Steve is a charasmatic character that believes computers are as much things of art as of science. He goes from making computers in a garage to being head of a company determined to dethrone IBM from its position as leader of the computer world. To Steve, IBM is a dinosaur and people who wear suits have no place at his firm because they remind him of old coporate types like IBM employees. In the movie Steve struggles with his desire to succeed and his erratic moods. Steve refuses to recognize his own daughter Lisa and give her much attention for many years. But decides to later name a computer, the Lisa after her.

In the film Bill is characterized as a geeky computer nerd who can't get girls and whose only friends are other computer techies. Bill is a strategist and even in simple games like Poker it shows. When opportunity presents itself Bill along with two of his buddies form their own company Microsoft to go after the software market that Bill believes will be the real profit center of the future. With a cheap operating system named DOS which is licensed nonexclusively to IBM the fuels of software growth are born. When IBM adopts DOS all other non IBM clones also adopt it, and it becomes a defacto standard. In the film Bill collaborates and later steals technology from Apple. The war of Windows vs Mac plays itself out in the personal battle between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.