Apple’s $1 Million Power Supply

5:57 pm, July 22nd, 2007, Pete Mortensen

Andy Hargadon, the director of the UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship, related a funny Apple story from his past at his talk on Thursday night. He came to Apple as a product designer in the early 1990s, and his first big project was the Powerbook Duo… power supply. Seriously. And his budget was $1 million.

As he tells the story now, Apple in those days was so opposed to using off-the-shelf solutions that they would over-invest in areas that people didn’t care much about. After all, though the Duo power adapter was pretty great, did the internals need to be developed in-house? Could an existing solution have been integrated into the case, which did incorporate the still-innovative gull wings for cord management?

It’s a great example of the trouble with creating a culture where everything a company does has to be the best, most exciting and most advanced. You end up investing in areas that don’t matter and spend too little time making sure that people actually care about the changes coming.

Apple’s much healthier these days, and appears to be committed to using the best solutions, no matter who creates them, and then spending the rest of their energy on increasing the difference between the off-the-shelf answer and the Apple-branded experience. That’s why the iPod was entirely non-Apple in every regard except the ones that counted: The logo, the user interface and the integration with iLife.

Anyone else have tales of past Apple development excess? I really don’t know if I can think of a crazier one than the million-dollar power supply.

Picture via eBay

Posted by Pete Mortensen in Vintage Tech | Comment on this article

About the author

Pete Mortensen is the communications lead for growth strategy firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete's particular Apple avocations are both around design--interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!

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