[weland]

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 , 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]

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]

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.

[weland]

> how inportant was/is a switching supply

Fairly important. Linear power supplies are pretty large and put out a lot of heat. It was commonplace back then for most appliances, including computers, to have a linear power supply. A switching-mode PSU was an improvement over the status quo in general.

> and was incorporating it really as simple as copying a well-known design?

Yes, it was.