American Genius (2015) s01e01 Episode Script

THIS PROGRAM INCLUDES DRAMATIZATIONS INSPIRED BY HISTORY.
SOME EVENTS HAVE BEEN ALTERED FOR DRAMATIC PURPOSES.
Text is history.
Welcome to the future.
Apple's future.
Kinda neat.
The digital age was not born peacefully.
And emerged from a bitter rivalry.
Between two the most influential minds, the world has never now.
Bill Gates the young computer prodigy.
We have an operating system.
And Steve Jobs the charismatic innovator.
Today for the first time ever, I like Mcintosh speak for itself.
Two brilliant thinkers.
I tell you what, I'll let you investor one million dollars in our company.
Willing to do whatever it takes.
- Has 50.
000 sounds? - Sounds amazing.
To go down in history We had a deal that you agree to! As the man who would make the computer personal.
Is Apple goes down you will not have to fight.
And change the world forever.
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON SPRING, 1969 A teenager and his friend run a mission to hack into their local computer center.
And helped themselves to some free computer time.
The hacker's name is Bill Gates.
Bill Gates was a guy who came from wealthy family in Seattle.
Had a great education, was a smart guy, was by all accounts a very driven and competitive guy.
That was his nature, Bill wanted to win.
Even as a teenager Gates possesses a rare knowledge.
He knows how to operate a mainframe computer.
Mainframe computers, released huge computers that experts used to know to crunch data.
They're used by corporations and you know the gods of tec had to run these things.
They can't be handled by regular people.
In 1974 the concept of the personal computer doesn't exist.
Until a company in New Mexico introduces the first computer small enough to be used by the general public.
It's called the Altair 8800.
in the proof-of-concept, toy in a lay I mean it was a sophisticated toy.
It was a direction but it didn't do a whole lot didn't have a terminal didn't have a keyboard didn't have any the things that we typically associate with the computer right now.
Most importantly there's no easy way to operated.
HARDVARD UNIVERSITY DECEMBER, 1974 When the Altair is released, Bill Gates is a student at Harvard University.
Gates in his friend Paul Alan know that to be useful the Altair new to programming language.
And they decide to give it one.
Bill Gates and Paul Alan sense that something was in the air They do not want spend the next two or three years watching the parade goodbye.
They use in early form of programming.
In which holes are punched into spools of paper and patterns that form commands.
To prove that their program works, they'll have to take it directly to the makers of the Altair.
You go you.
You look older they'll take you seriously.
Ok.
SAN FRANCISCON BAY AREA, CALIFORNIA 1975 But Gates and Allen aren't the only ones determined to make computers easier to use.
3,000 miles away the future of the personal computer is being imagined in a completely different way.
Steve Jobs is a college dropout, who's just returned from a spiritual quest in India.
And is limited experience with computers.
He was part of the hippie crowd the whole drugs and all kinds alternative lifestyles.
he was not trained in computing.
One of jobs friend is Steve Wozniak in electronics and computer hobbyist.
Who's come up with a radical idea Ey! - You work in? - I have something new.
Check this out.
Wozniak has built a computer with a microprocessor like the Altair.
But he added to other key components: A keyboard and a monitor.
Instead of having the punch code in the paper programming can now be written directly using the same keys found on a typewriter.
It was a Eureka moment.
Write a typed commands on the computer and it came up on my TV screen.
These things I called eureka moments are surprises that even you didn't realize how important they were gonna be for how things work.
Jobs is immediately intrigued.
But unlike Wozniak Jobs is less interested on how computers work and more interested in how we can seldom.
Steve was a total businessman he wanted the company I just want to build cool products and that was pretty much our relationship.
We need each other so badly.
Bill Gates is waiting on word from his partner Paul Allen.
He's demonstrating the software they created for the Altair.
Okay this is just a basic language we wrote, but let me take a few commands and show you how it works.
You don't know which ideas are gonna have the greatest potential until you actually put them in practice.
Some time someone comes up with an idea and you say: "Wow".
This could really revolutionized the world.
Paul? Gates and Allen have just sold for the first software program for personal computer.
It's enough to inspire Bill Gates to take the biggest risk his life.
At the age of 19 he dropped out of Harvard, and along with Paul Allen start a small computer company in Albuquerque strip mall.
Be called Microsoft.
In a California garage another ambitious company is being born.
Steve Jobs things you can sell the latest computer designed by his partner.
Steve Wozniak.
After all it has 16 times the memory of the Altair 8800 and a memorable name.
I thinking "executed".
Maybe a personal computers Inc.
No.
It was a brilliant name because in made people laugh.
It was sort of a disjuncture, Apple and computer.
Those two words don't go together.
But it made you feel was friendly it took the edge of the word computer.
But a clever name will make it any easier to sell their creation.
As you can see I will use in the the ASCII keyboard and as well as the MOS 6502 chip.
Why no use the Intel 8080? is more compatible.
- If you see the design here - If you want to know more you can buy one.
I think we said enough.
Even with the revolutionary addition a the keyboard and monitor the Apple I is a flop.
Jobs only sells 200 units to computer hobbyists.
But Jobs and Wozniak are not ready to quit.
We knew we were going to be successful.
We never thought we were going to fail.
We knew, we were gonna shock the world.
And that we were gonna be so far ahead everybody else's attempts to build low-cost computers that we were going on the world.
As Steve Wozniak works to make their processes faster Steve Jobs knows he needs to make the computer itself more appealing.
Not only the computer enthusiasts, but the everyone.
he begins to imagine a fully contained machine incorporating all the needed components into a revolutionary easy to use design.
It was simply a beauty.
Steve Jobs brought a whole different designs and spiritual dimension to computing.
He looked at the "zen" of computing, and he was able to bring a sense a beauty to computing.
The Apple two was about to change the computer business forever and one man is determined not to be left behind.
22-year-old Steve Jobs, believes a personal computer will one day be in every home.
and now he's one step closer to making that dream a reality.
APPLE COMPUTER COMPURTINO, CALIFORNIA In June 1977, the Apple 2 was released.
And its unlike anything the public is ever seen before.
His easy to use design is a instant hit in consumers.
And within a year its release the company's bringing in eight million dollars in sales.
We started selling right away, we were so advanced in the computer world.
It colour, it was graphics, we were some light years ahead of everyone else.
ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO Apple has its first hit.
But when Bill Gates gets a look at the computer he see a way to advance his own company.
Microsoft.
The Apple 2 may be perfect for everyday consumers.
But its programming is incompatible with most business software on the market.
Gates knows if you can give it the ability to run business programs he can cash in on Apple success.
Gates and he's engineer spend months developing the soft card.
A circuit board that plugs right into the Apple 2.
Allowing it to run business software.
But in order from Microsoft to benefit from its design, two of the greatest minds in the computer industry will have to meet face to face.
Sure looks good in the outside, is what's inside that matters.
You know write code? I hire people for that.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were like a binary star system.
Starting in the nineteen seventies they orbit around each other.
They each have a grand gravitational pull.
Now you'll be able to run everything out there.
Word processors, spreadsheets.
Bill Gates shows given Steve Jobs a way to turn his popular home computer into a powerful business machine.
It's a win for Apple and from Microsoft.
By nineteen eighty, selling soft cars to Apple users has become Microsoft number one revenue source.
And the company triples its sales.
But Bill Gates is already looking past to Jobs.
and sets his sights on the biggest name in technology: IBM.
For decades IBM has been at the forefront of business technology but now they want to get into the personal computer business.
The thing that Gates saw that was important is IBM is going to be a big deal in this area.
And so he wanted to be the principal software on that PC.
What we're really looking for is a operating system.
¿An operating system? I thought you only need a programming languages.
We can go with another vendor.
I mean we have an operating system.
Gates makes a deal with IBM.
Even though Microsoft hasn't actually build an operating system yet.
But Bill Gates knows where you can get one.
Has fifty grand sound? Sounds amazing.
-did you say what for? - Confidential.
Gates purchases a already finished operating system from a small software company.
And rename it: MS-DOS.
Basically they said: "will pay fifty thousand dollars and we can do with this anything that we want with it and the companie is glad to sell them.
Armed with an operating system Bill Gates now has the upper hand.
So when he returns to IBM he makes one non-negotiable demand.
I would like to sell to third parties.
Gates is making software and software was king and so Gates made a a shrewd idea creating software that could be on any device.
I think IBM was not thinking about in terms of where it was headed.
Gates negotiate a non-exclusive license to IBM for MS-DOS.
Now microsoft has the right to sell their operating system did any computer company in the world.
Probably ranks as the greatest business deal in history.
The money that DoS brought in made Microsoft an incredibly wealthy company.
And when you have a lot of wealth you have a low-power.
And you can begin to shape an industry.
Steve Jobs has been watching from afar as Bill Gates dominates the computer business.
Apple's response to the IBM PC it it was a, you know, a derision.
They thought it was a big, clunky, inelegant box.
But they're all so smart and they knew anything that IBM make is gonna to own a share of this market.
Jobs knows if he's going to keep Apple competitive he needs a big idea.
This guy Jef Raskin suggested we go to Xerox PARC center, he said they have some things you should see, there under wraps they kind a secretive.
So what kind of great things you have on in xerox PARC? Object-oriented programming Network stuff nothing as exciting as you guess.
I tell you what, I'll let you invest one million dollars in our company.
If you give us a full tour the facility.
We can make that happen.
Steve Jobs is no idea, that what he's about to see will transform his life, his company and the world.
By 1980, the Apple Two is became one of the most popular computer in the market.
With sales reching $117 million dolars.
But for Steve Jobs it's not enough.
And what he's about to see in Xerox PARC will change everything.
Let me try.
We saw screens with Windows than came up a window look like one program running and another one with another program.
And we did not understand everything they had and the importance of it but the visual appearance was so drastic.
My comment to Steve was "once you have that you'll never go back".
You knew that once you have this machine you want it forever.
But what Xerox as a experiment Steve Jobs sees as a opportunity.
Xerox being a big company couldn't quite figure out how do we make this into a personal computer and Steve saying: "We've got to do it we've got to do it".
they're blowing in at Xerox, we know how to do that.
Jobs takes the idea of a graphical user interface from Xerox and creates a team to incorporate it into a new computer: Called the Macintosh.
Andy you're on the Mac team now, Burrell you're also on the Mac team and Mike you're coming as well design meeting tomorrow morning 8am.
Jobs makes one non-negotiable demand: everyone on the team must be as passionate like him.
Steve Jobs he has a certain vision he was not particularly pleasant to deal with - him a good chunk at the time.
- This sucks, ok? Ttheir amazing stories about the pressure cooker that the Macintosh team was under.
But he was also the most charismatic guy who ever walk in the planet, according to anyone who ever meeting or work with him.
With building the Macintosh demanding all this attention Jobs realizes he needs a proven business leader to run Apple.
Steve needed somebody you could be a firm manager and market.
Steve was all over the place, he was not a great manager.
In 1983 former pepsi executive John Sculley steps in Apple's new CEO.
As jobs is nearing completion on the Macintosh.
- We all set.
- all the top guys? Yep, all for the Mac.
- did you pick the software? - Microsoft - You trust in Gates? - Is no one better.
what he did for Apple 2, is insanely great.
Once again Steve Jobs invites Bill Gates to participate in hislatest innovation.
Text is history.
Welcome to the future, Apple's future.
Steve wants to show off his notion that they can do this user interface really cool and graphical.
And Gates thinks is absolutely wonderful and he's willing to write Microsoft software to be part of it.
kind of neat.
But Gates sense a even bigger opportunity for Microsoft.
I think Bill Gates saw the graphical user interface.
I can imagine he didn't anything think like "I got a run back into my guys about this".
Because this is the way you can interact with computers in the future.
What's wrong with ours? Its brain dead.
his can slide windows around, he can have two open at once.
why not we make it look like? We need to beat him to the punch.
This has to happen now.
Bill Gates decides to go after directly Apple.
He instructs his team to start work on a graphical user interface that they call interface manager.
But by the fall of 1983 a different name finally stick: Windows.
When word of Microsoft Windows reach to Steve Jobs ARE YOU SITTING DOWN? - WOZ is only weeks away from releasing the Macintosh.
The idea he's devoted the last three years of his life to.
The man who Jobs thougt was an ally has declear war.
Gates getting down here now.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are both staking their futures on the same revolutionary approach to software for the personal computer.
but in the effort to get to market with it first the one-time partners are now in war.
Gates getting down here now.
APPLE COMPUTER as well you treat your friends? I trusted you.
I have put you in on the Apple two I brought you on the Macintosh.
We are a partnership we had a deal that you agree to.
And you're stealing from us, you're killing us I'm not gonna stand for it.
Bill Gates is a smart guy and he's a smart businessman, he recognized an opportunity.
He wanted to create a great computer, he wanted create a great company, strong company.
And you do whatever you have to do to get that.
Windows is still two years away from being ready.
But Bill Gates knows he needs to be Jobs to the announcement.
THE PLAZA HOTEL, NEW YORK NOVEMBER 10, 1983 I'm here to show a few highlights for our upcoming product.
It support a user-friendly graphical interface Time is a such a factor in these things.
so it's like "okay let's start something from nothing".
That's the spirit a Silicon Valley.
Steve Jobs dream has been hackjack.
But unlike Gates he has a working product that ready to sell.
An a natural talent for marketing them.
Many of us have been working on Macintosh for over two years now.
Today for the first time ever i'd like Macintosh to speak for itself.
HELLO, I'M MACINTOSH.
IT SURE IS GREA TO GET OUT OF THAT BAG.
The Mac was a ultimate fusion of beauty with technology.
The world's first truly beautiful machine.
It looks like it's smiling, at you and look friendly.
That made Steve Jobs's heart glad.
The unveiling of the Macintosh is ahead.
But the computer itself is slow and struggles to find buyers.
APPLE DECLINES 27.
3% AS LOTUS BURROUGHS AND CRAY ALSO FULL The Macintosh sales fell drastically.
We had a factory designed to build 80,000 macintosh a month and sales fells 500 a month.
APPLE WILL LAY OFF 75 AT 2 OREANGE COUNTY FACILITIES Our Apple stock dropped in half, this is scary stuff for a company.
I was with the design department - and I think is going to be - Steve.
there's no one who admires your brilliance vision more than I do.
John, what are you saying? The board decided that it's best if you stepped out.
Steve Jobs had created a board of people who was almost like father figures and they looking at the kid.
Steve Jobs it become undisciplined, was spending too much money, was antagonizing people and they finally vote to kick him out on the company he founded.
Steve told me he was like a kick in the gut.
In 1985 the Macintosh fails to light the world on fire and Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple computers, is out his own company.
A man who once seemed unstoppable pioneer has been cast a side.
While his rival Bill Gates is building Microsoft into an empire.
MS DOS has become the standard operating system on millions of computers and on November 28 1985 Bill Gates and microsoft introduced windows to the world.
The genius the Bill Gates was to realize that there a lot computer makers but somebody had to get them to write for the same specifications, there had to be a standard operating system to essentially tame the wild west of personal computers.
Windows quickly takes the computer business by storm.
But into the end of '80, eighty percent of the world's computers use Microsoft operating systems.
Making Bill Gates the world's youngest billionaire.
But now gates goes even further.
Microsoft starts to bundle additional programs with it operating systems.
Now anyone who buys a PC automatically gets Microsoft spreadsheets.
Word processors and other programs whether they want them or not.
Bill Gates is a genius at assembly all the parts that we need to create the modern computer software industry.
But he did in a way that got his rivals to call him a monopolist a bully.
MICROSOFT'S TACTICS QUESTIONED BY RIVALS By the mid 90's Microsoft's aggressive tactics begin to backfire.
RIVALS ACUSE FIRM OF MONOPOLIZING OPERATING SYSTEMS BUSINESS ANTITRUST CASE AGAINST MICROSOF Competitors accused the software giant monopolizing the industry.
MICROSOFT MAY BE IN FOR THE FIGHT OF ITS LIFE The bundling of the software led to you the departed justice investigating a lot of claims that Microsoft's business practices were unfair they were in fact suppressing innovation in a marketplace it squelch is third-party software application development.
As Bill Gates legal troubles mount his competitor Apple is doing no better.
Apple with out Steve Jobs is not innovating they can a milking the old product line.
They don't even have a good new operating system.
with Windows dominating the industry Apple's share the home computer market force 24 percent.
And in 1996 the company loses one billion dollars.
Apple was struggling and passes through a series CEO's that are treading water, you had a Sculley, Gil Amelio, Spindler.
Apple was with end a month until going bankrupt.
Apple stands on the brink of collapse.
So twelve years after forcing them out the board ask Steve Jobs to come back.
But before he can begin making Apple innovative again Jobs knows he's going to need a infusion of cash and fast.
To get it he will have to turn a unlikely source.
Hi Bill.
Bill Gates is under investigation for running a monopoly.
Steve Jobs is back at the company he founded.
But it's on the verge of bank ruptcy.
- Hi bill.
- Steve? I hear you making friends in the Justice Department.
And you're back on board a sinking ship.
Is Apple goes down you will not have to fight.
But if you keep us in the game you can go on winning.
Think about them.
It didn't be good for Gates for Apple to go away at that stage of the game.
If you have no competitor than people say: "you on all the market", and that's not a good thing.
Is better have a cripple competitor, that no competitor an all.
Now I'd like to talk about meaning full partners.
Apple lives in an ecosystem and it needs help from other partners and I happen to have a special guest me today via satellite downlink and I would like come up on stage right now.
Good morning.
this was a remarkable moment when Steve Jobs brought Bill Gates up on screen, the folk of Maquintoch shriek and booed him he was reviled as a monopolist as a bully.
They heated windows, they heated PCs and I hated bill gates.
Despite initial backlash Microsoft invested $150 million dollars in Apple.
And Jobs waste not time turning out all around.
Steve just takes massive control.
And they make sure that the products are just relentlessly beautiful.
Like the original iMac, with its translucent colors and that rabbit shape design Seven minutes to load a song In 2001 Steve Jobs pushes beyond computers.
The Mp3 player that ruined my day.
Into entirely new products like the iPod.
Maybe something better.
Nobody knew we needed a thousand songs in our pocket we all had mp3 players, but Steve said: "No I'm gonna create something that's so great people do not know they want, but once they see it they're gonna want one".
Everybody says "that's great", but Steve says: "no".
Somebody's gonna be smart enough to put this on a telephone and we be left out.
And so comes up the iPhone.
in 2007 fans wait in line is long as over 100 hours to buy what would become Steve Jobs signature model the iPhone.
and Apple is on its way to becoming one of the most profitable companies in the world.
The concept that you the carry around and hold the supercomputers in your hands and you have all things with them and interact with the world.
Is a big idea.
If you had to pick one person who impacted technology more than anyone in this era it would have to be Steve Jobs.
As Steve Jobs's reputation source Bill Gates has an image problem.
He wanted to people loved and he wanted his name to go down in history in the Phanteon of great man.
In effort to redeem his legacy Bill Gates one of the wealthiest man in the world GATES ESTABLISHES $100 MILLION FOUND turns to philanthropy.
AIDS IN GATES CROSSHAIRS He was motivated to become a philanthropist, not only to make the world a better place but to rehabilitate his image.
GATES AIMS BILLIONS TO ATTACK ILLESSES OF WORLD'S NEEDIES The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation becomes the largest private foundation in the world.
Gates now is is very compassionate, very wise, and this come around to he think that we all are on the same team.
he is will make the world a better place.
for years Steve Jobs has been down playing the news that is suffering from pancreatic cancer.
By 2011 his health problems forced Jobs to resign as Apple CEO.
Maybe he did not know he was dying, but he knew he had limited time on this planet.
Death became important motivator for him.
And if you think about it everything that he did that people remember him for today for when he was dying.
His death is mourns the world over by legions of fans has devoted to the man as their machines.
In the year following his death, Apple would become the most valuable company on earth.
The relationship between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates was very complex.
They were like brothers in a way, the are with each other every step of the way.
Sometimes rivals sometimes friends.
they were mean to each other, but eventually reconciled.
Pecause they were the two pioneers that built the industry.
- Created, synced and