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Comment by weland | Hacker News Reader

This is a pretty interesting article! I raised more than my fair share of eyebrows by telling people I'm not really surprised with this kind of complexity (note: I'm an EE by formation, I took a frickin' two-semester course on power supplies) but that it doesn't fully justify the price difference.

Also, Jobs was a blatant liar :-). The SMPS in any modern computer is based on a standard topology that Rod Holt -- though a brilliant engineer in his own right -- didn't invent. I don't remember the specific details, but it's based on a flyback design that was certainly well-known at the time.

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It's interesting that most of the author's claims about quality (and reasoning to not buy a non-Apple brand power supply) boils down to "look at all the extra stuff on the circuit board in the apple power supply". Surely not everything Apple put in the charger was absolutely required, and that also doesn't mean someone else couldn't deliver the same quality with less components.

The main take away message though is the proper isolation you get in the Apple one.

And that's the actual conclusion of the author. Don't buy the other one, not because the extra stuff in the Apple one is worth it but because the others generally cut a corner too far. ( or worded differently, if you don't have the skills to assess the safety of the design from the cheap one, buy the Apple one )

The same site has a long article about Jobs' claim about the power supply. http://www.righto.com/2012/02/apple-didnt-revolutionize-powe...

I think this isn't so much Jobs lying as it is him doing his normal embellishment.

Rod Holts design wasn't electrically unique, but it was extremely light and small. The Apple II wasn't the first computer to use a switching supply but it was shockingly light of a power supply which really helped the Apple II's reputation.

Which... as far as Jobs was likely concerned was all that mattered, but it wasn't the rip-off he claimed, it was just the start of the trend and Holt was at the right time to be one of the first on that wave.

Yeah. When Apple claims to have invented something, they don't mean that they invented the very first instance of it, they mean that they invented a practical and transformative consumer implementation, which depending on who you are can be viewed as just as important (because what use is a technology if it can't be used on a practical level?)

"popularized" and "invented" are two words which would be useful in this situation. Hopefully, we can all agree on the distinct meaning of those words.

>because what use is a technology if it can't be used on a practical level?

I know you meant it in a general sense, but the act of demonstrating something can also be useful. It could be that its not very profitable to manufacture or that it could serve as an inspiration for others to improve upon the idea itself.

It's a case of not really telling the truth, which is pretty much what lying means.

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