OPTIONS

A novel by a fake author about fake incidents at a real company.

The parodistic premise of this book is that Steve Jobs, narrator and god-in-training, has more to do than merely attend to cooked books, presentations about iPhones and meetings with the likes of Bono, Sting and Yoko Ono—he wants to save the world. Much is made of the counterculture atmosphere at Apple computer. (Jobs does not like to be interrupted in the Tassajara meditation room, for example, and a post-Pilates working lunch consists of miso soup and apple slices.) Interruptions abound, however, especially in the form of a pesky lawsuit about backdating stock options. One of the government prosecutors is aggressively motivated by the fact that “his iPod battery crapped out after ten months and [Apple] refused to replace it under warranty.” But Jobs, the self-described “mega-rich mega-famous mega-creative genius,” has other things on his mind—for example, a meeting to discuss a proposal to reduce the length of the next iPod by half a millimeter, a move that Jobs is convinced will “throw off the balance of the design.” He also smugly knows that if he were “taken out of the game,” a looming reality would scare people out of their minds. His one-word hint: “Microsoft.” The Steve Jobs narrative persona says things like “I’m like, ‘Dude, whatever’ you know?” He also likes to mess with the heads of his Apple employees by basing his management style on anti-MBA principles such as, “Never let people know where they stand,” “Only promote stupid people…who actually believe they’re super brilliant” and “Throw tantrums.” He shows the perks of power in his firing schemes, for some days the first person he meets with red hair gets fired—or “the first person wearing one of those stupid Bluetooth earpieces.”

Kind of fun, especially if you’re a computer geek.