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.

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 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.