Apple didn't revolutionize power supplies; new transistors did (2012)

> 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.

> Seen people with hearing lower than 20Hz band

This is called subsonic hearing, and it is not any blessing. Those who can hear frequencies lower than most often experience pain. It's the low frequencies coming from diesel school busses that are most painful to me, when no one else nearby can even hear the bus at all until it gets close enough. What the GGP is talking about is supersonic hearing, which often also includes that extra detail of pain.

> Apple is the only company I am aware of that manufacturers power supplies which are reliably completely free of perceptible inductor whine...I often have to replace non-Apple USB(-C) switching power supplies

it's a well-studied economic fact that monopolists generally sell higher quality products, and it helps them maintain their monopoly. With their market power and the fat margins they earn, there is plenty of budget to do R&D and have achieve scale benefits. Their optimum-profit product-mix and pricepoints are skewed higher. Nobody complained about IBM mainframe quality, nor Bell Telephone quality.

So, it's not testimony to Apple's prowess, it's simply a cookbook outgrowth of their product differentiation strategy.

I don't remember exactly when, but maybe around 2007, my cousin sent me a video where a man was essentially interacting with a tablet that was sitting on a table. It had an assistant that was helping him with everyone - he was putting together a presentation about a forest (I believe), I think he asked it the weather, set up meetings, etc.

It was an amazing thing to watch unfold.

To this day, I can't for the life of me find that video and really wish I could.

As I was reading through that paper, it reminded me of it.

Same story as with hard drive based audio players. I've been using one (if I remember correctly) from Creative long before iPod materialized. All was quiet but suddenly as iPod came it was of course called revolution.