He was a genius. A pioneer. And now, the subject of a movie that's been nominated for two Oscars, for actors Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet. But what does the Steve Jobs movie get right, and what does it get wrong?
At the start of the movie, Jobs yells at programmer Andy Hertzfeld about the computer not saying "hello," and then gives him 40 minutes to fix it. However, this incident never happened.
That's because, among other things, the 128k model couldn't say (you guessed it) "Hello."
Joanna Hoffman and the rest of the Mac marketing team did know that Mac was a closed system ... far in advance of the announcement.
In the film, Lisa Brennan-Jobs (the daughter Jobs refused to recognize for years) is brought by her mother to the launch of Mac. The girl then charms her father by using MacPaint (and getting paternity payments for her mother in the bargain). A lovely anecdote, but nonetheless, untrue.
Although she never spoke to Walter Isaacson (who wrote the biography the movie is based on) she did talk with Sorkin while he wrote the screenplay and gave Sorkin insight into her father's mind and personality.
When Jobs imagines working things out with adult Lisa in the film, it portrays him as single and without a family of his own. Motivation to want to connect with your only daughter, right? But in real life, by that time, Jobs was a family man with a wife and three other children.
While Apple did sue him, it happened in 1985, which was three years before the launch of the "black box" NeXT computer. Apple in fact withdrew the suit in 1986, two years before the 1988 launch.
The fictional Jobs also tells Hoffman that he plans to use NeXT to get back at Apple by making it so great, they'll buy it for a cool half million. In reality, Jobs had no idea NeXT would be the reason he would eventually come back to the Apple fold.
Simply put: The iMac was not the crowning glory of Apple's financial success.
Instead, what made Apple a proven comeback kid was the 2000 runaway breakout success of the iPod.
Wozniak did tell Bloomberg that most of the things he says and does in the movie didn't happen, including the scene where he and Jobs have a huge fight before the iMac launch.
He also told Bloomberg that, although he didn't exactly say the things his movie version does, the character does express "things [he] could never say" but wanted to.
At that launch, Jobs wore a jacket and a white shirt. He hadn't yet solidified his famous turtleneck fashion signature.
With each launch, the movie has Jobs meeting the same people: Chrisann Brennan, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Andy Hertzfeld, Apple CEO John Sculley, and Steve Wozniak. In reality, many of these people weren't even around Jobs during the time period of these launches, and none of them necessarily confronted them like they do in the film.
Let's face it: Star Michael Fassbender looks nothing like Steve Jobs whatsoever.
Wozniak said after seeing a rough cut of the movie that Fassbender's acting made him feel as if he was "actually watching Steve Jobs."
The movie does get Jobs' minimalistic tendencies right, to the point he often didn't have a lot of furniture. In fact, his real-life widow Laurene once said she and her husband would spend "... a lot of time asking ourselves, 'What is the purpose of a sofa?'"
Some, such as Wozniak, say the movie gets Jobs and his spirit completely right. Others who also knew him, like current Apple CEO Tim Cook and journalist Walt Mossberg, vehemently oppose this portrayal.