on FreeRepublic and posted the details as well as sworn testimony. There was NOTHING illegal about it except the fake Board meeting and those officers were canned.
In other companies where prison terms and resignations resulted, the stock backdating involved plots to defraud the stockholders in failing companies and we're done with the involvement of the beneficiary. In this case, Jobs had properly recused himself from the decision on his compensation package and it had been properly decided by a Board committee.
Oh, yeah. . . "He never did." Right, sure! He only made Wozniac into a multi-billionaire! So, in your opinion, that's not paying back a few hundred bucks, which Woz rightfully gives Steve Jobs credit for doing?
Jobs daughter Lisa became an officer at Apple and had a strong relationship with her father. She made out quite well in his estate.
As for Steve Jobs making Woz a multi-billionaire, nothing could be farther from the truth. Woz left Apple in 1985, publicly stating that the company had been going in the wrong direction since 1980. When he left, he sold off his Apple stock. Woz is worth approx. $100 million. He's not hurting by any means but he's no billionaire. To this day, he gets $120,000/year from Apple in royalties.
Any multi-millionaire that would deny his own daughter and pay the mother less than $500/month (especially in California) is a scumbag, end of story.
Frankly, you don't know what you're talking about. Steve Jobs' wife, Lauren Powell Jobs, is perfectly happy with how he treated her.
The woman who wrote that screed was Chrisann Brennan, a girlfriend he had back in the mid-1970s, with whom he had a daughter, to whom Jobs was never married, repeating old news, from forty years ago. Your claim she was his "wife" shows the level of your knowledge about this.
Jobs reconciled with his daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, before he left Apple for the first time, accepted his responsibility, and she became a top executive at Apple.
The patents that Woz held and would likely receive any royalties from Apple for have probably long since expired. There may be some copyrights, but Woz left before Apple learned to copyright everything, and then it's copyrighted in the company name. Had Woz kept his share of Apple, he'd be worth billions. His claims of Apple going the wrong direction has been proved wrong. . . He advocated sticking with a command line interface and the Apple II 6502-6510 family of processors. Not a good recommendation at all. He certainly is no businessman.
Damn auto correct. . . Lauren = Laurene.
You’re right, I mis-typed. His treatment of Chrisann Brennan (not his wife) and his own daughter was downright vile, I don’t know how you can justify denying your own daughter, stating publicly that the paternity test was bogus, spreading rumors that her mother was sleeping around and that’s how she got pregnant, and giving them money that’s not even subsistence-level WHEN HE WAS A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE (and about 10 years away from being a billionaire). He saw his daughter twice before she was 13. If you think it’s OK to do that, we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. It says a lot about you and it isn’t good.
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