Sarcasticus posted this on another thread:

Everyone seems disappointed by MWNY. Consider this, the G4 will most likely break 1Ghz in the next revision. Mac OS X is picking up steam and 10.1 is only 1 year after the Public Beta. Even if it is only half as good as Jobs’s demo, that is a lot of improvement for one year. Apple is making money and other companies are struggling to stay above water. Further, when the economic shakedown stabilizes, Apple will not have to recover unlike other companies. Anyone who listened to the call to the analysts after the MacWorld keynote knows that the team at Apple is very realistic. Perhaps the people with the Reality Distortion Field is not Steve and Co., but us Mac users. Lighten up, the future is very bright despite a less than spectacular Stevenote.

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Irony is wasted on the stupid.

Then Raena said:

Pssstttt…. The Macworld forum is thattaway! *points*

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I’m usually thin and gorgeous, but I took today off

I’ll still kick in with the fact that the iMac rev was beyond pointless.  The whole “let’s jack UP the price of the cheapest iMac for the second rev in a row” thing also bugs the holy heck out of me.

Thanks iBrotha for the repost. I’m a real big fan. I like how you keep it real without sacrificing attitude. Not to mention the things that make me giggle like a little girl (NOTE: I am not a little girl).

As far as the iMac price being upped, I don’t know what is up Apple’s sleeve or if they are unable to keep prices low for whatever reason. This is annoying, but it could be worse. Personally I am hoping that the iMac will branch in two different directions. I would like to see an educational model (read: cheap) and a LCD model (read: as bitchen as the cube with a consumer price point). I think it could even happen at Paris as Shawn King suggested in a pre-MWNY daily report.

What is this Reality Distortion Field that everyone talk about?  I feel kinda dumb because I really don’t know what it is.

Ah, the Reality Distortion Field.

People have argued that Jobs has the ability to bend reality in the direction that he wants it when you are in his physical presence.  This hasn’t been so much the case recently, but going back a few years at MACWORLD’s and whatnot Jobs could make any announcement, any product, seem like the be all and end all of existence.

This sort of happened with the Cube last summer.  He’s up on stage showing this beautiful little piece of hardware off and nearly everybody left that keynote going, “Man, that’s what a computer SHOULD be.  They are not going to be able to make them fast enough.  Actually, I think I need TWO.”

OK, maybe not quite, but the reality of the situation is it was too expensive with limited upgrade potential and as it turns out almost nobody bought one.  But while you were there looking at Steve…man, it was the Next Big Thing.

His ability to put a positive Apple spin on EVERYTHING is the essential ingredient to the Reality Distortion Field.  Jobs might be the greatest pitchman of our time, and definitely one of the most charismatic.  Those things lead to some pretty major “distortion” of how things are perceived, thus the Reality Distortion Field.

It’s all really pretty funny.

Nice explanation, Kyle. 

I wanted to add that the “Reality Distortion Field” term got coined in the early 80s while Steve was still at Apple and working on the original Mac.

On 2001-08-10 16:44, Bryan wrote:
I wanted to add that the “Reality Distortion Field” term got coined in the early 80s while Steve was still at Apple and working on the original Mac.

Thanks for that extra info Bryan! I first heard of the RDF a few years ago in MacAddict and thought it was coined after he returned to Apple.

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David Nelson
Mac Observer Forum Mod

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: David Nelson on 2001-08-13 23:04 ]</font>