The term Reality Distortion Field was used to describe the ability of Steve Jobs to get his engineers to buy into his vision and build machines just at the edge of what was possible with the technology at the time. We wouldn't be talking about Apple or Jobs or his Reality Distortion Field, if not for his other talent, which was his uncanny ability to pick the right things to build: things that nobody imagined or expected, but had to have once seen.
A prime example was the creation of the Apple II, which was so far beyond competitors, that it really formed a different category of product: A computer to use, as opposed to a computer to tinker with. The Apple II was lusted after by customers. Same thing with the iPod, when the competition was hard-to-use MP3 players. And then the iPhone, which redefined what a cellphone was, back when the competition sold nothing but portable phones. NeXT was the forerunner of modern Macs. And there were numerous smaller examples: Adding the 3.5" floppy drive, (and then deleting it). In each case, Steve and Apple were correct, everyone else was wrong, and Apple's correctness and everyone else's wrongness became apparent fairly quickly. That was Reality Distortion Field 1.0.
But for a few years now, we have been experiencing a new and inferior kind of reality distortion field from Apple. In Reality Distortion Field 2.0, Apple's size, and their confidence in their ability to change reality is leading them badly astray. They make decisions for a world that they want to exist, hope will exist eventually, but absolutely cannot ever exist. Apple is a one trillion dollar company and Steve is gone. No wonder it can no longer perceive the world accurately.
You need one. This is the ultimate example of Apple's Reality Distortion Field 2.0. Each new iPhone model is thinner than its predecessor, and wrapped in some new, stunning, futuristic material. The promotional media for these products always always always highlight the ever sleeker new exterior. But nobody gets to experience these perfect objects. They are so delicate that any misstep in handling them is likely to crack the screen, or the back surface, and possibly one of the few remaining mechanical controls on the side. Unless you are below, let's say, 30 inches in height, you need a case to protect your phone because you will inevitably drop it.
Back in Reality Distortion Field 1.0 days, Apple would have come up with a design that is beautiful and functions in the real world. It would have been crazy at first. A phone made out of wood? or rubber? or leather? or sand and epoxy? People would have blinked in disbelief, and mocked Apple for its stubborn idiocy. And then in a few months, it would be the most obvious thing. A resilient phone that survives contact with hardwood floors, and concrete sidewalks — why doesn't Samsung do this?
But RDF 2.0 says: We made this beautiful device. Forget about how you use it in the real world. Forget about gravity. If you were an astronaut in a padded space capsule, this would be the phone for you. Enjoy our stunning photographs of these devices (taken on an iPhone XR). Please buy this fragile, beautiful, futuristic thousand plus dollar miracle, and permanently seal it inside an ugly layer of blubber, whose coefficient of friction is so high that it only reluctantly leaves your pocket. But just know that the piece of art you bought is in there somewhere.
SPOILER ALERT: In season 71 of The Man in the High Castle, there will be a version of 2016 USA in which bluetooth connectivity is universal and flawless. Steve, who is alive in this world, notices the state of bluetooth, and decides to remove the headphone jack from iPhones. Connecting to a bluetooth speaker is minimally intrusive. Your iPhone asks before connecting to each new bluetooth device encountered, but then remembers your choice, and just connects automatically, quickly, silently.
What we have now is exactly like this season 71 world, except that Steve is gone, everyone still needs a headphone jack and a dongle, bluetooth connectivity is fragile and flaky, and people are placing their iPhones in (empty) coffee mugs to amplify the tiny iPhone speakers.
The problems of USB-C have been widely discussed. The author of this note, Marco Arment, notes the RDF 2.0 nature of USB-C — great idea, but not in this world: "I love the idea of USB-C: one port and one cable that can replace all other ports and cables. It sounds so simple, straightforward, and unified. In practice, it's not even close."
Maybe it can be the best connector, one day. And maybe it already is, in a narrow, technical sense. But — the dongles. Who carries all that crap around? Why is it that if you buy the newest iPhone and the newest MacBook, you cannot just plug one into the other? Still? This one little piece of reality is something that Apple could easily change.
After I inherited my wife's iPhone 7 Plus, I upgraded to iOS 11, and discovered the joys of the new, convenient, aspirational WiFi control. You swipe up, and get a control panel. There is a button with a WiFi icon, for toggling WiFi connectivity. When you disable WiFi, a message flashes: "Disconnecting Nearby Wi-Fi Until Tomorrow". But your WiFi isn't really disconnected. It is temporarily stunned, and soon will doggedly keep trying to reconnect, as soon as you move a few meters from your current location. WiFi hotspots that don't work, that require a password you don't know, that require you to visit a web page and watch an ad, that contain theoretically useful information, or that require you to click agreement to terms and conditions — your phone will try to connect to any and all of them, and eagerly ask you which of these useless hotspots you would like to fail to connect to. And during these pathetic attempts to be helpful, your connectivity is completely gone, because you have sensibly configured your phone to prefer WiFi to a cellular connection. Eventually, you get so tired of these nuisances that you go to the phone's full Settings panel and actually turn off WiFi for real.
It should be the case that when you return to a familiar location, your phone will finally get it right, and silently connect to a hotspot that has worked for you in the past. And sometimes it does! But sometimes it doesn't! Who knows? So exciting to find out!
RDF 2.0 requires Apple to pretend that WiFi connectivity is seamless. Maybe that's how it is at the Apple Spaceship HQ, the one with the glass walls that RDF 2.0 says must be spotless, even though employees keep trying to walk through them. But elsewhere, the world still has clunky WiFi, and the WiFi control panel design is useless and annoying.
Here is what RDF 2.0 says about laptops: 1) Newer laptops must be thinner than older laptops; 2) Laptops are used exclusively in dust-free environments; and 3) Nobody eats anything composed of crumbs while operating a laptop. So-called keyboard malfunctions have been observed in extreme testing environments, in which dust and crumbs are present, but obviously those are highly unrealistic conditions.
Apple laptops used to have great keyboards. Easy to type on, but with some gentle and quiet tactile feedback. But then, presumably in pursuit of ever-thinner laptops, they redesigned their laptop keyboards to be fragile and unpleasant to type on. Also, they deleted about 16% of the keyboard, replacing the Function and Esc keys by the execrable touchbar. The touchbar is clearly the result of design-by-committee, as it isn't available on any non-laptop keyboard, even those made by Apple. It's as if there was one group that wanted them, but another group realized that these things were the second coming of Clippy, and laptops-only was the compromise. Back in RDF 1.0 days, there would at least have been one view of reality.
Apple imagines a world in which I can move seamlessly from one of my many Apple devices to another, and whatever item I want, regardless of where I created it or last used it, the latest version of this item is magically available on the device I am currently using. It's a beautiful idea. According to RDF 2.0, connectivity is perfect, and so fast that any digital asset I care about can be moved to my current device in the 2 msec between the time I press a button, and my brain registers the haptic feedback, and tells my eyes and ears to expect the content to start playing.
But in the real world, iCloud has decided to replace my rare Bob Dylan bootleg by the standard version from Blonde on Blonde. Or I want to listen to a podcast but it won't download right now. Or something has gone wrong again with my Apple ID, or the family sharing setup, and I can't access my stuff. Or I'm someplace with a bad signal and all my music is unavailable. Or the syncing options on my laptop were not set up quite right, so now I can't access the files I need until I go back to my hotel and change the settings on my laptop. Or I can't find the photos I took last week because, oh who the hell knows why? It's just too complicated and fidgety.
The rules defining the movement of files from a device to the cloud, and from the cloud to a device are just far too inscrutable for Apple's vision to work. Apple controls those rules, and could presumably do something about them. But that would mean fixing iTunes, which has just been getting more bloated and complicated from one release to the next. Similarly, the Apple ID and cloud configuration choices are just bewildering. Remember when you could pick up an Apple device you had never seen before and you just knew how it would work, and it did? Yeah, no, that was back in RDF 1.0 days.
Now, during RDF 2.0, Apple is approaching Microsoft territory. That place where touching your computer causes feelings of dread to rise up, because some things don't work the way they should, and you are helpless. You could ask Apple for support, but it will take your entire afternoon to go through the support script with the friendly support person. Having done that, your support person gets a point for his productivity (went through the entire script with a customer!) but your problem isn't fixed. You learn to live with the problem. It's the place that Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, realized that his company was in. But Steve is gone, so he can't realize it. Tim Cook cares about nothing but the bottom line and the supply chain.
Suppose that Apple miraculously clears away all the iCloud clutter. There is one panel, "Sharing", let's say, that has five checkboxes that allow you to configure everything having to do with sharing of information across devices and within your family. This seamless sharing model is impossible for two reasons.
First, there is DRM. Too many distributors of "content" really love the model in which you don't "own" things, like music or movies; you merely have the right to play them in prescribed ways. This isn't Apple's fault. But until it changes, sharing is not seamless, and their cloud model can't really work.
Second, there is the fact that connectivity is still not as good as would be needed for the model to work. If I'm driving in a tunnel, or flying, or in remote places, or in places without good cell coverage, or my phone is trying WiFi again (see above), or, or, or, ... then the model is, again, unworkable.
Apple's approach to the cloud is wrong. It just works except for the zillions of ways and times in which it doesn't. And the attempts to hide and work around those failures create a mess. RDF 2.0 says that these petty concerns will be resolved eventually, just be patient.
Apple should not design iCloud to pretend that these business and technical limitations don't exist. They have it exactly backward — these limitations should constrain design. Listen, Apple. I have some stuff on my laptop. I want some of it on my phone. Don't pretend it's just there, and then leave me puzzled and frustrated when it isn't. Let me say "copy this stuff to my phone". And then if that isn't possible, tell me why. I'll understand, really. If you want to use your cloud as a cache to make that movement of stuff faster — great. But it's a cloud. I don't want to constantly be checking the sky for signs of thunderstorms. It should mostly just be something I ignore.
The RDF 1.0 approach to design was the old classic: form follows function. In RDF 2.0 it has become form follows fetish. Function is disconnected from reality.
Apple, it's over between us. It's not me, it's you.