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Comment by ricardobeat | Hacker News Reader

> but his main talent appeared to have been his skill at raising money by promising the impossible — the 19th century version of Steve Job’s reality distortion field.

That’s a wild mischaracterization. Steve Job’s “reality distortion field” was coined after the ability to get people to achieve the impossible and deliver better products; quite the opposite of funneling money into dead end ideas.

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> Steve Job’s “reality distortion field” was coined after the ability to get people to achieve the impossible and deliver better products;

I was under the impression it was about Steve convincing the faithful that Apple invented the categories of products they sold, rather than simply delivering better products in existing categories.

It was coined by Apple engineers who would agree to whatever Steve wanted them to do while Steve was at their desk, and then when he left they'd be distraught over what they'd agreed to.

https://www.folklore.org/Reality_Distortion_Field.html

Hmm, that's basically a fancy way to describe psychological pressure and persuasion.

No, it was first coined by people who worked for him in the early 80s. He was really trying to push the limits of what was possible and convinced people working under him to do so.

> That’s a wild mischaracterization. Steve Job’s “reality distortion field” was coined after the ability to get people to achieve the impossible and deliver better products; quite the opposite of funneling money into dead end ideas.

Apple is widely successful, and their products are highly regarded so it's a good spot to be in.

I always find it strange when 'achieve the impossible' tag is attached to him or the products that came along. take iphone for example - there were ton of products that were way ahead of their time way before iphone came along - palmpilot (grafitti handwriting), handspring, hp pocketpc (a buddy of mine had a working vnc client on it during days of wifi infancy), and of course the original blackberry.

Apple is known to be late to market for almost every category. What they did bring was hardware and software innovations - the "impossible" - that allowed them to be smaller, thinner, faster, more responsive, and more user-friendly in a way that usually made the 'ahead of their time' products immediately feel outdated. When the first iPod touch was released in 2007 it was pure science fiction, there was nothing remotely similar on the market.

This was the case with the iPod, iPod touch, iPad, iPhone, Macbook, Macbook Air, Apple Watch and Airpods after his death, and probably more; these are all products that created categories of their own when they were first released.

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