At the time, "Apple invented the switching power supply" was a notion going around in bad tech/sci reporting circles, so it deserved dismantling along with the power supplies.
> I didn't see the need to frame it by attacking Apple.
Other posters have already pointed out that this article seeks to clarify the history around Steve Jobs' (not entirely accurate) claims.
I want to focus on the fact that people find a need to protect Apple.
Apple is a 2T+ market cap corporation. It is not a friend, it is not a family member, and it is certainly not beyond reproach. It doesn't care about you -- it just wants you to spend more money on its products and services.
Don't feel bad for Apple when people call it out for bad behavior or historical inaccuracies. People should do this.
While there are people that work at Apple that legitimately care about making good products, in the macro the predominant factor is still money. It drives the whole enterprise. The very shape of Apple's solutions and good will are fit by an optimization function to obtain money.
Brand, supply chain, innovation, fierce competition, fostering loyalty, building a moat. These are the things Apple does. It's a machine that makes money selling products.
You might like Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, or many of the other product people and engineers there. That's fine. But don't form a fond bond with the company. And also realize the motivations of the leadership. They're humans -- they can do good, but they can also make mistakes and tell lies to serve their own needs.
If Apple makes products you like and enjoy, buy them, appreciate them, and leave it at that. Don't let Apple create a sense of nostalgia, closeness, or loyalty. This is artificial. The company doesn't care about you at all. It can't.
It's my subtle protest against the HN belief that people need to be warned against articles from previous years. That said, it's a bit alarming to realize I wrote the article 9 years ago.
Agree - a date is often absolutely essential to placing what you’re reading in context. I always look for one at the top of any article I read, and assume based on past experience that the lack of one is usually indicative of clickbait (although clearly not in this case).
I did a small A/B test long ago, and found that the date, if more than a couple of years old, can discourage a lot of people from even reading the article.
So maybe it should be placed at the end as a compromise?
Hi, kens. This is my n-th time rereading this article, this time I noticed a small typo. Footnote 90, "More recent VMR specifications" should've been "VRM".
Lack of dates in articles annoyed me way before i started reading HN. So i don't see the problem (didn't know that was a thing on HN), but i respect your decision.
The article is debunking this claim by Steve Jobs:
"That switching power supply was as revolutionary as the Apple II logic board was," Jobs later said. "Rod doesn't get a lot of credit for this in the history books but he should. Every computer now uses switching power supplies, and they all rip off Rod Holt's design."’
Which like the GUI was ripped off from someone else:
The GUI was stolen from Xerox, and the switching power supplies were ripped of from an oscilloscope company, Hewlett-Packard. Didn't Woz work for them. Hmmmm...
Stolen...right. Xerox invited Apple's engineers to tour PARC and then Apple gave them millions of dollars of shares which Xerox later sold for a hefty profit. IIRC they made more off the Apple stock sale then sales of the Alto and Star.
> The GUI wasn’t stolen. It was licensed. That it was stolen is completely false.
Not only was it not stolen, several Xerox PARC people moved over to Apple since they wanted to see their ideas actually commercialized and not squandered like Xerox was doing, so a lot of it was even the same people!
Read the article. Many computer companies used them before apple. Apple's use didnt revolutionize anything according to the article, because it was already in common use before them. Did we read the same thing?
I remember reading something by Art Spiegelman, whose father was a Holocaust survivor, about how his life felt unimportant because nothing could compare to what his father went through.
But then, he rhetorically asked, if surviving the concentration camp was success, did that mean the vast majority who didn't were losers?
And I think his father said something to the effect, that it was random, there was no "survival of the fittest", so no, matter of factly, the dead were not ones who failed.
Oh you're absolutely correct about that. Jobs in particular needs to be scrutinized.
But if that was the point of the article a few paragraphs under the section "History of switching power supplies to 1977" already accomplished that.
The article reads like it was written by a power supply enthusiast (who knew?), and the author did a good job of drawing me into the history, technology. It would have still been an interesting read without the "bookends".