Where's the drama?

Rating: 3/10 (23 December 2015)

Everyone with even a slight interest in tech culture is familiar with the fact that Jobs wasn't a whiz programmer but a "tech visionary". This basically means he predicted what the masses really want, told other people to materialize it into pretty looking devices (minimally compatible with all others) which he advertised at conferences in an awkwardly pompous way. This is the singular distinguishing character trait of Steve Jobs in the minds of many people familiar with his biography - being a pompous megalomaniac. In this he shines like the North Star, his boldness and cheek are truly awe inspiring. The dude routinely compared himself to none other than Albert Einstein!
This trait should have been fertile ground for a plot full of gripping personal conflicts, but this is not what this movie manages (or wants?) to achieve. As the movie starts Jobs is already a millionaire, there are no serious obstacles to his business success. Even the failures he seems to take in stride, knowing he can't really fail. The biggest drama in the movie (along with Jobs getting fired) is his relationship with Wozniak. The conflict is punctuated by Wozniak attending Jobs's presentations and asking him to credit the team of Apple II, Jobs of course saying no, which of course seems plausible because why would you talk about a device that was made a zillion years ago when you present a new one. Even his relationship with his daughter is free of any serious conflict up until the end but then everything is easily resolved by his tech genius charm.
In addition to this, the viewer is treated to many lectures in Steve Jobs's business philosophy. I have many problems with this philosophy. In short, we are told to admire Jobs (instead of Wozniak) for being one to understand that "computers are paintings" - the concrete input of Jobs in the Apple II and other products is never explicitly shown in the movie. I was surprised that he can't even be credited with designing the damn things.
On the politics side, the movie has a very problematic streak in the way it portrays the character of Chrisann Brennan. She is depicted as a lazy gold digger hippie type scrounging off the great man's wealth with the pretext of caring for his love child. Supposing that some of the events are factually correct, if the writers cared about gender politics at all they wouldn't have embarrassed themselves by writing a character that is such a blatant misogynistic trope. Also it seems mind boggling that the only thing that is contested in the way Apple ran its business is the fact they used skinheads in one of their promotion videos? What about those Chinese sweatshops, Aaron?