Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Broadly considered a brand that inspires fervour and defines cool consumerism, Apple has become one of the biggest corporations in the world, fuelled by game-changing products that tap into modern desires. Its leader, Steve Jobs, was a long-haired college dropout with infinite ambition, and an inspirational perfectionist with a bully's temper. A man of contradictions, he fused a Californian counterculture attitude and a mastery of the art of hype with explosive advances in computer technology. Insiders including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, the chairman who ousted Jobs from the company he founded, and Jobs' chief of software, tell extraordinary stories of the rise, fall and rise again of Apple with Steve Jobs at its helm. With Stephen Fry, world wide web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and branding guru Rita Clifton, Evan Davis decodes the formula that took Apple from suburban garage to global supremacy.
A competent but fairly conventional BBC documentary profile of Steve Jobs and Apple. The talking-head format is standard for the genre, and while the interviewees (Wozniak, Fry, Berners-Lee) lend credibility, the narrative arc — garage startup, exile, triumphant return — is well-trodden territory by 2011. Cinematography is functional television-doc fare with archival footage and staged interviews. Novelty is limited as it covers familiar ground without a particularly fresh angle or distinctive visual style. The ending appropriately acknowledges Jobs' legacy but the film aired just before his death, giving it an incomplete quality in retrospect.