The following conversation might have been recorded recently after the release of Apple’s new iOS 10. It probably didn’t. OK, it didn’t happen at all.
However, its content will serve to demonstrate the experience millions of iPhone users were subjected to recenlty while adopting Apple’s woefully ill-prepared fledgling operating system.
Apple CEO Tim Cook awakens in his California home high above Silicon Valley because it floats on secret anti-gravity technology that won’t be made public until the release of the iPhone 206.
He gets out of a bed stuffed with silken hair sheered from specially bred harvest gold unicorns. He doesn’t bother to make said bed as its cloaking device activates and shields it from view. Slipping on a robe sewn by Genius Bar Necromancers from the souls of PC users, he begins the one hour walk to his kitchen downstairs.
As he strolls, he talks to himself: “What a morning! I’m in the mood to send a cheerful text to the digitized intellect of Steve Jobs that we uploaded to The Cloud after we froze his head and shelved it next to Disney and those four clones of Donald Trump.”
Upon arriving in his kitchen and admiring the indoor weather its vaulted ceiling creates, Cook unwraps a brand new iPhone 7 from a stack of 2,000 neatly piled in his breakfast nook next to his custom Keurig carved out of gold mined from moon rocks. The genetically engineered mini-Barista locked inside it reads a tiny copy of iOS 10 for Dummi…Never mind. It’s Hopeless while waiting for Cook’s latte order.
Turning his iPhone on, Cook opens the Messaging app in the iOS 10 and types up a delightful missive with four emojis, eight “stickers” and an animated gif featuring the entire running time of Young Guns 2 (Jobs’ favorite film).
He hits send. The phone does nothing. He hits send again. More nothing. Then the screen freezes.
Also: How to Fix iOS 10’s Problems: What to Do if Your iPhone’s Bricked
Cook unwraps another new phone and dials Scooter, his head of software design. He gets a prompt answer.
“Good morning, Mr. Jobs.”
“Good morning, Scooter. I’m glad your awake.”
“I never sleep, Mr. Jobs. You replaced my cerebral cortex with an iPad Mini 2 three years ago. As long as I plug in for an hour at lunch, I’m always conscious and forced to work. It’s a hellish nightmare, Mr. Jobs.”
“Steve is dead Scooter. We talked about this.”
“Mr. Jobs is with us always, Mr. Jobs.”
“Of course. How’s that iPad Mini 2 working out for you?”
“Fine, sir. Only glitches are that I sometimes see the world as an Angry Birds Star Wars level while driving and occasionally I use the wrong banana in a sentence.”
“Banana?”
“No thank you, sir. They give me gas.”
Cook looks to the dead iPhone in his other hand. Still frozen.
“Scooter, I tried sending a text message this morning.”
“That was brave, sir.”
“But my iPhone froze.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“Is it running iOS 10?”
“Of course.”
“Then I’m not surprised.”
“Why not?”
“It doesn’t work.”
“The phone?”
“No, sir. The phone should work, sir.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Because you’re running iOS 10.”
“What’s wrong with iOS 10?”
“It doesn’t work, sir.”
“Perfect. Why not?”
“We released it before it was ready. You’re about to ask ‘why’ again, aren’t you, sir?”
“You know me so well.”
Scooter doesn’t answer for a while.
“Scooter?”
“Sorry, sir. Just let me finish this level. The piggy in the Stormtrooper helmet is really pissing me off this morning.”
“Scooter. Listen carefully. Why doesn’t iOS10 work?”
“I thought you knew, sir.”
“I don’t. Should I?”
“You run the company, Mr. Jobs.”
“No!”
“You don’t run the company?”
“No, I do, Scooter. I’m Tim Cook. How does Tim Cook send a text message on this iPhone?”
“He probably can’t, but we could pretend — maybe as a team building exercise.”
“Whatever you like.”
“Excellent, sir. There are 10 steps.”
“Can we simplify that down to maybe five?”
“Sure. It won’t make any difference.”
Cook holds up the frozen phone, waiting for Scooter’s instructions.
“First, you type your message.”
“Did that.”
“OK. Then hit send.”
“Done.”
“When nothing happens, hit send again.”
“I’m on the rails so far.”
“The phone will freeze.”
“Way ahead of you.”
“Now, you have a few options.”
“Good.”
“You can swear, cry, have a strong morning cocktail – perhaps a Mimosa or a Bloody Mary – or buy a verty durable case.”
“What will the case do?”
“Protect your iPhone when you throw it across the room.”
“Scooter, is there any way to get this iPhone working right now? Should I try restarting it?”
“It it’ll make you feel better, please. I’ll hold.”
Cook hard restarts the phone and waits for it to come back online. He can hear Scooter swearing at pigs in the background. Once the phone is alive again, Cook’s thumb moves to resend the text message.
“Scooter?”
“Yes, Mr. Pork.”
“Cook!”
“Delicious.”
“Shut up. I’m ready to resend the text.”
“Happy days, sir.”
Cook hits send. Nothing. Send again. Nothing. Freezes.
“I think it froze again.”
“I’d be pleasantly surprised if it didn’t.”
“Scooter, I am the CEO of the most successful electronics company in the history of Planet Earth. How did we release an operating system this bad? Didn’t we test it?”
“We tried.”
“And how’d it go?”
“No idea. It bricked all of our test phones.”
Cook’s screen goes black: “Now it crashed completely.”
“See?”
Cook tries to restart it. The phone makes a tiny fart noise.
“Did you eat a banana, sir?”
“That wasn’t me. It was the phone.”
“Mr. Jobs, the new iOS is having enough trouble without you feeding it bananas.”
Cook can’t get the phone to do anything.
“Is this thing bricked, Scooter?”
“I don’t think the phone’s material properties would make it useful in construction.”
“The phone’s functioning properties don’t make it useful as a phone.”
“Good one, Mr. Jobs.”
Cook throws the phone across his kitchen. After spinning through the 50 yards to the matter transporter that sends his dirty dishes to an open field in Kuala Lumpur, it smashes into pieces.
“I did suggest you buy that case, sir.”
END SCENE.
Whether or not you found this vignette amusing, I guarantee you it was more pleasant than the experience of actually installing Apple’s “not ready for primetime, lunchtime or anytime” iOS 10. Do yourself a favor and avoid installing it until it’s been updated and fixed because there’s more bugs in this thing than Bill Clinton’s underpants (equal time, non-partisan political references completed).
