[TedDoesntTalk]

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."’

[ForOldHack]

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...

[giantrobot]

> The GUI was stolen from Xerox

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.

[briandear]

The GUI wasn’t stolen. It was licensed. That it was stolen is completely false.

And on switching power — did any other computer company think to use it? Apple did. And borrowing that tech did revolutionize computer power supplies.

[kalleboo]

> 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!

[TedDoesntTalk]

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?