"I don't like California," states Danny Boyle. "I've never liked California." Particularly, he says, the urban sprawl that is Los Angeles. "I just don’t like it very much." Perhaps it's no surprise. Whether it's depicting the Leith heroin addicts of Trainspotting or the eccentricities of British life as seen in his celebrated 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, the best of Boyle's work has puts its finger on the pulse of the nation. Transplanting Boyle, with his broad grin and even broader Manchester accent, to West Coast USA somehow seems wrong.

So it's something of a shock to see the energetic Boyle – who is 59 going on 15 – heading up his new film Steve Jobs. You couldn't get more American than a biopic of the creative genius at tech giants Apple written by the creator of The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin. Except, says Boyle, it's not your standard-issue bio. "I’m not really that interested in biopics, generally speaking. I occasionally like watching them, but the cradle-to-the-grave thing skims the surface, I think, in something as ludicrous as trying to explore a human being."

Steve Jobs does anything but. Set on the eve of three key product launches – the Macintosh (1984), the NeXT (1988), the flop computer made when Jobs was fired from Apple, and the candy-coloured iMac (1998) – it puts "a laser-like beam", says Boyle, on the alpha-male tech titan (brilliantly played by Michael Fassbender). Like Boyle's earlier 127 Hours, his other foray onto American soil which dealt with trapped climber Aaron Ralston's extraordinary survival, it's an artful lesson in how to "open up" a man from just a handful of moments.

The film almost exclusively takes place backstage in vast exhibition halls – a three-act piece that really feels like a trio of forty-minute movies as Jobs is caught in the crosshairs, fighting out his personal demons with friends, family and colleagues (including rip-roaring turns from Jeff Daniels as Apple CEO John Sculley and Kate Winslet as head of marketing Joanna Hoffman). Despite his dislike of California, Boyle insisted on shooting in San Francisco (a city he came to love, he says).

While this cost the production $5 million in lost tax breaks, Boyle felt filming in "the Bethlehem of the new machine age" was crucial. He was keen to absorb by osmosis the city's energy. When they put out a casting call for extras for the launch scenes, they were flooded with applicants. "They were there at the original launch, a lot of them. So when you ask them to give it up for Steve Jobs…holy s**t! They gave it up for him. A lot of them were made millionaires by him because they had stocks!"

If Boyle's canvas has usually erred towards the feelgood - notably his Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire – this isn't a corporate video for Apple, instead delving into the brutal quest for perfection. It was, after all, originally meant to be directed by David Fincher – who previously made Sorkin's script for The Social Network, which similarly dealt with another modern-day pioneer, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. When Fincher departed, Boyle eagerly hopped on. “This is the first time I’ve ever worked on something that we didn’t generate,” he says.

It evidently didn't hamper his creative juices. From shooting each segment in different stock (16mm for 1984; 35mm for 1988; digital for 1998) to cutting the dramatic confrontations that Boyle calls "a battle and a duet at the same time" to the throb of Daniel Pemberton's score, each artistic decision bottles Jobs' essence. The task was to capture “the sound of his mind”, he says. “That’s what we wanted to try and illustrate – what the sound of his mind is like? How do you do that?" Well, firstly you cast Fassbender, an actor who seems ideally tailored to bringing Jobs’ ever-humming grey matter to the fore.

Boyle had tried to work with the Irish-German actor before. "I don’t know if it’s the Celtic thing – I tend to work with Celtic actors. I don’t know why! I think they have this edge – they’re European but they’re out there somewhere as well and there’s an energy or anger in them. He’s uncompromising but when somebody is that good, everyone else comes up to that level. Funnily enough it’s Jobs’ argument – A players encourage the A players and B players don’t. He just wants A players and that’s the same with a cast like this."

While Steve Jobs is already in the frame in this season's Oscar race, the film's showing at the US box office (taking just $14 million to date, less than half its budget) has been a disappointment. Perhaps those Apple fans in America who fetishise the beautiful sleek design of their iPhones and iPads (neither of which, by the way, merits a mention in the film) have no wish to peek at the imperfections of their creator, as he battles with his ex-wife (Katherine Waterston) over whether he is actually the father of their daughter.

At least Boyle needn't fear if the film doesn't reap the financial benefits it richly deserves. He has an Irvine Welsh-shaped ace up his sleeve – the long-awaited sequel to Trainspotting. Ever since Welsh's Porno was published in 2002, there has been frenzied speculation that Boyle and his most famous Celtic cast would reunite – despite bad blood between the director and Ewan McGregor, who played the junkie Renton, after the actor was overlooked for the lead role in Boyle's take on Alex Garland's backpacker thriller The Beach.

Now, with differences resolved, the project looks to be finally happening. In some ways, he seems pleased that two decades will have elapsed between the two films. "We always had this idea that…because it was about friendship…what would happen to them? Initially it was going to be ten years later, but they didn’t look any different. Those actors looked exactly the same." The cast may have aged now, but is he not worried about harming the first film’s legacy? “I mean, it’s a test,” he nods. “A big challenge. There’ll be a lot of potential disappointment there.”

With a script from John Hodge, who won an Oscar nomination for adapting Trainspotting, Boyle has already road-tested it. “We had a read-through about six weeks ago, and they’ll all on top of it, character-wise. They are those characters. It was amazing, hearing them again around the table." Confirming they will film in Edinburgh "and a bit in Glasgow", the only issue is aligning the schedules of McGregor and co. And what will it be called? "T2," Boyle jokes. "There are a few rights issues with that name which we’ll have to resolve.” He winks as he gets up from the table. “I’ll let you know.”

Steve Jobs is in cinemas from today