Interesting deep dive on switching 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.
I do not think they're trying to protect Apple. They are protecting their choice. Same as people "protecting" Python, Rust etc.
So maybe it should be placed at the end as a compromise?
"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."’
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.
And on switching power — did any other computer company think to use it? Apple did. And borrowing that tech did revolutionize computer power supplies.
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!
The peanut gallery is not to be trusted on how curable his cancer was, and this article says nothing firm about anything.
If someone chooses not to be tortured for their last weeks of life, in order to have those weeks, that doesn't make them unscientific or suicidal.
Yes, if that's the motivation.
But if the reasoning is "I have a better treatment, [insert nonsense here]", it does.
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.
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".
1) 1960s-era tech used in the Apollo Guidance Computer: https://www.righto.com/2019/08/reliable-after-50-years-apoll...
2) Mercury thyratons used in 1930s-era Teletype hardware: https://www.righto.com/2018/09/glowing-mercury-thyratrons-in...
Might be some other candidates as well, but those are a couple of the more interesting ones he's gone over.
> The new biography Steve Jobs
it was a response to the new biography.