[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.