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RDF


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2025 Apr 30, 4:20pm   35 views  1 comment

by Eric Holder   ➕follow (5)   ignore (3)  

Reality distortion field (RDF) is a term first used by Bud Tribble at Apple Computer in 1981, to describe company co-founder Steve Jobs's charisma and its effects on the developers working on the Macintosh project.

In the book Steve Jobs, biographer Walter Isaacson states that around 1972, while Jobs was attending Reed College, Robert Friedland "taught Steve the reality distortion field." The RDF was said by Andy Hertzfeld to be Jobs's ability to convince himself, and others around him, to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement and persistence. It was said to distort his co-workers' sense of proportion and scales of difficulties and to make them believe that whatever impossible task he had at hand was possible.

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1   Ceffer   2025 Apr 30, 4:28pm  

And all this time I just thought he was a demanding, childish and petulant asshole.

A friend of my wife's from work had a husband that worked under him directly for a good spell and had nothing good to say about the experience except that getting out without a nervous breakdown was a signifier of mettle.

Reality Distortion Field sounds so ESP and Scientology. OMmmmmmm to the inner alien.

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