10 Best Movies & Documentaries About Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs is a co-founder of Apple and one of the most important tech inventors in modern history. His genius and visions will forever be remembered. Due to that, we present you with the list of best movies and documentaries about Steve Jobs, celebrating his character and work.

1. Jobs ( 2013 )

The movie “Jobs” was written by Matt Whitely and directed by Joshua Michael Stern. Ashton Kutcher is starring in the movie portraying Steve Jobs’s character. The movie starts in 2001 when the first iPod at an Apple Town Hall meeting was disclosed. After that, the movie retrospectively introduces us to Jobs’ college years. It is widely known that Steve Jobs was not exactly an exemplary student. He was prone to drugs and skipped many classes that did not interest him. However, he always did have a passion for computers and fonts.

The movie also provides us with a part of Steve’s life when he started the Apple company from his parent’s garage alongside his friend Steve Wosniak. Project Macintosh and Steve being forced out of his own company are also depicted in the movie, with Steve’s triumphant return to Apple in 1996 eventually. It’s a fun movie to watch overall, but the movie critics could have been more gentle toward it.

2. Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine ( 2015 )

This is a documentary movie produced and directed by Alex Gibney. This documentary can be described as straightforward; it does not deny Steve Jobs’s talents and praises them, but it also has no intention to sugar-coat his flaws. Alex Gibney is somewhat fascinated by how much influence Steve had on people and the grief after his demise. He wonders if all that was justified and provides valuable arguments for his statements.

The movie used many interviews which Jobs gave throughout the years. We get to see what Jobs was like in his younger years, among other things, and how his behavior was not always right and fair toward the people he worked with. An interesting documentary to watch, but it is worth mentioning that the movie was made without the cooperation of Jobs’ wife and their children or Apple. This means that Gibney didn’t have the resources to dig deep into the personal aspects of Steve’s life and didn’t provide information in this movie that would help to understand Steve Jobs’ point of view more.

3. Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview ( 2012 )

This documentary was written by Robert X. Crangley and directed by Paul Sen. The movie provides a conversation with Steve Jobs. It is mostly centered around Steve and his goals after he left Apple company. Jobs admits that his main priority in life is a success. As he was running NeXT, the company he had founded after leaving Apple, he opened up about his early life and career struggles.

This interview was published 17 years after it was made and presented to the audience in its raw, unedited form, which gives him an authentic tone.

4. Steve Jobs ( 2015 )

Michael Fassbender is Steve Jobs in this one, and the movie is written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle. The movie’s screenplay is based on Walt Isaacson’s authorized Steve Jobs biography, and the storyline is centered around the launches of three iconic products: the Macintosh (1984), the NeXT workstation (1988), and the first iMac (1998).

Besides portraying Steve’s tech genius and intellect, the movie also theatrically shows us the most important people in Jobs’s professional and private life. The relationships that Steve Jobs has with all of them are heated, complicated, and intense, all revolving around different aspects of Job’s life and profession. Fun to watch as a movie, but not exactly factually correct.

5. Jobs Vs. Gates: The Hippie And The Nerd

This documentary is exactly what the title says it is, the clash and comparison of one of the greatest tech developers regarding computers. Their competition began in the late ’70s. Later, their clash continued with Job’s Mac and Gates’s PC on the main stage. The rivalry between these two was healthy, as it pushed them to be as productive and inventive as possible. A real digital revolution was born because of it.

A fun fact is that both of them are college dropouts, and still, their ideas and vision changed the world, and the world we know today would not be the same without their genius. Jobs and Gates always respected each other, and in this documentary, you can see their viewpoints that are different, so you can decide for yourself who is the winner between these two inventors.

6. Steve Jobs: One Last Thing

This documentary, directed by Sarah Hunt and Mimi O’Connor, focuses more on how others experienced Jobs. In this movie, Steve’s friends, fans, colleagues, and rivals reflect on his talents, achievements, and flaws that he had. The extracts from the Jobs and Gates interview are also included in this movie.

7. Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy ( 2011 )

In this documentary, Steve Wozniak and others that worked with Steve give their views on the whole situation regarding the rise of Apple. It is interesting to see what Steve Wozniak has to say, as he was a co-founder of Apple, after all. The movie follows the events Apple went through in the years since it was founded.

There were ups and downs regarding Apple’s management, and many people that have worked there provide their experiences in this movie. Since its foundation, through the years when Jobs had to leave the company, only to return once again, it is all in this documentary.

8. Pirates of Silicon Valley ( 1999 )

Pirates of Silicon Valley is a biography drama that tells the story of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in their early days. We get to see their struggles during college, how they founded their companies, and what it took to build up the global corporate empires of Apple Computer Corporation and Microsoft Inc. 

9. iGenius: How Steve Jobs Changed the World ( 2011 )

This movie is another documentary based on the life of Steve Jobs. We get to see how Steve’s career gradually developed and what influence he had on the people and the world around him. It has somewhat of a rushed tone, but it is still an informative documentary.

10. iSteve ( 2013 )

iSteve is a biography comedy movie about Steve Jobs’ life. As such, the movie does not represent real-life events regarding Steve’s life as the storyline is very far-fetched, but it is about Steve Jobs. It is a good movie to watch as long as you don’t go watching it with expectations that you’ll learn something about Steve.