Gizmodo: apple cyoa

Choose Your Own Apple CEO Adventure

Jason Chen — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST

Future, Cupertino — After a long and fruitful tenure as CEO, Steve Jobs steps down in early 2009 to fanfare and industry fawning. Apple needs a new leader. It's time to choose your own adventure.

Much deliberation and coin tossing goes on in the back rooms of Apple. Their board of directors choose a person who they strongly believe can lead Apple into its next phase of growth, a person who can, at the very least, match Steve Jobs' product development whip cracking, if not his outsized public persona.

The board chooses...

• Jonathan Ive, Apple's Senior Vice President of Industrial Design. Turn to page 10.
• Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing. Turn to page 11.
• Tim Cook, Apple's Chief Operating Officer. Turn to page 12.
• Bill Gates, Super Rich Dude. Turn to page 13.
• Yourself, Super Poor Dude. Turn to page 14.

Choose Your Own Adventure is property of CYOA.com.

Apple CYOA: Page 5

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:32:00 EST

Now having controlling interest in the company, Microsoft uses their new found leverage to somehow buy Yahoo and Google, forming a gigantic web/tech/electronics corporation known as NAMBLA. You fade into obscurity as a footnote in the annals of history.

THE END. Back to the start?

Apple CYOA: Page 6

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:31:00 EST

No amount of silhouetted dancing cock ads can save you from this public relations disaster. What were you thinking?

Turn to page 25.

Apple CYOA: Page 7

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:30:00 EST

You stumble onto the shaman’s mystical chamber. “What are you doing here, kid!”, exclaims the Shaman. You tense up. Words start forming, but your throat closes around them. The Shaman casts a spell. Your legs don’t work. A bright blast of blue light blinds you and knocks you to the floor. Your legs still don’t work…because they’ve turned into a shark. You slither out of the cavern, into the river, and off into the sunset. As a shark.

THE END. Back to the start?

Apple CYOA: Page 10

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:29:00 EST

You’ve been waiting for this moment all your life. You are Jon Ive, whose design aesthetic has influenced countless companies and countless industries the world over. And now you are CEO of Apple. Stocks tank.

Turn to page 86.

Apple CYOA: Page 11

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:28:00 EST

You’ve been waiting for this moment all your life. You are Phil Schiller, whose salesmanship can put as good a spin on any Apple product released as Steve jobs can. Stocks tank.

Turn to page 39.

Apple CYOA: Page 12

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:27:00 EST

You’ve been waiting for this moment all your life. You are Tim Cook, who as COO, actually runs the company and knows what’s going on in each department better than everyone else. You know design, you know software, you know everything Steve Jobs knows. Stocks tank.

Turn to page 86.

Apple CYOA: Page 13

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:26:00 EST

You’ve been waiting for this moment all of three months. You are Bill Gates, and you are very happy to take the job because the word “philanthropy” didn’t mean what you thought it meant. Stocks tank despite the fact that you bought all the shares yourself.

Turn to page 86.

Apple CYOA: Page 14

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:25:00 EST

You’ve been waiting for this moment all your life, but unfortunately you’re as unsuited for this position as anybody who’s ever lived.

Nevertheless, the board has great confidence in your skills (because your dad is on the board). The stock tanks anyway.

Turn to page 87.

Apple CYOA: Page 18

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:24:00 EST

With the financial and technological backing of Apple at your side, you decide to devote only 10% of your attention to running the company and 90% of your attention to becoming Batman.

Your first outing goes horribly wrong. Two muggers have cornered you in an alley. Your martial arts skills, though impressive to your adult night school Tae Kwon Do class, won’t be enough to get you out of this mess. You...

• Grab a nearby Sony laptop battery and hope it explodes. Turn to page 64.
• Open up your utility belt and throw razor-sharp iPod Shuffles at their faces. Turn to page 80.
• Activate your real life, actually working Reality Distortion Field to stun and arouse your assailants. Turn to page 50.

Apple CYOA: Page 20

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:23:00 EST

Operation “sneak into Microsoft and steal stuff” goes well until your curiosity gets the better of you and you just HAVE to see what Steve Ballmer’s office looks like. Big mistake. The ogre is unleashed.
Ballmer chases you down a hall. You...

• Shoot him. Turn to page 61.
• Try and outrun him. Turn to page 89.
• Turn around and charge at him, vaguely remembering an old show on Animal Planet where you heard something about how the dominant gorilla in a pack never takes shit from nobody. Turn to page 29.

Apple CYOA: Page 25

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:22:00 EST

Apple engineers stumble upon the secret to time travel while researching ways to make iPhones have a coefficient of friction less than 0.02 in order to increase sales of iPhone cases. You have the option of going back in time only once before the time travel device gets too scratched up and fingerprinted to function. Do you choose...

• To stop Hitler before he came into power? Turn to page 51.
• To the future and see what Apple will be like in the year 2030? Turn to page 2030.
• To go to the 70s to when Jobs and Woz started Apple? Turn to page 77.

Apple CYOA: Page 29

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:21:00 EST

You are not the dominant gorilla. Despite getting hit with a cheap shot to his neck, Steve Ballmer takes you down with a basic wrestling move. Noogies and wedgies ensue for what seem like hours.

Eventually Ballmer calms down and decides to let you leave, but not before making you sign over your control over Apple.

Turn to page 5.

Apple CYOA: Page 34

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:20:00 EST

After an initial outcry on blogs and local newspapers, the outrage fades as you continue to revamp your product lines every few months. Occasionally, random wackjobs bring up the subject with a, “you guys do remember that this was the company that poisoned us, right?”

Eventually, all complaints are drowned out by the release of the iTV, a standard HDTV that ships with an Apple TV screwed onto the back. First generation units suffer from a problem where assembly workers don’t screw the screws in tight enough, and cause the liquid in the liquid crystals to drain out. Thousands of carpets are ruined. Nobody cares.

Turn to page 18.

Apple CYOA: Page 39

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:19:00 EST

You decide to bring back the Macworld keynote for the year 2010, despite having previously backed out of it. You end up giving a slightly above average presentation, only stumbling twice due to technical difficulties: once with yet another Flickr integration demo, and once when Steve Jobs booed you from the audience.

As a cost-cutting measure, however, festivities were moved from the Moscone Center to the much cheaper San Francisco Zoo. You deliver the keynote from a perch above the lion pit. And just when you think you're finished...

Turn to page 88.

Photo credit

Apple CYOA: Page 41

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:18:00 EST

The public eats it up. You’re hailed as the next Steve Jobs. Everybody loves you…except the real Steve Jobs. He invites you over to his house to congratulate you on your newfound success. To your chagrin, he rigged a pit in his driveway.

Turn to page 88.

Apple CYOA: Page 47

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:17:00 EST

Surprisingly enough, everyone is happy buying incremental upgrades of your older products, and as a benefit of the economy recovering and the Christmas season, your stuff sells just as well as if you had released something new. Kudos to you sir.

Turn to page 52.

Apple CYOA: Page 50

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:16:00 EST

Your Reality Distortion Field works better than you expected. Not only are the muggers incapacitated, they drool enthusiastically and whisper amongst themselves about your upcoming products. You slink away into the night.

After refining your RDF to work on an auditorium-sized area, you take the stage at WWDC, the annual conference for Mac developers, investors, press and sycophants. Nobody notices the difference between this year and the last.

Turn to page 55.

Apple CYOA: Page 51

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:15:00 EST

You stand unblinking, knife dripping with blood, above a dead 15-year-old Hitler. You have done what so many before you couldn’t (including Tom Cruise, whose recent movie was an autobiographical account of his own attempt).

Suddenly, you feel your facial hair slowly sprouting, and one testicle slowly shrinking away to nothing. You rush to a mirror. The color drains suddenly from your face as you realize that nature’s tendency to self-correct wins out in the end.

YOU are now Hitler.

THE END Back to the start?

Apple CYOA: Page 52

Jason Chen — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:14:00 EST

Months pass without any major incident. You release updates such as the iPhone 3G, with 128GB of flash memory, front-facing camera, iChat support, cut & paste, but shorter battery life. Some people like it, some people don’t. It’s the usual.

However, on March 17 2010, medical researchers discover an ailment called aluminum poisoning, caused by too much skin contact with the alloy. Symptoms are several times more severe when the aluminum is licked, so 57% of Apple customers are treated for this condition.

A class action lawsuit is filed on behalf of the afflicted. You…

• Recall all your products with aluminum on it. Turn to page 87.
• Ignore the problem, and slowly phase out aluminum products. Turn to page 34.
• Give all customers who purchased an aluminum product a $100 credit to the Apple store (not applicable in the iTunes music store). Turn to page 74.

Image credit