Apple exec slams Steve Jobs documentary

AUSTIN, Texas — In a highly unusual step from one of the world's most disciplined and reticent companies, Apple senior executive Eddy Cue took to Twitter Monday to attack a documentary that premiered at the South By Southwest festival this weekend. The film, Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine, which we reviewed here, is an outsider's look at the Apple founder that spares no blushes in looking at both his light and dark side. Oscar-nominated documentarian Alex Gibney talks to many of Jobs' friends, employees and perhaps most damningly, Chrisann Brennan, the mother of his daughter Lisa. Speaking in Austin, Gibney described the documentary as "in my own ham-fisted

way, my version of Citizen Kane [the Orson Welles film based on the life of another business tycoon, William Randolph Hearst]." Here's what Cue had to say about it, in a tweet that arrived apropos of nothing:That's perhaps not surprising. Jobs presented different faces to different people, and could be immensely charming when he wanted to be, as this writer can attest. Cue was a trusted lieutenant. And he has a sliver of a point about the movie, in that the Foxconn suicides it covers are unfairly related to Jobs. One thing Cue didn't specify: whether he had actually seen the documentary, or just read the reviews. Given that it has only screened once here at SXSW, and Cue has not been spotted here in Austin, it isn't clear how he could have seen it. Mashable has reached out to Cue and to Apple for clarification. Meanwhile, we know at least one account of Jobs' life has Cue's approval: the forthcoming book Becoming Steve Jobs, by journalists Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli.