Power Source
Wozniak, whose passion was the circuitry, didn't concern himself with the issue of heat. But the power source necessary to keep all those circuits functioning can make a lot of heat, and that can require a fan, a low-tech contraption in itself, to disperse said heat. Steve Jobs thought fans an inelegant solution, and looked for someone who could come up with a better one.
Rod Holt is credited (for example in the Walter Isaacson biography of Jobs) with the solution. Holt employed a Switched-mode power supply design. This generated far less unwanted heat than a linear power supply, which most other home computers of the time used.
Isaacson quotes Wozniak saying that this was not something he could have done. "I only knew vaguely what a switching power supply was."
Read more about this topic: Apple II
Famous quotes containing the words power and/or source:
“No other human being, no woman, no poem or music, book or painting can replace alcohol in its power to give man the illusion of real creation.”
—Marguerite Duras (b. 1914)
“As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)