Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says a new movie about late chairman Steve Jobs appears to misrepresent aspects of their personalities and their early vision for the company.

Wozniak made his comments ahead of the premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah of jOBS, starring Ashton Kutcher in the title role. It is the first of two feature films about the legendary Apple entrepreneur who died in 2011 at age 56.

The film, to be released in the United States in April, covers Jobs from his early years in the counterculture through his initial successes with Apple and his rise to becoming a household name.

A clip of an early scene was released online on Thursday.

"Totally wrong. ... The ideas of computers affecting society, did not come from Jobs," Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Jobs and Ronald Wayne in a California garage in 1976, told technology blog Gizmodo.com on Friday.

"His idea was to make a $20 PC board and sell it for $40 to help people at the (Homebrew Computer) club build the computer I'd given away," Wozniak recalled in a series of emails. "The lofty talk came much further down the line."

The Homebrew Computer Club, started in 1975, brought together electronics hobbyists in Silicon Valley including Jobs.

Wozniak, who is played in the movie by Book of Mormon musical star Josh Gad, said that, based on the clip, "personalities are very wrong although mine is closer".

"I never looked like a professional. We were both kids. Our relationship was so different than what was portrayed. I'm embarrassed but if the movie is fun and entertaining, all the better," he said, adding he never wore a tie in the early days.

Wozniak emphasised that he was basing his comments on one clip and that it was "just a movie".

"The movie should be very popular and I hope it's entertaining. It may be very correct, as well. This is only one clip. But you'll see the direction they are slanting the movie in, just by the dialog style of this script," he added.

jOBS, directed by Joshua Michael Stern, will be released in US movie theaters on April 19.

A second movie, based on Walter Isaacson's official biography Steve Jobs, is in development by screenplay writer Aaron Sorkin of The West Wing and The Social Network fame. No release date or casting has been announced.

- Reuters

Comments