Apple

Out of context: Reply #1054

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  • GeorgesII-6

    coz it's friday :)

    --
    I am Mr Allen Everton, BSc, MBA. I do not ask for your pity, nor your forgiveness. I only ask that you understand:
    On June 29, 2007, we released the first Apple iPhone. It was, as you all know, an overnight sensation that revolutionised the cellphone market forever. It changed the way humans communicate. What we created was nothing less than a modern marvel.

    As the lead product designer of the original iPhone, I was happy to take part in the triumph of innovation that we had given the world. The launch party was probably the best moment of my professional career. Apart from the birth of my daughter, it was undeniably the best day of my life. I revelled in the adoration of my peers, they toasted me and sang my praises. We drank champagne from the bottle and danced into the night. A very drunk Steve Jobs called me "The smartest motherfucker in the whole fucking city". No-one believes me when I tell them that, but it's 100% true.

    My work on the orginal iPhone got me a seat on the board of Apple Inc. There, Steve put me in charge of overseeing the development of the iPhone 3G. If the original iPhone was my magnus opus, the iPhone 3G would be the exact opposite. Except that would be understating it. The iPhone 3G was not only the worst thing I ever did, it is the worst thing anyone ever created in the entire history of humanity. It is my great shame that I never told you this, but here is my story: With the incredible success of the original model there was immense public demand for a newer and better model. Of course there was, there always is. And the Board wanted nothing more than to fulfill that demand. There was a huge amount of pressure on us to release something with serious product feature upgrade, in a very short amount of time.

    It wasn't easy, we had to put in some massive nights working on it, developing and tweaking, eeking out as much performance from the device as was possible. The team around me was fantastic, full credit to them for the amazing work they did. We released it on July 11, 2008, and once again it was a huge commercial success, selling millions worldwise in just the first week. By all practical measures, the iPhone 3G was a resounding success.

    But there was something bugging me. Some of the data transfer just wasn't as fast as it was meant to be. After a couple weeks of it being on the market, this became abundantly clear. Specifically, photo files sent via mobile internet to other iPhone devices were transferring about 8% slower than they should be. All of our research, all the math said that it should be faster. We tried looking at our compression systems, at our upload speeds, perhaps the battery was less powerful than we previously thought. Nothing could explain it.
    I went to Steve with my dilemna. I wasn't sure if he would give a shit, because the issue was not affecting the sales of the devices, and even the harshest critics couldn't tell the difference between the actual speed and what it was meant to be. But I underestimated him. Like anyone that has been as successful as him, Steve Jobs had an all-encompassing hatred of failure, in any form. The fact that we were underperforming, even by the smallest margins, drove him crazy. Together we looked at all the possible scenarios, anything that could have anything to do with that missing 8% data transfer speed. He put his best men on it, dedicating an entire department of 50 engineers solely to working out the cause of this loss. He commissioned university professors to run studies on the capabilities of 3G networks. He ran investigations into whether anything could possibly be choking the airwaves, something we hadn't anticipated that could already be on the networks.
    For 6 months I dedicated my life to working out what was happening. It was infuriating not knowing where we went wrong. After months of work with no breakthrough, we began to fear we would never know what went wrong. But then something happened which changed everything. I was contacted by a postgraduate electrical engineering student at the University of Delaware by the name of Devin Chuah who had stumbled onto something. He had run a macro-analysis of the data tranfer from thousands of different locations, trying to work out if the speed varied depending what cell tower it bounced off. Everywhere the test was run returned the exact same result, it was always 8% slower than our math had told is it should be. But there were certain ares where, by just a fraction of a percentage point, the transfer was even slower, no matter what was sent or whom it was sent to.

    This was the first breakthrough we had had in months, so naturally we threw money at him. We had him hire an entire team and run the test from millions of different locations throughout the continental United States. The results that came back were astounding. The data transfer was consistently, across the board, a fraction of a point slower when both the phones, and the cell towers, were within a short distance of Hospitals, Morgues, and Cemetaries. This made no sense to me at all, so I ask him, what would possibly explain this phenomenom? When he told me his answer, it was like the ground had been pulled from under me. "Sir, I believe we have disovered what was slowing down your data. There was already something on the network. And I think it could be... souls" Of course, I couldn't just accept this on it's face, so I had Devin partner with a Noetic Scientist at MIT by the name of Professor David Gordon to study how it was that there was something else on our network at the same frequency slowing us down. Part of that study involved them going to the Central African Republic and building the first 3G network there, so as to compare the effects of this phenomenom in a country where 3G was not currently popularised.

    They came back with incredible results. They had discovered "something" - it wasn't a particle, and it wasnt a radio signal, so they couldn't really put into words what it was, so they just called it "something". Whatever "something" was, it apparently moved or operated on a coincidentally similar form of communication to the iPhone 3G and most other modern smartphones. Because it was on our frequency, it was slowing down our data tranfer. But the most haunting discovery was the effect our phones were having on it. When they had set up their system in Africa, the speed of the data transfer varied. When it was operating in America, it was always a consistent 8% slower. There was a lot more evidence which built up the case, but that was the smoking gun. I couldn't deny it anymore. I was terrified to tell Steve the answer, for fear that he would accuse me of making a mockery of his company. But I knew I had to say something.

    I presented to Steve Jobs in his office, one on one. I prefaced it by telling him that, as absurd as it sounded I promised I was telling the truth. Then it all spilled out of me. We had discovered empirical evidence of the human soul. Souls had a intricate system of trasferring out of dying bodies, they leave the body and connect to a network which, by pure coincidence, was formatted extremely similarly to the one that we used to transfer files between iPhones. The soul then appears to make a number of rapid and erratic movements around the earth, we suspected it may be making contact with family members. Then, after it has completed it's course, the soul dissappears. Presumably to the an afterlife, possibly it finds a new host. This theory had held up in Africa. But in America we were increasingly seeing this system being thwarted. Souls were being trapped in a meaningless loop, thrown off their task by random transfers of cellphone data, causing them to become lost and abandon their task. Millions of souls were now stuck in our system and not disappearing the way they were meant to. We had created a modern day purgatory where no souls could ever leave Earth, forever being bounced around by random dick pics and instagram lunches.

    Steve looked at me. When I say 'looked', I mean stared. Deeply, menacingly, sliently. I saw him mulling over what I had just said. At first I was afraid that he would throw me out of his office and his company. Then I began to realise that the expression on his face was much more sinister, and much more terrified than I had previously thought. This was not a matter of being fired. This was much, much worse. He must have stayed there, silently still for a good 10 minutes before he spoke.
    "How many people know about this?"
    "Just myself, Devin, Professor Gordon, and you, sir"
    "Good. Lets have it stay that way. Do not repeat this to anyone. You may go"

    And that was it, I left his office and went home. I had told Steve, that was my job, the whole thing was out of my hands. It was his responsibility now. I might just retire and take a nice long holiday with the wife to the Greek Islands. The next day there was $600 Million in my bank account, and both Devin and Professor Gordon were dead.

    I understood the message. I was to say nothing. This was hush money, but it was also a threat and a show of power. If I said a word of this to anyone, Steve Jobs would never be able to sell another iPhone. I don't care how principled you are, when a man like Steve Jobs wants something and is willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen, you don't stand up against him.
    This has been my great shame for these past 10 years. I stayed silent. I allowed the iPhones to keep operating. Millions and Millions of souls now have been forever seperated from their God. They will never reach heaven. My priest when I was a child once told me that hell is by definition a permanent speration from God's love. By that interpretation I am the devil.

    Please, forget me. I am not one who deserves to be remembered. Do not hold a funeral, leave me in an unmarked grave, and move on.

    Isaiah 59:2: But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.

    GeorgesII -6Permalink
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    • too long did not readernexbcn
    • It's a good read.O0O0O0
    • ^
      why am I talking to myself again      GeorgesII
    • Becase I am the only friend I have.O0O0O0
    • Then he looked at his kingdom, he was finally there. To sit on his throne as the prince of Mac Air.face_melter
    • ^
      lol, that would have been a good ending      GeorgesII
    • is this from r/nosleep?mekk
    • Fuck, I accidently read all that. Nice one Georges.Ianbolton
    • this is hilariousmonospaced
    • reddit post says it's some guy's uncle's suicide notemonospaced
    • @mekk, yep nosleep, read it on the shitter this morning, if you want some other nice one, check r/writingpromptsGeorgesII
    • Tell me you wrote this on a iPhone while bouncing along on the bus to work....see_thru
    • psssh there's no such thing as a soul.garbage
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