Apple II Bits

In February 2012, I heard of an upcoming computer documentary called 8-Bit Generation. As it was scheduled to ship imminently, I paid to preordered a copy to review in Juiced.GS. But the ship date came and went, no DVDs shipped, and emails to the director went unanswered. I learned that October that some customers had received refunds, but I was not one of the lucky ones.

Jason Scott saw the bigger picture: what we’d lost was not just a few preorders, but an impressive collection of documentary footage with industry founders and luminaries that may now never see the light of day. As a director himself of such invaluable productions as GET LAMP and BBS: The Documentary, Scott understood the trials of creating such a product and the value of seeing it through to the end.

Thanks in no small part to Scott’s empathy and support, the film’s producers came out of hiding and sought to finally finish what they’d begun. A successful Kickstarter this past fall produced the necessary funds to see the film through to completion. An email from the project manager assured me that those who have not yet received refunds from the original preorder will eventually receive the documentary. So instead of backing the project at a level that would get me the DVD, I backed the Kickstarter for $1 to get access to any backer-only updates.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744798558/growing-the-8-bit-generation

The film still isn’t done, and the last Kickstarter update is from two months ago, but I’ve seen enough to now believe that this film exists and will become a finished product. Bil Herd, a former Commodore engineer, will be the narrator, and interviews with the elusive (and now deceased) Jack Tramiel will be donated to the Internet Archive and the Computer History Museum.

Here’s an example of a familiar story told in stunning HD quality:

I’ve never had the ambition or talent to create a documentary and don’t envy those who would tackle such a challenge. I believe this time, they’ll prove worthy of the faith that’s been shown in them.

Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine debuted last Friday. While lacking the marketing and star power of next month’s Aaron Sorkin dramatization featuring Michael Fassbender, this documentary offers a more authentic look at the life Apple’s co-founder.

That’s not to say that documentaries are inherently accurate and unbiased; King of Kong proved otherwise. But I appreciated this film’s take on Steve Jobs, even if it took me two viewings. The first time around, I saw it merely as a presentation of facts, none of which were new to me: having been a life-long Apple user, read Walter Isaacson’s biography, and seen the Ashton Kutcher film, there’s little about Jobs’ life that would surprise me. But some additional perspectives granted me new insight into the film. Those views came from Dave Ross, whom I previously quoted for my Halt and Catch Fire review; and Steve Weyhrich, whom I quoted in my 2008 story about an Apple IIc unboxing. Each are bonafide retrocomputing experts, without whom I likely would’ve produced a much more critical — and boring — review.

The resulting article, “New Jobs movie: A quieter, more authentic portrait“, was my first for Computerworld in 2015. I applied my usual editing process of printing out my draft, reviewing the hardcopy, then soliciting feedback of the edited version from a few friends (in this case, Steve and Dave) before submitting the final copy.

The more red I see on my drafts, the happier I am with the final copy.

With Juiced.GS‘s launch of Opus ][ just the day before my Computerworld deadline, and the beginning of the academic semester the day after, it was a stressful week — but everything turned out excellently.

It’s a good film, too — perhaps a bit long at two hours, but there’s plenty of good material in there. Here’s my favorite scene:

And here are some additional stills that were submitted to, but not used by, Computerworld:

Lest I overdose on Jobs, I’m inclined to skip Fassbender’s interpretation of the character… but I doubt I’ll be able to keep myself away. Stay tuned.