The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: The Real Deal Behind The Reality Distortion Field
11:59 pm, September 13th, 2009, Carmine Gallo
Think visually. Apple presentations are strikingly simple and visual. For example, there is very little text on a Steve Jobs slide. While the average PowerPoint slide has 40 words, there were far fewer than forty words in the first dozen slides of last week’s event. When Jobs talked about the popularity of iTunes around the world, his slide showed 23 flags of different countries instead of country names. When he said the iPhone app store was celebrating its first anniversary, a slide appeared with a birthday cake holding one candle. When he talked about lower iPod prices, the new price was accompanied by photos of the iPods. Psychologists call this picture superiority: Ideas are more easily recalled when presented with text and images instead of text alone.
Posted by Carmine Gallo in Apple, How-To, Opinions, Steve Jobs | Comment on this article
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Carmine Gallo is the author of 
Why do you refer to yourself in the third person?
nak, on September 14th, 2009 at 12:11 am
Very good post. Was a great read. Thanks!
Dylan, on September 14th, 2009 at 12:27 am
Interesting article to read. Thanks.
Johnny, on September 14th, 2009 at 12:36 am
I recognise and appreciate that hits = $ so I understand breaking this up over several “pages,” but geez louise ELEVEN PAGES?? That’s just money-grubbing, sorry. Six would have been about right.
Shenanigans like this actually hurt the story (just check Digg comments any time a story not from Ars Technica goes over half-a-dozen pages) by losing “busy readers” and by annoying faithful readers. It also makes me question the motivation behind presenting the story — am I really going to get some useful info if I stay with it, or am I just being used to drive up the hit count and will end up with an unsatisfied feeling at the end?
Better editorial judgement about how long you can string readers along, please …
Charles Martin, on September 14th, 2009 at 1:50 am
I agree with the above post. I’m afraid I skip these articles with so many pages because it’s too annoying to have to keep clicking from one page to another.
Matt, on September 14th, 2009 at 9:45 am
The problem is that if you try to copy steve jobs “reality distortion field” your audience would not think:
-Wow that guy is great at speaking!
Instead they will chuckle to themself and think:
-Wow, that guy thinks he’s Steve Jobs. What a looser.
D, on September 14th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Meh, Jobs is good, but he’s no Billy Mays.
J, on September 14th, 2009 at 8:09 pm