Apple didn't revolutionize power supplies; new transistors did (2012)
righto.com97 points by geerlingguy 10 hours ago
97 points by geerlingguy 10 hours ago
The Apple II power supply was the first switching PS I had ever seen. And I still saw a lot of linear ones post-Apple II… From the article, perhaps the IBM switching PS, four years after the Apple II, then more or less cemented the switching PS for consumer electronics.
Previously:
(2012, 246 points, 74 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3636047
(2013, 170 points, 63 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6575994
(2021, 208 points, 158 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28700554
What an excellent example of Brandolini's law: “ The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.”
Is this one of those cases where Apple didn’t invented, but they did crash the price per unit?
No. There was no "unit". This was before the days of modular PC PSUs and switching wall warts (which started proliferating only later). So it was just a custom circuit that used commodity components. For these components, the volume of orders from Apple would have been tiny compared to overall market demand.
Missing (2012) in the title.
No, Apple did.
Apple 2 power supply worked until it failed after a couple years.