Wired: Steve's six sneakiest statements
Steve Jobs' ability to enchant and persuade is often referred to as the "Reality Distortion Field." It's this power that convinces people who own 2 or 3 iPods that they need just one more.
He's also made some convincing statements that his company later contradicted in grand fashion. Last week, Brian X. Chen compiled six of the biggies at Wired's Gadget Lab (reprinted at CNN), including one of our favorites: "There are no plans to make a tablet," Jobs once told Walt Mossberg. "It turns out people want keyboards ... We look at the tablet, and we think it is going to fail."
Brian also listed Steve's insistence that Apple won't make a cell phone and that "...people don't read any more."
Of course, part of Steve's purpose here is to misdirect market watchers, customers and competitors from his company's plans. But more than that, this speaks to Apple's incredible patience.
Apple isn't usually the 1st to market. It didn't create the first digital music player. It certainly didn't create the first mobile phone and it didn't create the first tablet computer. The important thing is that Apple engineers took the time to devise the absolute best way to implement each of those devices.
If that requires a bit of reality distortion, so be it.
