8 ms·

Apple didn't revolutionize power supplies; new transistors did

246 points by pmarin 15y ago

oconnore 15y ago
Jobs was an idea person, not an engineer. You have to imagine the engineer getting excited about the ideas going into building something. Later, Jobs sees that same idea popping up everywhere, and his natural response is to claim that it was "ripped off". I think the same thing happened with the iPhone/Android controversy. Many of the similarities are emergent from the technology that became available at that time (larger screens, accurate multitouch panels, faster processors), but all Jobs saw is the idea.
- jgw 15y ago
  This has been bugging me for a while, too. Jobs is given (and quite frankly, claimed) credit for far more than he deserves. The sad part about that is that it actually detracts from the many tremendously significant contributions things he did make. But as far as invention goes, I don't think Steve Jobs actually invented anything other than, well, Steve Jobs.
  - micahgoulart 15y ago
    This comes up all the time. Here's a quick way to put that argument to rest, an interactive feature by the New York Times showing the patents Steve Jobs is personally listed on: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/steve-jobs-patents.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/ste...
    - munin 15y ago
      "CLAIM The ornamental design for packaging, as shown and described." really?
      - Cushman 15y ago
        It's called a design patent. It explicitly covers only the ornamental, non-functional design of the object, and is subject to somewhat different terms than a utility patent. In terms of IP law, it's actually quite reasonable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent
        munin 15y ago
        appreciated, however I don't think that people mean "design" as in aesthetic design when they say "invented" for example, the spinning beach ball is patented... I think we have passed the point where "patented" has anything to do with what people think of as "invention"
    - Pheter 15y ago
      How does this put the argument to rest?
    - gnaffle 15y ago
      While he did invent lots of stuff, I think it's pretty undisputed by the people close to him such as Jony Ive and Andy Hertzfeld, that Steve was famous for claiming other peoples ideas as his own. [Edit: Jony Ive describes this in chapter 26 of the biography. See folklore.org for more examples.]
    - Drbble 15y ago
      The CEO is on a lot of corporate patent applications for contributing" to the invention. I have seen two CEOs on my applications for patents.
  - gnaffle 15y ago
    Jony Ive mentioned this in the biography, and said it was especially annoying to him since he always remembered who came up with an idea. It's the same "phenomenon" described by Hertzfeld here: http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Reality_Distortion_Field.txt http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Reality_Distortion_Fi... That said, this story is about an invention that Steve Jobs _doesn't_ take credit for. It's another example of how Isaacsons biography gets simple facts wrong by simply quoting people without doing research (just like the NeXT quote by Bill Gates discussed earlier). Also, I think Steve Jobs comes off as belittling the accomplishments of Woz here, by saying that the power supply was just as revolutionary as the logic board, which apparently is clearly false.
- gnaffle 15y ago
  Well, it's hard to say that other companies didn't rip off the "idea" of the iPhone. After all, all the hardware had been available for a number of years, including displays, CPUs, GPUs, capacitive touchscreens, batteries etc. Someone else could easily have come along with a multitouch phone two years earlier, but nobody did. Of course, the "idea" of the iPhone wasn't new either, but Apple was the first to make the idea into a working, usable product.
  - oconnore 15y ago
    You just contradicted yourself: "it's hard to say that other companies didn't rip off the 'idea' of the iPhone." and "Of course, the 'idea' of the iPhone wasn't new either". If the idea wasn't new, then other companies weren't ripping off the iPhone's idea. I'm not attempting to detract from the fact that Apple executed on the iPhone almost perfectly. Realizing that the market was ready, and then providing a product that delivers on that analysis is what Jobs should be known for, not this notion that he invented multitouch devices.
    - gnaffle 15y ago
      Maybe I should have written that they ripped off Apples _implementation_ of the idea. Or maybe they were just "inspired". The right question to ask is this: Would multiple capacitive multitouch phones similar to the iPhone have been introduced in 2007 / 2008 if the iPhone had never launched? Some people seem to think so, but I see no evidence that other companies were working on similar technology / user interfaces at the time, and plenty of evidence that they were caught off guard.
  - gst 15y ago
    There's a simple reason why Apple was often the first one to put something into a product: They could afford to sell high-end products for a high price and know that they still have lots of users who buy their stuff. Most of the other companies had prototypes using those technologies available, but they didn't build products out of them because (at this point) they would have been too expensive for their target audience. And even if those other companies built a product before Apple, Apple would still claim that it was first: Two examples: (1) LG Prada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada) was there before the iPhone, yet (AFAIK) Apple claims that basically all the touchscreen phones are a copy of the iPhone. And (2) Netbooks and Subnotebooks have been on the market for nearly a decade now - I've used Thinkpad X-series laptops for years now (which weight about as much as a Macbook Air). Still, as soon as a company announes a new Subnotebook now someone will claim that it is a copy of the Macbook Air.
ajays 15y ago
Tangential: when I saw the iPhone power supply, I was blown away. Here was this little white box, about 1-inch cube, able to convert 120V AC into low-voltage DC. No tranformer; no big capacitors; nothing. Just some solid-state electronics, and bam! Out comes some sweet DC juice. I wish all DC equipment came with such power supplies. Heck, while I'm at it: here's a great idea. Establish 2-way communication with the solid-state power supply, so that the equipment can tell the power supply what it wants, and the solid-state supply can then give it out. Then you won't need a separate power supply for every piece of equipment!
- SuperFungus 15y ago
  Hey, not to shoot you down but there is definitely a transformer in the iphone supply. Second, building switching supplies that can supply an arbitrary output voltage/current isn't practical or economical. Third, don't you want a power supply for every piece of equipment? You don't really want to have to unplug one thing to plug another thing in do you?
  - vidarh 15y ago
    I agree with you it probably isn't economical, at least not yet. But the reason for wanting it is for the power supplies to be arbitrarily interchangeable. One of the big advantages of the move towards micro-USB charging cables for phones, for example, is that in my house we now have several adapters spread around the house, and both my wife and I can now charge our phones at any one of them, despite having different brands.
    - SuperFungus 15y ago
      I can see the advantage, but I still would argue that just having some DC power standard like USB will always be more economical and practical than trying to build "do it all" supplies to work with all gear despite the absence of a standard.
    - klodolph 15y ago
      I'm not sure what problem variable voltage is supposed to solve.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- walkon 15y ago
  Your comment seems rather irrelevant to the article. Please read it for context.
  - cooldeal 15y ago
    Anything that doesn't fit someone's worldview is irrelevant for them. Eg. Take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3262181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3262181 Nirvana might be prepping a similar comment now about how all of this is a fabrication by perceived anti-Apple folks to deny Apple the credit it deserves for having invented everything. Sad that such people actually detract from the real innovations that Steve Jobs and Apple made by exaggerating and making outlandish claims that they deserve all the credit and all the other companies are just doing nothing innovative at all. Edit: Since the GP comment was deleted, here it is for context(username removed in the interest of privacy): >Irrelevant. >Apple seems to be the only company that cares enough to spend time, effort and money on something as utilitarian as the power supply and make it fit their aesthetic and ethos. >Every other company seems happy enough to ship large ugly bricks that block 2-3 outlets in a power board. >That's the Apple difference.
drats 15y ago
The record of vastly overstated and false claims of innovation around Apple has become ridiculous. Nobody doubts they have innovated in many areas, but largely they are excellent at integration and polish (which is worthy of praise in its own right). And being a full-stack company they often match their sails to the wind before anyone else, but it doesn't mean they made the wind. It's not all Apple themselves doing this, much of it is bad journalism and fans saying things that the company has no reason to correct. But it's gotten so bad now that I approach any new claim of innovation from Apple or their cheer squads as probably false. I can't see why Apple enthusiasts can't be like luxury car enthusiasts. Most of the time new luxury cars don't have much innovation in them, but it's the fit and finish, attention to detail and integration which make them great. You don't need to claim some divine spark of innovation to say that something is better, or that you prefer it. To make another analogy a well done dish at a nice restaurant isn't usually innovative, it just takes the best of breed components and presents them well in a good atmosphere with good service. Nothing wrong with that, just don't claim the chef is making vast strides in chemistry or forget that the chef is drawing on tons of home cooking going back a long time which some people have had in their homes well before it appeared on your menu. It's pretty sad that as I click "add comment" I expect this to get vigorously downvoted (even on HN).
- mrich 15y ago
  I fully agree with you. It seems the louder somebody shouts "Apple is the best, they invented x" the more you can be sure that - the person has not much background in computing - often hated/never could get PCs to do what they wanted/is scared of computers But they don't realize that Apple's great computers are standing on the shoulders of decades of PC innovation (partly done by Apple, but also many others). Downvoters: Try to read the comment and understand that this is not attacking people who like Apple, but fanboys who shout "Apple is the best because..." Don't turn voting into a popularity contest based on the products YOU like.
  - cooldeal 15y ago
    An example of such a user, right here on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3510806 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3510806 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3510342 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3510342 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3512102 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3512102 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3512126 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3512126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3262181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3262181 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3535333 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3535333 There's much more, but I guess you get the point. When there are similar people in most Apple, Gruber, Google and Android threads, there are obviously flamebait conversations.The smug superiority and abject hate of of other companies/platforms from Gruber, Marco, 37 Signals, Roughly Drafted, MG Siegler etc. can sometimes be really overwhelming and the labeling of anyone that doesn't share in the worship beaing called a hater causes even worse discourse. Many fans are not below sending death threats if they feel Apple has been wronged or it's image can be damaged. http://www.overclockers.com/how-i-pcd-an-apple-g5/ http://www.overclockers.com/how-i-pcd-an-apple-g5/ Apple seems to tending to attract such a crowd because of it's cult type of branding, ads and secrecy.and anyone questioning their or their fans outlandish claims seem to be vilified as haters.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
That has got to be one of the most complete treatises on the development of the Switch-mode power supply unit (SMPSU) that I have ever read. Excellent work Ken. That being said, I don't really resonate with the hating on Steve Jobs because he believed something that wasn't true. C'mon there are a lot of things people believe that aren't true. I expect Holt (or maybe Holt's manager) was selling his work as really really excellent and Jobs, who was not an EE by training, really didn't have a way to know if it was true or not. He chose to believe it, and apparently believed it up until the day the biographer wrote it down. I've noticed the sometimes person A will do something for person B because they believe something about A that isn't true. That makes them at least partially invested in that thing that isn't true being true, and so convincing them that it isn't true is made quite difficult. The recent article posted here about how Teller tricks people into believing something validated my intuition about people sometimes really want to believe something. So Steve believed Holt was God's Gift to power supply design, and it turns out he was just another capable engineer who could build a switching power supply. The world isn't changed. Life goes on, but now you know a bit more about how complex building power supplies has become, so its a win.
- revelation 15y ago
  Right, we shall never attack the beliefs of those that, cmon, "believed something". Ignorance really is bliss for you.
- buster 15y ago
  The problem is when others start to believe the "untrue" believes of others, especially such charismatic persons as Steve Jobs. You see this very often, people don't getting their facts right and taking believes for facts.
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    I'd like to know more about your thoughts on this. In this case the error was simply reputational, which is to say Steve had a high opinion of Holt which was in part based on something that wasn't true. Now if you were a co-worker's of Holt and passed over for promotion I could see how this would bug you. If you were an engineer (like Ken the author of this point) you might say "I don't think that is true" and quickly discover that the 'boss' was wrong on this particular point. Depending on how much you cared you might share it with your boss you might not. If this mistaken belief got out of hand and Steve had directed Apple to sue say Delta Electronics for patent infringement. It wouldn't because the lawyers would have done their diligence and they would have realized the outcome would be the invalidation of Holt's patent. People who are mislead by the charismatic person become disillusioned when they discover the truth is not as it was told to them. That is 'bad' for the charismatic person and potentially embarrassing for the person who didn't check their facts. But I'm still not getting the source of wrath. Disclaimer I'll be the first to admit I'm a bit clueless when it comes to these sorts of emotional battles, they don't make a lot of sense to me.
ricardobeat 15y ago
Steve Jobs didn't say others were stealing "Apple's revolutionary design", he said they all rip off Rod Holt's design. All the machines he mentions were either not consumer products neither compact, or still had lots of fans for cooling (HP 21MX, TI 960B, HP 9825, etc), so I assume there is some measure of truth in that the one designed by Rod Holt was something new.
- kens 15y ago
  I wondered why you were ignoring the switching power supplies in consumer televisions in 1976, but then I discovered that I'd posted an older version of my article without that section. Oops. It's there now.
mcescalante 15y ago
I'm honestly not sure why there was even a discussion along these lines. If you understand hardware, you'd get that it would be hard for Apple to revolutionize hardware before the hardware existed.
seltzered_ 15y ago
Figure I'd chime in since I currently work in this industry. We make power supplies that have many thousands of lines of custom-written flashed firmware on a microcontroller that's a switching buck regulator. With it you can do all sorts of crazy tricks with the control loop to reduce the number of components and increase efficiency. I'd say most of the design meetings are about testing ideas about the control loop. There have been a bunch of startups in this space over the past 10 years, although most eventually get acquired by a bigger IC vendor to deal with foundry sourcing. Many computing companies have slowly been getting rid of power supply design engineers, and shouldering the burden onto the IC vendor's application's engineer to help with the design. Dealing with a giant company (like apple, dell, etc.) requires a lot of effort, as they'll negotiate down your margins heavily, have a backup design with your competitor, and require your field apps engineer to be waiting at your service if something goes wrong. It's not uncommon to have apps engineers dedicated to a really big customer and stay at their offices.
- chipsy 15y ago
  I really appreciate the work that power supply makers do to improve efficiency. Besides the direct costs of energy usage, the PSU is a major source of heat and noise in desktops, so better efficiency can also directly benefit the user experience.
  - seltzered_ 15y ago
    Yeah, something stuck in my mind when I read "Fundamentals of Power Electronics" - I don't have the exact quote, but it basically mentions most efficency gains are primarily done to add features, not as part of any conservation effort. As a power/software guy, i'm mostly looking forward the development of more non-backlit/outdoor readable screens, along with direly needed revolutions in hvac design.

246 points by pmarin 15y ago

Jobs was an idea person, not an engineer. You have to imagine the engineer getting excited about the ideas going into building something. Later, Jobs sees that same idea popping up everywhere, and his natural response is to claim that it was "ripped off". I think the same thing happened with the iPhone/Android controversy. Many of the similarities are emergent from the technology that became available at that time (larger screens, accurate multitouch panels, faster processors), but all Jobs saw is the idea.

jgw 15y ago
This has been bugging me for a while, too. Jobs is given (and quite frankly, claimed) credit for far more than he deserves. The sad part about that is that it actually detracts from the many tremendously significant contributions things he did make. But as far as invention goes, I don't think Steve Jobs actually invented anything other than, well, Steve Jobs.
- micahgoulart 15y ago
  This comes up all the time. Here's a quick way to put that argument to rest, an interactive feature by the New York Times showing the patents Steve Jobs is personally listed on: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/steve-jobs-patents.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/ste...
  - munin 15y ago
    "CLAIM The ornamental design for packaging, as shown and described." really?
    - Cushman 15y ago
      It's called a design patent. It explicitly covers only the ornamental, non-functional design of the object, and is subject to somewhat different terms than a utility patent. In terms of IP law, it's actually quite reasonable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent
      - munin 15y ago
        appreciated, however I don't think that people mean "design" as in aesthetic design when they say "invented" for example, the spinning beach ball is patented... I think we have passed the point where "patented" has anything to do with what people think of as "invention"
  - Pheter 15y ago
    How does this put the argument to rest?
  - gnaffle 15y ago
    While he did invent lots of stuff, I think it's pretty undisputed by the people close to him such as Jony Ive and Andy Hertzfeld, that Steve was famous for claiming other peoples ideas as his own. [Edit: Jony Ive describes this in chapter 26 of the biography. See folklore.org for more examples.]
  - Drbble 15y ago
    The CEO is on a lot of corporate patent applications for contributing" to the invention. I have seen two CEOs on my applications for patents.
- gnaffle 15y ago
  Jony Ive mentioned this in the biography, and said it was especially annoying to him since he always remembered who came up with an idea. It's the same "phenomenon" described by Hertzfeld here: http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Reality_Distortion_Field.txt http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Reality_Distortion_Fi... That said, this story is about an invention that Steve Jobs _doesn't_ take credit for. It's another example of how Isaacsons biography gets simple facts wrong by simply quoting people without doing research (just like the NeXT quote by Bill Gates discussed earlier). Also, I think Steve Jobs comes off as belittling the accomplishments of Woz here, by saying that the power supply was just as revolutionary as the logic board, which apparently is clearly false.
gnaffle 15y ago
Well, it's hard to say that other companies didn't rip off the "idea" of the iPhone. After all, all the hardware had been available for a number of years, including displays, CPUs, GPUs, capacitive touchscreens, batteries etc. Someone else could easily have come along with a multitouch phone two years earlier, but nobody did. Of course, the "idea" of the iPhone wasn't new either, but Apple was the first to make the idea into a working, usable product.
- oconnore 15y ago
  You just contradicted yourself: "it's hard to say that other companies didn't rip off the 'idea' of the iPhone." and "Of course, the 'idea' of the iPhone wasn't new either". If the idea wasn't new, then other companies weren't ripping off the iPhone's idea. I'm not attempting to detract from the fact that Apple executed on the iPhone almost perfectly. Realizing that the market was ready, and then providing a product that delivers on that analysis is what Jobs should be known for, not this notion that he invented multitouch devices.
  - gnaffle 15y ago
    Maybe I should have written that they ripped off Apples _implementation_ of the idea. Or maybe they were just "inspired". The right question to ask is this: Would multiple capacitive multitouch phones similar to the iPhone have been introduced in 2007 / 2008 if the iPhone had never launched? Some people seem to think so, but I see no evidence that other companies were working on similar technology / user interfaces at the time, and plenty of evidence that they were caught off guard.
- gst 15y ago
  There's a simple reason why Apple was often the first one to put something into a product: They could afford to sell high-end products for a high price and know that they still have lots of users who buy their stuff. Most of the other companies had prototypes using those technologies available, but they didn't build products out of them because (at this point) they would have been too expensive for their target audience. And even if those other companies built a product before Apple, Apple would still claim that it was first: Two examples: (1) LG Prada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada) was there before the iPhone, yet (AFAIK) Apple claims that basically all the touchscreen phones are a copy of the iPhone. And (2) Netbooks and Subnotebooks have been on the market for nearly a decade now - I've used Thinkpad X-series laptops for years now (which weight about as much as a Macbook Air). Still, as soon as a company announes a new Subnotebook now someone will claim that it is a copy of the Macbook Air.

ajays 15y ago

Tangential: when I saw the iPhone power supply, I was blown away. Here was this little white box, about 1-inch cube, able to convert 120V AC into low-voltage DC. No tranformer; no big capacitors; nothing. Just some solid-state electronics, and bam! Out comes some sweet DC juice. I wish all DC equipment came with such power supplies. Heck, while I'm at it: here's a great idea. Establish 2-way communication with the solid-state power supply, so that the equipment can tell the power supply what it wants, and the solid-state supply can then give it out. Then you won't need a separate power supply for every piece of equipment!

SuperFungus 15y ago
Hey, not to shoot you down but there is definitely a transformer in the iphone supply. Second, building switching supplies that can supply an arbitrary output voltage/current isn't practical or economical. Third, don't you want a power supply for every piece of equipment? You don't really want to have to unplug one thing to plug another thing in do you?
- vidarh 15y ago
  I agree with you it probably isn't economical, at least not yet. But the reason for wanting it is for the power supplies to be arbitrarily interchangeable. One of the big advantages of the move towards micro-USB charging cables for phones, for example, is that in my house we now have several adapters spread around the house, and both my wife and I can now charge our phones at any one of them, despite having different brands.
  - SuperFungus 15y ago
    I can see the advantage, but I still would argue that just having some DC power standard like USB will always be more economical and practical than trying to build "do it all" supplies to work with all gear despite the absence of a standard.
  - klodolph 15y ago
    I'm not sure what problem variable voltage is supposed to solve.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

walkon 15y ago
Your comment seems rather irrelevant to the article. Please read it for context.
- cooldeal 15y ago
  Anything that doesn't fit someone's worldview is irrelevant for them. Eg. Take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3262181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3262181 Nirvana might be prepping a similar comment now about how all of this is a fabrication by perceived anti-Apple folks to deny Apple the credit it deserves for having invented everything. Sad that such people actually detract from the real innovations that Steve Jobs and Apple made by exaggerating and making outlandish claims that they deserve all the credit and all the other companies are just doing nothing innovative at all. Edit: Since the GP comment was deleted, here it is for context(username removed in the interest of privacy): >Irrelevant. >Apple seems to be the only company that cares enough to spend time, effort and money on something as utilitarian as the power supply and make it fit their aesthetic and ethos. >Every other company seems happy enough to ship large ugly bricks that block 2-3 outlets in a power board. >That's the Apple difference.

drats 15y ago

The record of vastly overstated and false claims of innovation around Apple has become ridiculous. Nobody doubts they have innovated in many areas, but largely they are excellent at integration and polish (which is worthy of praise in its own right). And being a full-stack company they often match their sails to the wind before anyone else, but it doesn't mean they made the wind. It's not all Apple themselves doing this, much of it is bad journalism and fans saying things that the company has no reason to correct. But it's gotten so bad now that I approach any new claim of innovation from Apple or their cheer squads as probably false. I can't see why Apple enthusiasts can't be like luxury car enthusiasts. Most of the time new luxury cars don't have much innovation in them, but it's the fit and finish, attention to detail and integration which make them great. You don't need to claim some divine spark of innovation to say that something is better, or that you prefer it. To make another analogy a well done dish at a nice restaurant isn't usually innovative, it just takes the best of breed components and presents them well in a good atmosphere with good service. Nothing wrong with that, just don't claim the chef is making vast strides in chemistry or forget that the chef is drawing on tons of home cooking going back a long time which some people have had in their homes well before it appeared on your menu. It's pretty sad that as I click "add comment" I expect this to get vigorously downvoted (even on HN).

mrich 15y ago
I fully agree with you. It seems the louder somebody shouts "Apple is the best, they invented x" the more you can be sure that - the person has not much background in computing - often hated/never could get PCs to do what they wanted/is scared of computers But they don't realize that Apple's great computers are standing on the shoulders of decades of PC innovation (partly done by Apple, but also many others). Downvoters: Try to read the comment and understand that this is not attacking people who like Apple, but fanboys who shout "Apple is the best because..." Don't turn voting into a popularity contest based on the products YOU like.
- cooldeal 15y ago
  An example of such a user, right here on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3510806 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3510806 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3510342 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3510342 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3512102 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3512102 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3512126 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3512126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3262181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3262181 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3535333 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3535333 There's much more, but I guess you get the point. When there are similar people in most Apple, Gruber, Google and Android threads, there are obviously flamebait conversations.The smug superiority and abject hate of of other companies/platforms from Gruber, Marco, 37 Signals, Roughly Drafted, MG Siegler etc. can sometimes be really overwhelming and the labeling of anyone that doesn't share in the worship beaing called a hater causes even worse discourse. Many fans are not below sending death threats if they feel Apple has been wronged or it's image can be damaged. http://www.overclockers.com/how-i-pcd-an-apple-g5/ http://www.overclockers.com/how-i-pcd-an-apple-g5/ Apple seems to tending to attract such a crowd because of it's cult type of branding, ads and secrecy.and anyone questioning their or their fans outlandish claims seem to be vilified as haters.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

That has got to be one of the most complete treatises on the development of the Switch-mode power supply unit (SMPSU) that I have ever read. Excellent work Ken. That being said, I don't really resonate with the hating on Steve Jobs because he believed something that wasn't true. C'mon there are a lot of things people believe that aren't true. I expect Holt (or maybe Holt's manager) was selling his work as really really excellent and Jobs, who was not an EE by training, really didn't have a way to know if it was true or not. He chose to believe it, and apparently believed it up until the day the biographer wrote it down. I've noticed the sometimes person A will do something for person B because they believe something about A that isn't true. That makes them at least partially invested in that thing that isn't true being true, and so convincing them that it isn't true is made quite difficult. The recent article posted here about how Teller tricks people into believing something validated my intuition about people sometimes really want to believe something. So Steve believed Holt was God's Gift to power supply design, and it turns out he was just another capable engineer who could build a switching power supply. The world isn't changed. Life goes on, but now you know a bit more about how complex building power supplies has become, so its a win.

revelation 15y ago
Right, we shall never attack the beliefs of those that, cmon, "believed something". Ignorance really is bliss for you.
buster 15y ago
The problem is when others start to believe the "untrue" believes of others, especially such charismatic persons as Steve Jobs. You see this very often, people don't getting their facts right and taking believes for facts.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  I'd like to know more about your thoughts on this. In this case the error was simply reputational, which is to say Steve had a high opinion of Holt which was in part based on something that wasn't true. Now if you were a co-worker's of Holt and passed over for promotion I could see how this would bug you. If you were an engineer (like Ken the author of this point) you might say "I don't think that is true" and quickly discover that the 'boss' was wrong on this particular point. Depending on how much you cared you might share it with your boss you might not. If this mistaken belief got out of hand and Steve had directed Apple to sue say Delta Electronics for patent infringement. It wouldn't because the lawyers would have done their diligence and they would have realized the outcome would be the invalidation of Holt's patent. People who are mislead by the charismatic person become disillusioned when they discover the truth is not as it was told to them. That is 'bad' for the charismatic person and potentially embarrassing for the person who didn't check their facts. But I'm still not getting the source of wrath. Disclaimer I'll be the first to admit I'm a bit clueless when it comes to these sorts of emotional battles, they don't make a lot of sense to me.

ricardobeat 15y ago

Steve Jobs didn't say others were stealing "Apple's revolutionary design", he said they all rip off Rod Holt's design. All the machines he mentions were either not consumer products neither compact, or still had lots of fans for cooling (HP 21MX, TI 960B, HP 9825, etc), so I assume there is some measure of truth in that the one designed by Rod Holt was something new.

kens 15y ago
I wondered why you were ignoring the switching power supplies in consumer televisions in 1976, but then I discovered that I'd posted an older version of my article without that section. Oops. It's there now.

mcescalante 15y ago

I'm honestly not sure why there was even a discussion along these lines. If you understand hardware, you'd get that it would be hard for Apple to revolutionize hardware before the hardware existed.

seltzered_ 15y ago

Figure I'd chime in since I currently work in this industry. We make power supplies that have many thousands of lines of custom-written flashed firmware on a microcontroller that's a switching buck regulator. With it you can do all sorts of crazy tricks with the control loop to reduce the number of components and increase efficiency. I'd say most of the design meetings are about testing ideas about the control loop. There have been a bunch of startups in this space over the past 10 years, although most eventually get acquired by a bigger IC vendor to deal with foundry sourcing. Many computing companies have slowly been getting rid of power supply design engineers, and shouldering the burden onto the IC vendor's application's engineer to help with the design. Dealing with a giant company (like apple, dell, etc.) requires a lot of effort, as they'll negotiate down your margins heavily, have a backup design with your competitor, and require your field apps engineer to be waiting at your service if something goes wrong. It's not uncommon to have apps engineers dedicated to a really big customer and stay at their offices.

chipsy 15y ago
I really appreciate the work that power supply makers do to improve efficiency. Besides the direct costs of energy usage, the PSU is a major source of heat and noise in desktops, so better efficiency can also directly benefit the user experience.
- seltzered_ 15y ago
  Yeah, something stuck in my mind when I read "Fundamentals of Power Electronics" - I don't have the exact quote, but it basically mentions most efficency gains are primarily done to add features, not as part of any conservation effort. As a power/software guy, i'm mostly looking forward the development of more non-backlit/outdoor readable screens, along with direly needed revolutions in hvac design.