“Steve Jobs’s resignation was the most discussed in corporate history,” John Naughton writes for The Guardian.
“Because his illness has been public knowledge for so long, and because Wall Street and the commentariat viewed his health as being synonymous with that of his company, for years Apple share prices have fluctuated with its CEO’s temperature,” Naughton writes. “If all the ‘Whither Apple without Jobs?’ articles were laid end to end, they would cover quite a distance – but they never reached a conclusion.”
Advertisement: Limited Time: Students, Parents and Faculty save up to $200 on a new Mac.
“Still, you could understand the hysteria. After all, he’s the man who rescued Apple from the near-death experience it underwent in the mid-1990s,” Naughton writes. “It was the greatest comeback since Lazarus. Because only an obsessive, authoritarian, visionary genius could have achieved such a transformation, it’s easy to see why Wall Street has had difficulty imagining Apple without Jobs. He was, after all, the only CEO in the world with rock star status… But Jobs has something Gates never had – a reputation so powerful as to create a reality distortion field around him.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Mike Walker” for the heads up.]
Obviously it was the mock-turtlenecks….
“Reality Distortion Field” is the term used by the ignorant who cannot understand why Apple’s products sell well. The reality, undistorted, is that Apple cares about customers and doesn’t’ sell crap. But people with no standards or an anti-apple ideology, can’t see that and so, trapped in the real “reality distortion field” claim that there’s no reason anyone would want to buy Apple products unless “reality was distorted” for them.
Ironically they are the ones blinded by ideology.
What *really* makes Steve Jobs a good communicator is he makes sure his products are very well done, so he doesn’t have to BS people about them.
Nothing sells like being genuine.
Other companies could capture this same magic by simply deciding to stop making crap products.
You Said IT Engineer! Yes! It is all about quality products, with solid “it just works” engineering! Job’s was known as a great communicator … but he was not selling “sugar water” he was selling the real deal. I think the Company is in good hands, for he is responsible for so much of the current Apple quality, if not those of a less eloquent orator.
An article like that seems to bring out the Apple-haters about as much as an anti-Apple articles brings out the opposite side. I see people posting saying that Apple’s products are over-valued and over-priced simply because of Job’s Reality Distortion Field*. But I’d say 9 out of 10 people I know with Apple products have never even seen him speak. I mean, you do have to be a serious Apple fan to tune into a keynote, and most people haven’t done that. And another thing, that Apple products are sold mostly to the Apple fan base. I’ve heard that for years, back when the fan base must have been a small fraction of what it is today. And it makes you wonder what makes it grow (some people wonder, I don’t). At this rate the Apple UNfaithful will be the small minority.
* This Reality Distortion Field originated not with Apple fans, but with Apple engineers. They would go into a meeting with Jobs with a list of reasons why some feature or device couldn’t be built, and come out of it all hyped up, convinced that it was not only possible but they’d have it done by next month.
* as documented here:
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Reality_Distortion_Field.txt
WARNING! This site is a known time-sink.
My lectures to medical students and residents have benefitted enormously by watching Steve Jobs keynote addresses – primarily on how to create minimalist, yet effective slides.
Clarity is achieved by eliminating what does not need to be said. The same principle is at work in the design of all of Apple’s products from the user interface to the hardware.
Probably one thing ANYONE can take away from watching Steve was to not put up giant fields of text and just read it to the audience. That’s a one-way ticket to snoozeville.
I think the last sentence from the article was intriguing and astute. “last of the great media moguls.” I hadn’t thought of him that way before but I think it makes sense.
(typed from my iPod touch, my 1st apple computer since using a school Mac in1993 and an apple IIe in 1987.)
“And it’s why he is really the last of the media moguls”
I agree with most he said… but the end… that line has become such a cliche.
I admire Jobs and with not disrespect here… there will be others to come to bat and hit many more home runs – possibly further then ever imagined. KEEP the IMAGINATION going…
Jobs him self never imagined Apple to soar to such heights in the stocks – seen at his interview All Thing D. He was truly amazed over Apples great successes and he notes he did not do it alone – he credits his team.
Reminding me a bit like Jim Henson noting his creativity and genius could have never been achieved without the help of others and their talents and vision added value to the company. “THE LOVERS THE DREAMERS and ME…”
A leader must have the passion and belief to carry the dream and fuel the team.
New companies will emerge and new technologies – there will be more to come and maybe from some where unexpected.
It should read “What makes” not “What made”
I love it when people chalk up Apple’s success to the “reality distortion field,” or to cult stuff, or voodoo marketing, or ANYTHING other than great products.
I always think, “Keep telling yourself that. And more importantly, KEEP TELLING APPLE’S COMPETITORS that.”
They’ll stay in the dark and APPL will go go goooooo…
Ugh, I couldn’t agree more. They can’t grasp the concept of people genuinely creating great products and people really loving them for it, so they have to debase it instead of try to understand it.
I’ve always found the term Reality Distortion Field to be itself a distortion of reality as it were. If anything, it’s a Reality Check Field, getting it clear to you that Windows is truly rubbish instead of ‘the industry norm’, and that better than that truly does exist and is not imaginary at all.
I find the term RDF an insult to be honest.
I came on Apple bandwagon in the early 90s, getting a Performa 5200 with MacOS 7.5.something iirc. The beauty of that all-in-one design compared to a wintel box was not a distortion, but reality. The elegance and simplicity of System 7.5 was also not a distortion, but sheer reality.
And Apple kept the quality up with new models and new system releases, thus still am an Apple customer. With my feet firmly grounded in reality, thank you very much.
The keynote where he introduced the iPhone is pretty much the gold standard for Steve’s awesomeness as a communicator.
I still watch that and marvel at how well executed it was.
WHY must every TechTard on planet Earth INSIST that Apple had a “near death experience” or was “teetering on bankruptcy” or some other form of horrible imminent demise when in fact that NEVER HAPPENED!?
Apparently being a DRAMA QUEEN makes for tech rag sales and web hits. Exaggerating Steve Jobs’ health troubles into another imminent demise is apparently another way to suck money out of suckers. Exploit reality for every dime no matter the required distortion or ridiculous results. I hurl on all of you parasites:
:-Q*********
The key thing about Naughton’s article (for the Observer, BTW, not the Guardian) is that he cuts through the RDF idea, to some rick hard truths:
“This field has blinded people to some under-appreciated facts. While it is true, for example, that Apple – under Jobs’s influence – is probably the world’s best industrial design outfit, it is also a phenomenally well-run company.”
“If all the ‘Whither Apple without Jobs?’ articles were laid end to end, they would cover quite a distance – but they never reached a conclusion.”
Love it!!!