Me: I live in Silicon Valley with my wife, child and cat. I have worked at Microsoft since I graduated from College, both in the Macintosh Business Unit on products such as Outlook Express, Entourage, IE, and Virtual PC and in Windows Live on Hotmail, Calendar and People. I am currently a Principal Lead Program Manager on the Windows Live Social Networking team. I basically manage a team of Program Managers responsible for delivering features to support our web and client applications. I've been blogging since 2001 and like to play around with .NET in my spare time working on projects such as dasBlog (the blog that powers this site) and Send to SmugMug (an application for uploading photos to SmugMug). I blog about a number of technology and productivity related topics.
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It used to be that the Steve Jobs "Reality Distortion Field" only worked on Mac users. Now that Apple has expanded it's customer base to include practically every one on the planet (courtesy of the iPod) it seems everyone is susceptible to the Reality Distortion Field. Protecting yourself is non trivial. I personally find hiding under a desk with a Tin hat the only real protection.
I was encouraged to see at least a few posts today that indicate that people are starting to understand that they were subject to his powers the other day.
Mobile Crunch says:
Some of you - most of you in fact - likely think that I should capitulate now, kneel before the mighty Apple and swear on a stack of iMac manuals that I shall never speak of Symbian again. But wait; has anyone but Mssr. Jobs ever used the device? Has he? Does it actually work? Maybe. But the truth is that at this moment and until at least June - a full six months from now - we simply don’t know. In fact, we don’t know a lot of things. Like whether the battery is removable - if it’s not the thing is an expensive brick between charges. We don’t know if the “typing” really is significantly faster than on something like a Treo or a SonyEricsson P990 with their small but well engineered thumb keyboards. Steve-o didn’t do any typing during the demo, did he? Of course durability has to be a question. Few devices have to stand up to as much abuse in the line of duty as a typical mobile phone. Will that beautiful display go the way of the Nano after a few short weeks? What then? Is it replaceable? By the user? Or only by the dealer with a six week turn-around time and a two-hundred dollar you can afford it if you can afford Mac penalty?
Some of you - most of you in fact - likely think that I should capitulate now, kneel before the mighty Apple and swear on a stack of iMac manuals that I shall never speak of Symbian again. But wait; has anyone but Mssr. Jobs ever used the device? Has he? Does it actually work? Maybe. But the truth is that at this moment and until at least June - a full six months from now - we simply don’t know.
In fact, we don’t know a lot of things. Like whether the battery is removable - if it’s not the thing is an expensive brick between charges. We don’t know if the “typing” really is significantly faster than on something like a Treo or a SonyEricsson P990 with their small but well engineered thumb keyboards. Steve-o didn’t do any typing during the demo, did he? Of course durability has to be a question. Few devices have to stand up to as much abuse in the line of duty as a typical mobile phone. Will that beautiful display go the way of the Nano after a few short weeks? What then? Is it replaceable? By the user? Or only by the dealer with a six week turn-around time and a two-hundred dollar you can afford it if you can afford Mac penalty?
Marc Orchant also weighs in:
It's a product announcement folks… of a product that won't ship for nearly six months . A product that no one outside the fortress is Cupertino has apparently even seen or held except in the center of the RDF-powered MacWorld keynote. Watching the Steve do his thing the other day evoked an image of Edward Norton in the recent movie The Illusionist. No judgment implied before you start twitching to tell me what an idiot I obviously must be. What I mean by that analogy was that in the movie, most of the people in the audience weren't sure whether what they saw was illusion or reality. On the fringes on either side were those resolutely predisposed to believe what they saw must be one or the either. They knew it before they entered the theater and the experience of the performance only cememnted that predisposition. ... So please – everyone – discuss it amongst yourselves as you like but please don't accept the illusion as reality in the absence of proof.
It's a product announcement folks… of a product that won't ship for nearly six months . A product that no one outside the fortress is Cupertino has apparently even seen or held except in the center of the RDF-powered MacWorld keynote. Watching the Steve do his thing the other day evoked an image of Edward Norton in the recent movie The Illusionist. No judgment implied before you start twitching to tell me what an idiot I obviously must be. What I mean by that analogy was that in the movie, most of the people in the audience weren't sure whether what they saw was illusion or reality. On the fringes on either side were those resolutely predisposed to believe what they saw must be one or the either. They knew it before they entered the theater and the experience of the performance only cememnted that predisposition.
...
So please – everyone – discuss it amongst yourselves as you like but please don't accept the illusion as reality in the absence of proof.
And then of course there is the bitching that has already started:
Ryan’s list contains a lot of the tear-inducingly sexy fantasies that were going through my own mind on Tuesday morning when we all heard that the iPhone was going to run OS X. Like a lot of my friends, I (probably naively) took the announcement to mean that, as on my own Mac, I’d be able to install Cocoa applications built to take advantage of announced features like WebKit, Core Animation, and so on. Sure, given the foreseeable hardware limitations, these wouldn’t be the exact applications that we’re each running on our MacBooks today, but, hell, I’d take “OmniOutliner Mobile” or “iTerm Lite” or “Textmate for iPhone” in a heartbeat. No question. Yesterday morning, though, I started to hear rumbles about the “inability for users to install additional applications of their choosing.” And then later, after Brian from Gizmodo got a hands-on demo along with a sit-down with official Apple honchos, he noted… It isn’t OS X proper, as you’d expect. And like an iPod, it won’t be an open system that people can develop for. Remember, this is both an iPod and a Phone. …and I died a little inside.
Ryan’s list contains a lot of the tear-inducingly sexy fantasies that were going through my own mind on Tuesday morning when we all heard that the iPhone was going to run OS X.
Like a lot of my friends, I (probably naively) took the announcement to mean that, as on my own Mac, I’d be able to install Cocoa applications built to take advantage of announced features like WebKit, Core Animation, and so on. Sure, given the foreseeable hardware limitations, these wouldn’t be the exact applications that we’re each running on our MacBooks today, but, hell, I’d take “OmniOutliner Mobile” or “iTerm Lite” or “Textmate for iPhone” in a heartbeat. No question.
Yesterday morning, though, I started to hear rumbles about the “inability for users to install additional applications of their choosing.” And then later, after Brian from Gizmodo got a hands-on demo along with a sit-down with official Apple honchos, he noted…
It isn’t OS X proper, as you’d expect. And like an iPod, it won’t be an open system that people can develop for. Remember, this is both an iPod and a Phone.
…and I died a little inside.
Fat chance you will be able to install apps on this thing.
Apple will be lucky if they get this thing out in June and weather the force that is the Mac Faithful when they rip this thing to shreds till Apple cries Uncle. Just you wait... June is doing to be a fun month on the blogesphere.
Just remember... Steve has just sold you his dream, and that dream is scheduled to ship at some point. Reality isn't guaranteed to match what he was selling.
Remember the Newton. Best PDA EVAR!!! on version 4.