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0 pointsroc14y ago0 comments

The primary flaw with every RDF theory is that most Apple customers have never heard Steve Jobs speak. They only know new products are coming out when they see them on the shelves or when news hits CNN or by word of mouth. And if the media and word of mouth are so resoundingly bad at reporting on tech, how are they supposed to be so good at propagating the RDF?

How in the world could the RDF be so powerful as to bamboozle users over the utility and novelty of features, when most of the people buying new Apple products don't even know what the specific features of the next product are?

That's what's so damn offensive about people trying to push the idea of the RDF, even when they try to soft-pitch the idea by saying the products themselves aren't bad.

The entire theory insists that the person who just used an iPod and iTunes for two years doesn't know a thing about their own experience. That their high opinion of Apple is driven not by their actual experience but by the magical mind powers of a person they've never heard speak. That they're objectively wrong and some person who's never used an Apple product for more than five minutes is right, as evidenced by some techno-gibberish on a spec sheet. And that when the happy Apple customer decides to try a Mac, because the iPod thing went so well and the Dell PC thing went so poorly, that the only possible rationalization is that they've been brainwashed.

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bane14y ago· 1 in thread

There was something there. It was even acknowledged in the bowels of Apple (RDF was coined inside of Apple). I'm not sure I know entirely how it's propagated, but I have a hunch it's through people who could best be called "evangelists".

They didn't know Jobs personally. But they took time off of work to watch every keynote and try and crash the MacWorld expos. They bought every sort of device they could get their hands on since the original iMac. And they insist to their nontechnical friends that the benefits of the platform "it just works" outweigh any downside.

My nontechnical friends who have iPhones and Macs and such all seem to have gotten into the platform that way -- they all know somebody who evangelized the platform. And with the brilliant integration between the devices, once you dip a toe in, you may as well just jump in all the way.

Now it may not be Jobs' RDF that initiated this, it may be Ive's design I don't know. But there is a strange sort of pseudo-religious phenomenon there. You simply don't see this kind of behavior with any other technology.

That's the question isn't it? Today the iProduct line is well known. You can guess, based on the prior pattern, that any new iProduct will be very good at what it does. It may even innovate in a few key areas and shakeup the particular vertical it launches into.

But remember when the original iPhone came out? or the iPad? I don't know of anybody who actually knew anything about them, but they sure as hell were motivated to stand in line for 8 or 9 hours to get one. Why? I sure as hell don't know. They all already had phones, what was it about the iPhone that they just had to experience. There really wasn't any prior history there, and the original phones were pretty expensive for the time. I'd even argue that to a rational observer, Apple's near death not that long before hand would dissuade somebody from spending that kind of money on a device by a company that has had a very shaky history.

So what was it that moved people to empty their bank accounts and try to buy a dozen original iPhones? The iPod didn't have that sort of mania attached to it.

This

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNdr8Q423Y4

is not the behavior of a rational buying public.

Why are they all there? What would it hurt to wait a couple of days until you next swung by the mall? Why are they hi-fiving and jumping up and down like they just won the lottery? What great thing did they just accomplish?

Remember, at this point in time (June 2007) all they know they've accomplished is to wait in line to buy a phone by a not very successful computer company who's other non-computer devices were by and large complete flops (sans the iPod). Remember the Apple printers? Newton, Pippin, the Quick Take, the Hi-fi? In June of 2007, Apple was rumored to be up-for-sale (with Google a possible buyer), the stock wasn't performing well.

Outside of the keynote and some coverage in the major media, there was literally no information on this device up to this point. Nobody in that line had ever used one, most had probably never seen one in real life, there were no owner testimonials, early reviews weren't exactly glowing, this could have just been a weird Apple curiosity like the Quick Take.

But all of these people, at sites all around the U.S. lined up in massive groups to buy, site unseen, and hi-five each other, over a device that they already pretty much owned as far as they knew.

The RDF is amazing, it's real and it speaks to its power that those most affected by it seem to not even be aware of its existence.

rocOP14y ago

> "Why are they all there?"

Maybe because it's a 'social event', like lining up to buy concert tickets, or a new video game, or going shopping on black friday, or getting to an amusement park early to be first in line for their favorite roller coaster.

Regular people do those sorts of things for products and experiences all the time and no-one feels a need to invent an "RDF" to explain it.

If you want to say "Jobs was persuasive" in meetings, that's one thing. What people who've worked at Apple and seen keynotes comment on and call an RDF is basically that. There is no doubt that he was a charismatic guy who prepared and presented well. But that's a far cry from saying it's at all reasonable to assert that his charisma motivates any statistically significant slice of people to buy Apple products without any regard for their quality or value.

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