Jobs didn’t like it. He wanted a simple and elegant design, which he hoped would set Apple apart from the other machines, with their clunky gray metal cases. While haunting the appliance aisles at Macy’s, he was struck by the Cuisinart food processors and decided that he wanted a sleek case made of light molded plastic. At a Homebrew meeting, he offered a local consultant, Jerry Manock, $1,500 to produce such a design. Manock, dubious about Jobs’s appearance, asked for themoney up front. Jobs refused, but Manock took the job anyway. Within weeks he had produced a simple foam-molded plastic case that was uncluttered and exuded friendliness. Jobs was thrilled.Next came the power supply. Digital geeks like Wozniak paid little attention to something so analog and mundane, but Jobs decided it was a key component.

In particular he wanted—as he would his entire career—to provide power in a way that avoided the need for a fan. Fans inside computers were not Zen-like; they distracted. He dropped by Atari to consult with Alcorn, who knew old-fashioned electrical engineering. “Al turned me on to this brilliant guy named Rod Holt, who was a chain-smoking Marxist who had been through many marriages and was an expert on everything,” Jobs recalled. Like Manock and others meeting Jobs for the first time, Holt took a look at him and was skeptical. “I’m expensive,” Holt said. Jobs sensed he was worth it and said that cost was no problem. “He just conned me into working,” said Holt, who ended up joining Apple full-time at product presentations over the ensuing decades..

Instead of a conventional linear power supply, Holt built one like those used in oscilloscopes. It switched the power on and off not sixty, but thousands of times; this allowed it to store the power for far less time, and thus throw off less heat. “That switching power supply was as revolutionary as the Apple II logic board was,” Jobs later said. “Rod doesn’t get a lot of credit for this in the history books, but he should. Every computer now uses switching power supplies, and they all rip off Rod’s design.” For all of Wozniak’s brilliance, this was not something he could have done. “I only knew vaguely what a switching power supply was,” Woz admitted.