iSorry: Aaron Sorkin apologizes to Tim Cook

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aaron-sorkin
Aaron Sorkin says both men were out of line with their comments.
Photo: WEBN-TV/Flickr CC

Tim Cook and Steve Jobs screenwriter Aaron Sorkin had a war of words last week.

First off, Cook made some disparaging comments about the upcoming movie biopic on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — prompting Sorkin to lash back by criticizing Apple for employing a “factory full of children in China” who are paid “17 cents an hour” for building iPhones. Ouch!

It seems that PR types have worked their dark magic calmer heads have prevailed, however, because in a new interview, Sorkin says that him and Cook “probably both went a little too far” with their comments.

“I apologize to Tim Cook,” Sorkin told E! News. “I hope when he sees the movie, he enjoys it as much as I enjoy his products.”

It’s no great surprise that Cook wouldn’t react too favorably to the upcoming Steve Jobs movie, which is — after all — loosely based on the Walter Isaacson biography Cook has publicly disowned.

“I thought the Isaacson book did [Jobs] a tremendous disservice,” Cook was quoted as saying in the book Becoming Steve Jobs. “It was just a rehash of a bunch of stuff that had already been written, and focused on small parts of his personality. You get the feeling that [Jobs was] a greedy, selfish egomaniac. It didn’t capture the person. The person I read about there is somebody I would never have wanted to work with over all this time. Life’s too short.”

While Sorkin’s book isn’t a literal page-by-page adaptation of Isaacson’s book, the fact that this is the movie made from those book rights does mean there’s a lineage between the book Cook hated and the movie millions are about to see.

That hasn’t stopped others flocking to support the upcoming biopic, however. In particular Steve Wozniak has voiced his positive appraisal of the movie, claiming that it’s a pretty accurate representation of Jobs.

Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs debuts in theaters on October 23.

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