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Hidden gem in this article is a comically bald-faced lie from Steve Jobs: > "That switching power supply was as revolutionary as the Apple II logic board was.

• TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  It may not quite be true, but it's not necessarily a lie. People often don't realise where an invention came from.
  • hydrogen18 11y ago
    You're not really doing Jobs any favors. Instead of saying Jobs was a liar, you're saying he was an ignorant liar.
    • TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
      "Liar" is too strong a word here. It's a misconception at best. Jobs would not have known the history of switching power supplies.
      • gohrt 11y ago
        When you make statements that you don't know are true, but smart enough know that you profit in some way from people believing them, and you make no effort to find out the truth, you are a bullshitter. Jobs made a career of this sort of behavior. On the scale of respectability: 1. True statements. 2. Keeping your mouth shut. 3. Speculating. ... N-1. Making self-serving wishful statements as though they are facts. N. Outright Lies.
        • Steko 11y ago
          This whole tangent is because 'comically bald faced lie' is a comically bald faced worse way of describing the situation with words than how the article itself described it -- 'entirely false' -- despite Adam comment's description of the 'bald faced lie' as being somehow 'hidden' instead of being called out explicitly and discussed in detail.
    • untog 11y ago
      I disagree - a lie is told knowingly. If you say something untrue without knowing it is untrue, it isn't a lie.
      • DanBC 11y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit It might not be a lie, but it is bullshit. > On Bullshit (2005), by Harry G. Frankfurt, is a philosophical essay that presents a theory of bullshit that defines the concept and analyzes the applications of bullshit in the contexts of communication. As such, bullshit can be neither true nor false; hence, the bullshitter is someone whose principal aim — when uttering or publishing bullshit — is to impress the listener and the reader with words that communicate an impression that something is being or has been done, words that are neither true nor false, and so obscure the facts of the matter being discussed.[1] In contrast, the liar must know the truth of the matter under discussion, in order to better conceal it from the listener or the reader being deceived with a lie; while the bullshitter’s sole concern is personal advancement and advantage to their own agenda.
        • nickpsecurity 11y ago
          Yes, Jobs was great purveyor of bullshit. Much like the movies made about him. ;)
  • weland 11y ago
    It's more likely a bold overstatement made by a superficial onlooker. Wozniak describes the same power supply here: http://archive.woz.org/letters/general/35.html http://archive.woz.org/letters/general/35.html , in these terms: Other hobby computers of the day used inefficient power supplies. The Apple ][ was the first computer ever to use a plastic case. The heat buildup using even my own power supply design (inefficient type) would have been too great. Steve tapped an Atari engineer, Rod Holt, to design a switching power supply that was much more efficient and generated less heat. Rod also keyed us into the fact that the plastic case wouldn't conduct heat well. At this point in time we took pride in being the first computer to use a switching power supply. Steve was proud of the fact that we didn't need a fan and seems to hold to that ideal to this day. So: * Holt designed a switching power supply which employed a patented addition to an otherwise well-known topology (it's a flyback power supply). * Computers nowadays "rip off" the same design that Holt ripped off, they all use flyback PSUs. * I doubt that the Apple II was really the first computer to use a switching-mode power supply, but linear supplies were pretty common among hobby computers back then. The Commodore 64 had one, for instance. The downvoted comment about Jobs being an ignorant liar is probably spot-on.
    • CountSessine 11y ago
      I doubt that the Apple II was really the first computer to use a switching-mode power supply, but linear supplies were pretty common among hobby computers back then. The Commodore 64 had one, for instance. None that I've heard of. And when Acorn wanted to put a switched PSU into the BBC Micro four years after the Apple II debuted, apparently switched PSUs were still novel enough that the BBC engineers didn't trust them (they thought that there might be health and safety issues!) and insisted on linear supplies on early models.
    • vonklaus 11y ago
      interesting. i was thinking about that quote before reading the article, and did not realize it was incorrect. how inportant was/is a switching supply, and was incorporating it really as simple as copying a well-known design? also, i think that in this case Job's has to characterized as ignorant or a liar. he almost had no idea how power supplies work and this "invention" gave him the ability to credit someone other than woz for the Apple II success. which is how i read this qoute, as jobs usually didn't publicly praise people without a motive. or. he did realize how this work and lied to rewrite the books on what company made this contribution. i think it was a bit of both, but the ignorance allows one to attribute some of the mischarachterizations to lack of info rather than simple disingenuousness.
• whatever_dude 11y ago
  News for me too. I had read that quote in a different context and had assumed it to be true. Good little gem to learn.