Reality Distortion Field - n. A field exuded by Apple founder Steve Jobs that causes those around him to believe whatever he wants.

There are some who say that Steve Jobs exudes a Reality Distortion Field (RDF), but new evidence has just emerged suggesting that others in the industry have a Self Delusion Field (SDF). The Register has published a very good report on a talk that Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates gave in The Hague this week. Judging from some of the quotes attributed to Mr. Gates, he may have just such a field. While Steve Jobs' field gets other people to buy whatever he says, Mr. Gates seems gripped by the power to believe whatever it is he says to himself.

The bulk of the story deals with issues surrounding Microsoft's next generation operating system, which is code named Longhorn. Longhorn has been in development for years, and is supposed to be a major advance in the Windows world. It is scheduled to have a fancy new file system, a new interface, and all manner of other improvements. It's also not going to get here until 2005 or 2006, according to Mr. Gates.

That's actually a good thing. The Reg quotes him as saying, "This release is going to be driven by technology, not by a release date. Which probably means it is going to be late." That's a big change from Microsoft, which has made its billions by adhering to release dates.

In fact, Steve Capps, the Mac/Newton wünderkind cum Microsoft doctor, recently told me that release dates are a big part of why Microsoft's software is so often just not as elegant and solid as Apple software. He said that Microsoft's system is set up in such a way that everyone is afraid to just say no when the technology they are working on isn't working. The release date is king, he said, whereas at Apple, the product is king. Mr. Capps actually said it much more elegantly, but check out the next issue of MacAddict, which is running some of the quotes I got at AppleLore, for his exact comments.

The point is that Microsoft is, perhaps for the first time, letting technology control the development cycle. That's a good thing for Microsoft, its customers, and perhaps the rest of the Internet-using world. We'll see if it actually works out, but it's at least a nice thought.

So I found all those comments, and the other information in The Reg's article, to be very interesting. Read the full article, as it is a good read. It was a direct quote from Mr. Gates the end of the article, however, that convinced me that Bill Gates has lost his mind. From The Reg:

Gates is optimistic about meeting the challenge of the new security threats, he told reporters. "We have to. We invented personal computing. It is the best tool of empowerment there has ever been. If there is anything that clouds that picture, we need to fix it."

Bill Gates & Co. invented personal computing? INVENTED PERSONAL COMPUTING? INVENTED PERSONAL COMPUTING?

Wow, that's simply an unbelievable statement. It defies all rational thought. How can he think that Microsoft has done anything more than tag along with the personal computing revolution?

Microsoft did come up with a programming language for the Altair, but that was hardly a personal computer. Even if it is the first personal computer, Microsoft didn't invent it, Altair did.

Microsoft also wrote software for the Apple ][, but it most certainly didn't invent it. Apple did the bulk of that work. OK, Apple did all the work. Oh, and in my opinion, the Apple ][ actually was the first real personal computer.

It's also true was Microsoft was indeed the buyer of the software that became known as DOS. DOS, of course ended up being used as the OS for IBM's Personal Computer. Perhaps that is what Mr. Gates is talking about. Perhaps he thinks he and his fellow Microserfs invented IBM's Personal Computer. Except that they didn't. They didn't even invent the OS that ran IBM's PC. As I said, they bought it from another company, but that was still years after Apple had already invented personal computing with the Apple ][.

So perhaps Mr. Gates thinks that "personal computing" started with Windows? That doesn't make much sense considering the fact that it was DOS that drove the expansion of the IBM-compatible. Even if that is his thought, Windows was built on the work done by Apple and the Mac team. Remember that when Apple sued Microsoft for usurping the Mac look-and-feel, Microsoft won because of a contract, not because the company hadn't used Apple technology.

So what is Mr. Gates thinking? I don't know, but my guess is that he's been drinking his own Kool-aid for too long. It's always possible that The Reg quoted Mr. Gates out of context (I certainly wasn't there), but I think that the Self Delusion Field is the better theory.

Follow-up note: I know that people are going to jump on the "Al Gore invented the Internet" thing with this, so I have to butt in ahead of time. Al Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet. He did take credit for pushing legislation concerning the Internet, saying: "While in congress, I took the lead in creating the Internet." That, however is a true statement, and people such as Tim Berners-Lee (the father of the World Wide Web) have backed him up.

He was later incorrectly quoted as saying he invented the Internet, but he never made such a claim. So, don't let the discussion of Mr. Gates' statement get off-track by invoking a misquote of Al Gore. If things get out of hand, I'll start deleting off-topic posts like there was literally no tomorrow.