PC World's 50 Best Tech Products of All Time

Ant writes "PC World picks the 50 best tech products of all time. Apple holds down seven places in the list, Microsoft two, and open source software (Red Hat Linux) one. The top five, according to PC World, are: Netscape Navigator (1994), Apple II (1977), TiVo HDR110 (1999), Napster (1999), and Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS (1983).

Comments

mmmh

[motumboe]

I'm always concerned about listings of this kind, since the metrics involved to make the listing is not given or it is not accurate.

Re:mmmh

[NewKimAll]

Exactly. How many of us really care about the products listed that you can't buy anymore? Why are we still pining away for our Apple IIe's, Commodore 64's and our TRS-80 Coco's? (Did I miss anyone that mattered?) If it's that important, obtain or build an emulator for some of these products. Beyond that, just give me list of the top 50 products that are still worth the money to buy.
--
Thrower awayer of one TRS-80 Coco II and III, 5 years ago after powering it up and realizing I was nostalgic for my PC sitting on my desk.

Re:mmmh

[hswerdfe]

metrics? you mean the editors didn't sit around a table saying, "Hey remember my old NES, that was cool"..."It needs to go in."

Re:mmmh

[Anonymous Coward]

That's actually why I'm never concerned about these lists.

Actually, I am, but that's just because they keep listing the !@#$@#$ things in descending order!

Re:mmmh

[Phisbut]

How many of us really care about the products listed that you can't buy anymore?

Even though some products can't be bought anymore, they still were very important in their times, and things wouldn't be the same today if they hadn't existed. Stuff like the NES (revived video gaming), Epson MX-80 (brought printing to the home), Doom (popularized FPS), Netscape Navigator (pushed the WWW) et al. were major milestones in tech that made what we have today possible.

Re:mmmh

[twistedsymphony]

Perhapse the list should have been labeled the "50 most Influential Tech Products of All Time".

Even still I would say that something like the cell phone, or ethernet is more important than Netscape Navigator.

Re:mmmh

[slocan]

Such lists appear to me as part historical reveries, part advertising for the companies listed (those that still exist) as if they were the most innovative (i.e. as if they were the most worthy of our gratefulness for improving our lives with such great technology, without which we would not have all the benefits technology gives us today).

Such lists have so much of a scent of propaganda. And they do have some effect on how these companies are perceived today by people in general. And that's what some find disturbing, for these lists surely are not representative of the "best tech of all times". They are misleading. They are published as a definitive list, despite the "obligatory" disclaimers, yet they contribute very little to our comprehension of the role and effects of technology on our lives.

They are a gimmick to sell magazines and online-ads.

What do you think?
Cheers.

Re:mmmh

[zotz]

["Hey remember my old NES, that was cool"..."It needs to go in."]

Could be...

What's up with this quote:

"While development of Red Hat was discontinued in 2003, it directly spawned successors like Ubuntu, which aim to make desktop use of Linux commonplace."

all the best,

drew

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=zotzbro

Re:mmmh

[Mister Whirly]

Cell phone, maybe but ethernet is hardly a product. You can't go to your local tech store and "buy ethernet".

Re:mmmh

[BlindRobin]

how about :
the can opener
the pencil
ad nauseum
'what is tech' ? is largely dependent on 'when is tech'
The items listed are, even if not available at retail, still recent enough to be considered current tech, at least to most of us that experienced them as adults, or that have a topically elastic sense of temporal relativity.

Re:mmmh

[Have Brain Will Rent]

(Did I miss anyone that mattered?)

The DEC PDP line from the 60's which were the first real lab computers and mini-computers.
The IMSAI 8080 from the 70's, the first "real" computer that people could buy and assemble, and which pre-dated the Apple by quite a bit.
CPM from the 70's, the first general OS (some may quibble at that description) for micro-computers and which formed the model for Seattle Computer DOS which in turn formed the model for MS-DOS.
The S100 bus also from the late 70's and early 80's, which became the first bus standard for micro computers thus creating an industry for third party after-market add on cards to microcomputers.
The IBM PC from the 80's, the machine which rocketed microcomputers into the conciousness of the public and business.


There are a lot of innovations missed in the article that were a lot more fundamental than some of those that did make the article.

Of the top of my head some other important computer related tech products which fundamentally changed the tech scene:

DECTape cheap (relatively) random access mass storage.
DEC bus architectures in the PDP-8/12 and PDP-11 lines.
CRT terminals as a replacement for hard copy terminals.
Storage tube crt's opening up the world of computer graphics (e.g. Tektronix)
Modems and acoustic couplers
Ethernet
Unix
IBM TSO which popularized time-sharing
Burroughs computers which introduced the idea of stack architecture computing.
IBM MFT/MVT which popularized multi-tasking OS's

and on and on and on... the problem with the article is that they seem to think (for the most part) that "of all time" is a period that begins more or less in the 1980's. It would be interesting to know the age of the authors.

Anyway, to close how about: the punched card which fundamentally altered the way information was recorded, stored and processed for most of a century?

Re:mmmh

[denverradiosucks]

I completely agree. The article was a nice read for information only, but I feel the statement of opinion as fact is always poor journalism. It's like reading Rolling Stone every 5 years and seeing a new "best of" list and it has 20 different albums than it did before. I am sure a new 50 best list will come out in a few years so the newest gadgets won't be left out.

At least the headline stated "PC World's 50 Best Tech Products of All Time" as opposed to the same headline posted without PC World at the beginning that one would likely see on Digg.

Re:mmmh

[leeward]

Ethernet was around for quite a few years before Netscape and Mosaic. It was used mainly by companies, colleges and the government, but few (non-tech) people outside those circles even knew it existed. Though if you are going for most influential products, I would have to say that Mosaic was probably more influential than Netscape. After all, the same core group of people created both browsers, and Mosaic came first.

Re:mmmh

[leeward]

Of course, I was foolishly equating the Internet with ethernet. On the other hand, at some level the statement kind of applies to both.

Re:mmmh

[scottv67]

Ethernet was around for quite a few years before Netscape and Mosaic.

10Base5 and vampire taps, babeeeeeee!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE5

Those were the days. I couldn't find a good picture of a DELNI so this will have to do:
http://wwwx.cs.unc.edu/help/network/graphics/sn391 _rack.jpg

The list

[pedestrian crossing]

1. Netscape Navigator (1994)
      2. Apple II (1977)
      3. TiVo HDR110 (1999)
      4. Napster (1999)
      5. Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS (1983)
      6. Apple iPod (2001)
      7. Hayes Smartmodem (1981)
      8. Motorola StarTAC (1996)
      9. WordPerfect 5.1 (1989)
    10. Tetris (1985)
    11. Adobe Photoshop 3.0 (1994)
    12. IBM ThinkPad 700C (1992)
    13. Atari VCS/2600 (1977)
    14. Apple Macintosh Plus (1986)
    15. RIM BlackBerry 857 (2000)
    16. 3dfx Voodoo3 (1999)
    17. Canon Digital Elph S100 (2000)
    18. Palm Pilot 1000 (1996)
    19. id Software Doom (1993)
    20. Microsoft Windows 95 (1995)
    21. Apple iTunes 4 (2003)
    22. Nintendo Game Boy (1989)
    23. Iomega Zip Drive (1994)
    24. Spybot Search & Destroy (2000)
    25. Compaq Deskpro 386 (1986)
    26. CompuServe (1982)
    27. Blizzard World of Warcraft (2004)
    28. Aldus PageMaker (1985)
    29. HP LaserJet 4L (1993)
    30. Apple Mac OS X (2001)
    31. Nintendo Entertainment System (1985)
    32. Eudora (1988)
    33. Sony Handycam DCR-VX1000 (1995)
    34. Apple Airport Base Station (1999)
    35. Brøderbund The Print Shop (1984)
    36. McAfee VirusScan (1990)
    37. Commodore Amiga 1000 (1985)
    38. ChipSoft TurboTax (1985)
    39. Mirabilis ICQ (1996)
    40. Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 (1992)
    41. Apple HyperCard (1987)
    42. Epson MX-80 (1980)
    43. Central Point Software PC Tools (1985)
    44. Canon EOS Digital Rebel (2003)
    45. Red Hat Linux (1994)
    46. Adaptec Easy CD Creator (1996)
    47. PC-Talk (1982)
    48. Sony Mavica MVC-FD5 (1997)
    49. Microsoft Excel (1985)
    50. Northgate OmniKey Ultra (1987)

Re:The list

[HugePedlar]

The 3dfx Voodoo3 is placed at number 16, but the Soundblaster is way down in 40th place?

I don't know, but I'd submit that realistic polyphonic sound/music was more revolutionary than 3D hardware acceleration. 3D graphics are cool and all, but at least the CPU could generate 3D graphics (Quake?) before hardware acceleration - if it weren't for the Soundblaster we'd be playing visually stunning games with beeps and parps for sound effects.

Re:The list

[jimicus]

29. HP LaserJet 4L (1993) I've still got one of those working today. Didn't think it was that old though.

Re:The list

[sa1lnr]

29. HP LaserJet 4L (1993)

I bought one of these back then, lasted till June 2006. I bought another one for £9.99 (with HP toner) on eBay.

Older HP laser printers are excellent pieces of kit.

Re:The list

[Punch-Drunk Slob]

You can listen to The Beatles now and still find their music great. With that same logic, we should all still run Windows 95.

Re:The list

[imsabbel]

Also, voodoo3 wasnt special at all. It sucked.
IF a 3d accelerator is mentioned at that point, it should be voodoo1.

Re:The list

[SenorCitizen]

I don't know, but I'd submit that realistic polyphonic sound/music was more revolutionary than 3D hardware acceleration. 3D graphics are cool and all, but at least the CPU could generate 3D graphics (Quake?) before hardware acceleration - if it weren't for the Soundblaster we'd be playing visually stunning games with beeps and parps for sound effects.

The Amiga had four channel digital sound in 1985, so the SB combination of a Yamaha FM chip (already used in the AdLib) with one digital channel wasn't really that revolutionary. Oddly, the Amiga only comes in at number 37... And actually, the SB came out in 1989. Compared to the sound chip in the Apple II/GS from 1986, it was crap. The GS had an Ensoniq chip with 32 digital channels. A later 16-bit version was used in the Gravis Ultrasound boards in the 90s.

Re:The list

[Technician]

12. IBM ThinkPad 700C (1992)

Wow. How did that ever beat the IBM PC XT, DOS or the Intel 8088?

I guess the platform gets ignored that started the Wintel PC revolution. The platform is not important.. It's the apps stupid!

Re:The list

[WasterDave]

I had one. It was OK. Sure as shit wasn't one of the 50 best tech products of all time though. Voodoo1? The first Geforce cards? Maybe.

Dave

Re:The list

[BlueTrin]

My biggest gripe with this kind of list is not that only it is very subjective, like most of the peeps here said, but also the items are ranked.

Why do you want to rank one item #45 and the other #46 ? Just make a list of 100 items that were quite innovative and do not rank them, just order them by category, decade, platform ... etc but there is no point to rank them

I saw that the Ipod was ranked quite high. For me the Ipod is quite innovative but it is ranked way too high, you could find plenty of MP3 players that were quite close to the Ipod just after it was released, it was more about marketing than a real breaktrough ...

Re:The list

[TapeCutter]

Half the devices on the list use solid state drives and/or USB, neither are mentioned but for some odd reason zip drives are in there.

Re:The list

[thsths]

I can only agree with a few of these:

14. Apple Mac
27. WoW
29. HP LaserJet 4
44. EOS Digital Rebel
45. RedHat

They completely miss CD-writer, Gmail, Opera and the Commodore C-64, which is inexcusable. And what do they have instead? I can't believe it:

Eudora? One of the worst email readers in existence? (yes, it is has a few nice feature, but overall it completely fails)
Sony Mavica FD? Storing pictures on a floppy disk is a silly idea. Yes, it was practical for certain uses, but only if you had no USB.
Windows 95? Sure, the eye candy was nice, but under the hood is was nasty DOS all over again.
ZIP Driver? Are you joking? CD-writer finally put us out of this misery.
McAfee? The software with more security problems than virus detected?
CompuServe? Charging emails per page, and still mangling the attachments? No, thank you.

Re:The list

[Threni]

> I'd submit that realistic polyphonic sound/music was more revolutionary than 3D hardware acceleration.

Depends on what you call 'realistic' but computer sound/music had already been around for years and years. 3D graphics are actually useful for design/planning/building/prototyping, in addition to games, music, films etc.

Re:The list

[khakipuce]

May be I don't know what a "tech" product is but this list seems utterly trival. I assume "tech" is short for technology and a good definition of that (apart from "things that don't work yet") is "The application of science, especially to industrial or commercial objectives" Is this really the "ALL TIME" list? - about the microchip, the Wright Flyer, the transistor, antibiotics, water chlorination, the X-ray machine, paper, the printing press, steel, the steam engine ... Some people's "ALL TIME" seems a bit limtied...

Re:The list

[Sique]

RTFA ;) They especially restrict the list to the After 1970 Era, and concentrate solely on computing. No Differential Engine, no Abacus, no beans to count.

Re:The list

[jimstapleton]

Of all the web browsers, they put Netscape? That's about the only one I abjectly refused to used unless there were no other options (sadly, there were times when that was the case). If they wanted "original", then they should have used Mosaic, if they wanted good implementation of concept, then Firefox should go there.

Windows 95: Ok, these people must be into masochism. Most items on this list, I can at least find a skewed logic to put them on there, this one? 9X windows? Again, nothing really *new* here. Sure it's the first Windows that looked better than the 1980s MacOSes, but it's not a very good OS, if they wanted "first", give it to MacOS, or DOS, if they wanted good & functional in the mass-market end-user departement, go for 98, 2000 or XP.

Plenty of others I can complain about, but there's at least some good logic, and as much as I hate the applications/services myself, there are people who like them.

But, my thoughts:
For computer specific (which this seems to be):
--No WinAmp or XMMS?
--Where's a good code development tool? GCC seriously deserves a place or two on this list. Vi and Emacs deserve a shared spot as well, both making the lives of various programmers easier (well, I would argue against one of them making lives easier, but apparantly some people feel that way, and it's not my place to make their decisions for them).
All time technology? I think the light bulb, automotive vehicle and rope seriusly need space on that list.

Re:The list

[nospam007]

>CompuServe? Charging emails per page, and still mangling the attachments? No, thank you.
--
You must be very young.
We used Compuserve which had worldwide access (dial-up) when no web nor A-online etc existed.
That was the place where you'd get online help from the software companies, download new drivers, beta-tests, patches etc _years_ before the web was invented.
Not to mention that we Euros could buy Jeans there online for a fraction of the local cost, shipping included.

Re:The list

[clickclickdrone]

>The Amiga had four channel digital sound in 1985
The Atari 800 had 4 channel sound in 1978. Next?

Re:The list

[jlawson382]

8. Motorola StarTAC (1996) And still going strong, baby... just replaced my battery and antenna at a flea-market cellphone shop last month. You can have my phone-that's-just-a-phone when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!

(Now get off of my lawn.)

Re:The list

[mdwh2]

if it weren't for the Soundblaster we'd be playing visually stunning games with beeps and parps for sound effects.

I agree that I'm not sure what's so special about Voodoo 3 (I mean, the first Voodoo I could understand...) but there were other platforms with proper sound samples years before 1992.

Re:The list

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't digital. Or stereo. Or DMA driven on a 16 bit bus. Next?

Re:The list

[Yaruar]

The BBC micro had 4 channel sound as standard from 1981. I remember that being pretty revolutionary at the time. I suspect if the BBC had been released outside of the UK it would have been a lot more influential though.

Re:The list

[chaoticgeek]

Your serious about WOW? I don't see that being in history books ever. Sure it might be a great game but there is no way I'd rank it in the 50 best tech products. That goes along with the other software on that list I don't think iTunes is all that great either. Sure it is convenient but it is nothing with out the iPod. I would not put the iPod however were it is IMHO. I think the list is way off.

Re:The list

[thegnu]

I had one. It was OK. Sure as shit wasn't one of the 50 best tech products of all time though. Voodoo1? The first Geforce cards? Maybe.

I think--barring the soundblaster comment, which is very insightful--that it's on the list because of it's place in time. I would say that possibly an earlier 3dfx card would be a more apt selection. But then, wasn't the voodoo3 the first decent accelerator with 2d/3d? IIRC. I don't know. The voodoos were the shit briefly before the TNT2, and they still had a corner on a certain aspect of the market.

I'm surprised the NVIDIA is still on top. Now that AMD owns ATI, I'm interested to see what happens.

Re:The list

[RattFink]

Common, the Atari 800 had 4 tone/noise generators not 4 channels of DMA sound. If you are pulling in generated sound into the mix you should also count the 18 channels the YMF262 on the sb16 can generate.

Re:The list

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I can't. The Beatles sucked. I know some may diagree, but they're wrong.

Re:The list

[Hijacked Public]

I missed that the Sony Mavica was on the list. I remember fielding dozens of questions from my friends and family about why their floppied weren't readable and whether I could rescue their photos...the good ol days.

Complaining about these kinds of lists is fun. I'd swap out the Rebel with the 1D. The Rebel was an ok vehicle to get DSLRs into the hands of regular folks, but the 1D was the first pro quality DSLR that could be used in the field and offered even a sliver of the features on pro film SLRs. In terms of the engineering that was done it was a huge accomplishment.

Someday someone might even build a DSLR that is as good as a film body.

Re:The list

[thsths]

>> CompuServe

> That was the place where you'd get online help from the software companies, download new drivers, beta-tests, patches etc _years_ before the web was invented.

True, that was in the 80s. I think it never really took off in Europe because modems were illegal back then (and extreme expensive). But in the 90s it was just a slow slide to the bottom of the pile.

Anyway, this seems to be recurring theme for "top 100 ever" lists: people like to see fallen stars in there. One good idea, a short period an glory, and then the company fails to keep up with the competition. I think this pattern fits most of the items on list.

Re:The list

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod -5 "Didn't RTFA"

Re:The list

[uberjoe]

Don't forget the plow (or plough, for our brethren across the pond). Seems to be a pretty important piece of technology.

Re:The list

[Lord Ender]

You honestly think water chlorination belongs on the same list with a wonder like the Voodoo 3? Come on! Chlorinated water doesn't even have AGP! And can water render video cards? No. Can video cards render water? Yes.

Re:The list

[sottitron]

It is from PC World and not Scientific American.

Re:The list

[lpcustom]

Yeah no joke....in fact why isn't there any CPUs here at all. I would think the x86 architecture would have at least made the list.

Re:The list

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus Christ, it's COME ON. TWO WORDS. "Common" doesn't even belong to the same class of words.

Re:The list

[sconeu]

Where do you still get analog service?

Re:The list

[jlawson382]

Yeah, you got me - mine's the digital one. Still... it works fine for what I want, and I haven't been roped into a new contract in YEARS, so why upgrade?

(Yeah, I know... I just committed /. heresy. I'll turn in my nerd card on my way out.)

Re:The list

[ncc74656]

Compared to the sound chip in the Apple IIGS from 1986, it was crap. The GS had an Ensoniq chip with 32 digital channels.

While the default sound output was mono, you could theoretically demux up to 8 channels (with 4 voices per channel). I don't think anyone ever did more than 2 channels, though...sound cards for the IIGS are usually little more than demuxers and mixers, with maybe a power amplifier thrown in to drive unamplified speakers. It's only been fairly recently that multichannel audio from computers has become somewhat common.

Re:The list

[ncc74656]

The "Commie 64" got a brief mention in the blurb on the machine that did make the cut--the Apple II: "Beating the IBM PC 5150 to market by four years, the Apple II (and its cousins, the II+, IIe, and IIc) quickly became the computer for people who wanted a machine that actually did something (competitors like the Commodore 64 and TRS-80 Color Computer were mere toys by comparison)." (Their words, not mine, so put away your -1 Flamebait mod.)

Odd that the left out the IIGS and IIc Plus, though, while they listed the other models. The IIc Plus wasn't on the market long (don't think I've ever actually seen one myself), but the IIGS was a big step in capabilities that competed with the Amiga and Atari ST on their own turf, yet was nearly 100% backward-compatible with all of the Apple II software already available.

Re:The list

[Anonymous Coward]

Water can render video cards inoperable, does that count?

Re:The list

[Michael O-P]

"The Tough Coughs as he Ploughs the Dough."

An obscure Theodore S. Geisel reference. Totally off-topic.

Re:The list

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole series of voodoo cards were amazing. Y'all can't tell me you weren't amazed when you hooked one up for the first time and went from software rendering to ultra smooth, ultra colorful 3dfx graphics...plus, which was it, the Voodoo 5? That card had 128MB of memory waaaaaay before any of the competition....probably what led to 3dfx going under.

Re:The list

[NoOneInParticular]

I still remember the day when someone pointed out Netscape as a replacement for Mosaic. This was as profound an improvement as when someone pointed me to Google as a replacement of Altavista. The initial netscape was a huge improvement over anything out there, and for me, it made the web.

Re:The list

[SenorCitizen]

But did the Beeb have four channels of digital sound, as in four D/A converters? Or just four tone generators? As noted by another poster, Atari's 400/800 were probably the first ones out with four channel sound in that sense, even if the generators were very simple - just sine and square wave, IIRC.

Re:The list

[SenorCitizen]

While the default sound output was mono, you could theoretically demux up to 8 channels (with 4 voices per channel). I don't think anyone ever did more than 2 channels, though...sound cards for the IIGS are usually little more than demuxers and mixers, with maybe a power amplifier thrown in to drive unamplified speakers. It's only been fairly recently that multichannel audio from computers has become somewhat common. According to Wikipedia, the chip did indeed have 32 channels. The software paired them up by default into 16 stereo channels, of which the OS reserved one. Another thing is that the IIGS only had a mono output for sound, even though the chip was capable of stereo. Of course, if you used 32 channels and had a stereo output board, you would get 16 channels for the left output and 16 for the right output. The Ultrasound was the first sample playback synth chip with panning, AFAIK.

Re:The list

[ncc74656]

you could theoretically demux up to 8 channels (with 4 voices per channel)

According to Wikipedia, the chip did indeed have 32 channels.

8*4=32. I think there's some confusion here over terminology. Each of the 32 oscillators on the Ensoniq 5503 counts as a voice. These get dumped into one output channel by a stock IIGS for mono output, but they can be demuxed by relatively simple circuitry into as many as 8 channels (though 2 was more common, for stereo output). "Voices" refers to the on-chip oscillators, while "channels" refers to analog outputs that drive speakers.

Re:The list

[SenorCitizen]

8*4=32. I think there's some confusion here over terminology. Each of the 32 oscillators on the Ensoniq 5503 counts as a voice. These get dumped into one output channel by a stock IIGS for mono output, but they can be demuxed by relatively simple circuitry into as many as 8 channels (though 2 was more common, for stereo output). "Voices" refers to the on-chip oscillators, while "channels" refers to analog outputs that drive speakers.

You're right, we were discussing the same thing with different terms. I never considered a need for demuxing the chip's output into more than two audio channels. Likewise, the Amiga had four 'voices' routed into two output channels. However, since Amiga's audio output was essentially just a bunch of D/A converters with no synthesis features like envelopes for volume, or filters, they were commonly referred to as just audio channels. I'm not sure if the Ensoniq chip had volume envelopes or filters or LFOs, but if it did, I just wonder why they never used it on the Mac.

Re:The list

[ncc74656]

I'm not sure if the Ensoniq chip had volume envelopes or filters or LFOs, but if it did, I just wonder why they never used it on the Mac.

No filters, but one oscillator in a pair can modulate the volume of the other:

Oscillators

The 5503 Ensoniq Digital Oscillator Chip (DOC) has 32 sound oscillators. Each of them are capable of making an independent sound. Two oscillators paired up are a generator. The paired generator arrangement is favored by most IIgs sound/music programs, because that arrangement offers greater flexibility with better sound quality.

The DOC produces 8-bit waveforms, with a center line at $80 (128 decimal). Reserved for 'stop' is $00 or (0 decimal). If the sample value of 0 is encountered by a DOC oscillator, it will halt immediately and will not produce any more sound. The DOC also has an 8-bit volume register for every oscillator using a linear slope. The dynamic range of the DOC (the 'space' between the softest and loudest sounds which are produced) being approximately 42 dB.

Each oscillator has a 16 bit frequency register, ranging from 0 to 65535. In the normal DOC configuration, each step of this frequency register increases the play rate by 51 Hz.

Oscillator Modes

When oscillators are paired as generators, four possible modes can be used. These four modes as termed, are listed below.

1. Free (Free-run) (Loop) : The oscillator simply plays the waveform and stops. No interaction with it's 'pair' occurs.
2. Swap (Loop) : Only one oscillator of the pair is active at a time. When one stops, its pair starts immediately.
3. Shot : The oscillator plays the waveform and if it reaches the waveforms end without encountering a zero, it starts over (loops) at the beginning.
4. Sync (AM): One oscillator of the pair modulates the volume of the other paired oscillator with the waveform it's playing. Unique and very effective. But, not commonly used.

As for why this chip never found its way into a Mac, you can blame the Beatles:

Though including a professional-grade sound chip in the Apple IIGS was hailed by developers and users both, and hopes were high that it would be added to the Macintosh, it drew a lawsuit by Apple Records. As part of an earlier trademark dispute with the record company, Apple Computer had agreed not to release music-related products. Apple Records considered the inclusion of the Ensoniq chip in the IIGS as a violation of that agreement. Though the IIGS was allowed to keep the Ensoniq, Apple has not included dedicated hardware sound synthesizers in any of its Macintosh models since (though of course, third-party products exist).

Re:The list

[khakipuce]

Took me a while to get back on this, but ALL TIME is, by definition, not anything after 1970

Commodore C64

[bjourne]

Stupid list, they forgot C64. How many programmers haven't learnt programming using C64 BASIC?

Re:Commodore C64

[motumboe]

Me too!

Re:Commodore C64

[MosesJones]

Help me out here, is it 99.99% or 99.999% of all the developers on the planet?

Re:Commodore C64

[ErroneousBee]

I would pick the Sinclair spectrum over the C64, they were ubiquitous in the UK. The BBC micro might also get a mention.

They also seem to have picked the cameras almost at random, those models would never have been on my short list when buying a camera. I'd look to the Cannon digital SLRs or the Nikon coolpix range for models that changed the market.

They missed the Space Invaders machine, and the digital watch.

Business hardware has been left out, wheres the Xerox machine, fax machine, mainframe, or printer?

I do think they have a pretty good list, though. Particularly the older stuff.

Re:Commodore C64

[pasamio]

I'd pick the Mavica - you didn't need anything extremely special and it made it light weight. Every had a floppy disk drive and all you needed was a spare one, take the snaps and its on the computer. No fidling with cables or software, it was there, on the computer as a JPG. Build like a brick (hey, it had a floppy drive in it after all) but the thing was a great machine.

Re:Commodore C64

[Stooshie]

Hey, I didn't, I learned on the BBC Micro Model B.

Re:Commodore C64

[canuck57]

Stupid list, they forgot C64. How many programmers haven't learnt programming using C64 BASIC?

There isn't many "real" programmers out there. Remember Turbo C and Turbo Pascal? Pascal in 29K of RAM, and likely not a programmer coming on line today can say "Hello" in 29K. Forget about a compiler, linker, editor, libraries, debugger and full type checking in that 29K.

My peeve on the list is Lotus 123... it was a copy... VisiCalc and Supercalc were better and more original, 123 was a "borrowed" concept from VisiCalc.

Re:Commodore C64

[BlueTrin]

I learnt on Visual Stud ... oh you said programming ? Nevermind then ...

Re:Commodore C64

[marol]

Actually, they didn't forget it, they bundled it with TRS-80 under the Apple II entry, "competitors like the Commodore 64 and TRS-80 Color Computer were mere toys by comparison". And that's pretty much where I stopped reading...

Re:Commodore C64

[hummer]

They didn't forget it. From the entry on the Apple II...

competitors like the Commodore 64 and TRS-80 Color Computer were mere toys by comparison

I gave up on the article after that.

Re:Commodore C64

[192939495969798999]

The C64 is in 0th place at the top. Every geek of a certain age has at least a few fond memories of the C64!

Re:Commodore C64

[dunkelfalke]

not only in the uk, also in the ussr.

Re:Commodore C64

[Anonymous Coward]

Vic20 ! Rulez!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, I see Spybot, but what about AdAware?

Re:Commodore C64

[clickclickdrone]

>How many programmers haven't learnt programming using C64 BASIC?
Most of them, I'd hazzard a guess.

Re:Commodore C64

[thesandtiger]

I learnt on the Apple II. Applesoft BASIC, then I found some 6502 assembler references, and from there it was off to the races. The C64 was a sweet machine, though.

Re:Commodore C64

[jimstapleton]

The Commodore 64 was a toy in comparison to the Apple II they said?

What kind of drug-cocktail overdose were they on when writing /that/? Maybe the C64 was less powerful (I don't know for sure), but I can tell you, I had a lot more useful things on my C64 than my Apple II, and a lot more fun games too. It may have been better as a toy, but it was better at productivity also.

You were right to stop reading at that point.

Re:Commodore C64

[THESuperShawn]

Right there with you.

I was going to post and say the C64 should have replaced the Amiga, but you beat me to it.

If it wasn't for my C64 as a kid (originally purchased because I fell in love with "Choplifter" on the store demo unit), I would not be where I am today (and no, I am not in prison).

Re:Commodore C64

[dj_tla]

*Raises hand* It was Amiga BASIC.

Re:Commodore C64

[__aamnbm3774]

but they mentioned about 10 Apple products!

Re:Commodore C64

[Anonymous Coward]

Both the apple // and the c64 used variants of the 6502 processor clocked at ~1MHz. Commodore used a custom design, the 6510 that added an I/O port.

The "toy" label I'm sure comes from the fact that the c64 had a 40 column display, vs. the 80 available (via add-on card) for the apple //. Also, the graphic and sound capabilities of the c64 were among the best of the era (in personal computers), which made it an ideal platform for writing games.

I would have rather they just chose "the 8bit personal computer" instead of trying to single one out over the others. The c64 and //e were by far the most successful, but the others out at the time (TRS-80 coco variants, the Atari 800, TI99/4a and in the UK the spectrum, etc.) held enough marketshare to be significant as well.

Re:Commodore C64

[Black-Man]

They mentioned it in the Apple II blurb. Having owned both, I agree, the Apple II was a superior machine - remember it had expansion slots.

Re:Commodore C64

[blowdart]

29k? You were lucky, why I had to walk 10 miles in snow to punch my cards then walk back with them to put them in the reader (etc.)

The first Sinclair PCs had a massive 1k. And that was shared with the graphics chip too. If you were rich you could add a 16K RAM pack. Which wobbled and lost everything in memory. Ah those were the days.

Re:Commodore C64

[Hoi Polloi]

I loved finding all of those cool memory addresses you could peek, poke and call. For instance "call 62454" set the entire screen instantly to whatever the color of point 0,0 was in hi-res graphics mode. I can't believe I still remember that.

Re:Commodore C64

[sdpuppy]

...Also one of the places that the C64 was sold was "Toys R Us" which didn't exactly improve their image.

Re:Commodore C64

[ivan256]

We had a C64 and a Sinclair (with the 16k expansion module), and the Sinclair definitely got more use. It was, what, 1/10th the size? So it stayed hooked up all the time, while I (and my dad) were forced by my mom to put the C64 away after we used it. Additionally, the C64 came off mostly as a video game console. The joysticks that came in the box probably didn't help.

I will say one thing though... That C64 still works, but the stupid membrane keyboard on the Sinclair gave up ages ago.

The BASIC on the two machines were sufficiently compatible that most software available on cassette was compatible between the two machines.

Re:Commodore C64

[tbone1]

Punch card reader? You were lucky. I had to put my punch card into a jacquard loom and then decipher the stitching pattern to run my program.

Re:Commodore C64

[ncc74656]

Me, for one...started with my grandfather's TRS-80 CoCo, got a TI-99/4A as my first computer at home, and finally got serious about programming with an Apple IIe. First time I did anything with a Commodore 64 (compatible) was just a couple of years ago with those joysticks that were available. I added a keyboard port to one, but never got around to trying to get it to do anything really useful (it'd take at least a floppy drive for that, and 1541s are kinda thin on the ground (read: nonexistent) at my place, compared to Disk IIs).

Re:Commodore C64

[ncc74656]

but I can tell you, I had a lot more useful things on my C64 than my Apple II, and a lot more fun games too. It may have been better as a toy, but it was better at productivity also.

Flame on!

How do you figure that when the C64 had no 80-column display capability (add-on or otherwise, AFAIK), no provision for adding more RAM (my IIe was bumped up to 1 MB at one point, and I had AppleWorks documents that used most of it), and a floppy drive that was almost as slow as the cassette recorder it was supposed to replace? An Apple II with nothing in the expansion slots may have only been comparable to a Commodore 64, but the slots let you add on whatever capabilities you needed--more memory, a faster processor, better graphics and sound, more storage (including SCSI and IDE hard drives), etc. That, in turn, was what let you get useful work done with it, which elevated it beyond "toy" status.

Re:Commodore C64

[jimstapleton]

I appologize, but your post contained (a) valid logic, (b) politeness and a lack of name calling/insults and (c) a, which not compleately mild tone, one that was at least non-offensive

Suggestion:
Add more "you suck!", "hey moron!", and "idiot!"s into your post. In it's current state it is unacceptable as a flame post.

That being said, I've never really looked at the II with expansion modules in it, I just had a plain II, to compare. Also the memory on a C64 could be upgraded, but I don't know how difficult/trivial the task was.

Re:Commodore C64

[lord_mike]

Stupid list, they forgot C64. How many programmers haven't learnt programming using C64 BASIC?

I'm sorry to hear that... Commodore BASIC v. 2 was pretty much just PET basic ported the the C64, and had ZERO support for the C64's uniqute features (like graphics, sound, peripherals)... what a horrible language for someone to cut their teeth on.. neverending lines upon lines of confusing, non-intuitive POKE's in decimal. Compared to other microcomputer BASIC's of the day, I think that machine's BASIC did more to discourage programming than it did to encourage it, especially for kids.

I know that I honestly preferred Atari BASIC myself. It was slow, but I could actually DO stuff with it!

Thanks,

Mike

Re:Commodore C64

[Andrewkov]

In Soviet Russia... oh never mind.

Re:Commodore C64

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the Apple II was simply first and predated the C64 and deserves a mention for that reason and established success before the C64. Us C64 users knew of Apple II computers for sure (I remember how silly their commands were, like PR 6 or somthing like that. Everyone knows it's supposed to be LOAD "file",8,1). And 80 columns? meh. Cut your teeth on 23 columns or whatever it was on the VIC-20. The C64 was luxury!

But truly the Apple was an overpriced leviathan (I can't spell bohemoth). I knew some rich friends that had one and couldn't do crap with it (really I don't know if it's just the ones I knew but they were quite happy just using the machine instead of learning it, if you knwo what I mean). The ones at school couldn't do anything useful and the games on Apple II were pathetic.

We're talking about young programmers cutting their teeth here, not businesses running VisiCalc. The C64 FORCED you to learn BASIC. Looking in COMPUTE magazine to type in the program listings, seeing the beweildering PEEK and POKE instructions. I learned programming BASIC from the manual and those darn magazine articles because my parents were too cheap to buy catridges (well, very often anyway. Never had the games I wanted. To this day I want to play Airborne Ranger fromthe glowing reviews).

The C64 Programmer's Reference manual was a gateway into the unknown for me. I learned assembly programming, memory layout, and binary numbers before I turned 10 thanks to this. I never mastered it but I learned the memory locations for many things and felt a great rush once I finally figured out what an accumulator was.

But this isn't about me, it's about that first experience when you figured out that you could make the computer do what you wanted to do. That you could figure out how it worked. Maybe some got that experience from a BBC Micro, or CoCo. But I know that the C64 simply by virtue of reaching so many (10 million) probably stands out.

Re:Commodore C64

[celkin]

I learned programming using Dr. Scheme and OS X--two years ago.

(define myAge 17)

Simple, huh?

Re:Commodore C64

[Jumpy]

I had a C64. I don't really pine for it. Well, maybe a little bit. :)

I can still fire up some of the old games on the C64 emulator. (On my Lenovo fedora laptop)

You could do 80 colums on a stock C64 with a monitor. There was a program you loaded
that converted the display to 80. I used it all the time. I also had a C= 1200 bps modem
software that had an 80 column mode.

50 best, 50 worst... ho, hum

[chebucto]

What I want to see is a list of the 50 middle tech products of all time. Which are the most mediocre? Which products excel at mediocrity? Inquiring minds want to know!

Re:50 best, 50 worst... ho, hum

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Battery powered keyboard vacuum cleaners.
2. Screen filters.
3. Mouse Mats.
4. Mechanical Mice.
5. Winmodems.
6. Shadowing System RAM for video cards.
7. Atari STe having a mouse port underneath the keyboard.
8. My first beige PC.

Re:50 best, 50 worst... ho, hum

[vtcodger]

I can't speak to the other 49, but Microsoft/IBM certainly get into the list of awful products with MSDOS 4.0. And maybe with the original release of OS/2 ("half an operating system") as well, even though IBM eventually made later versions into a decent product.

Re:50 best, 50 worst... ho, hum

[gEvil (beta)]

What I want to see is a list of the 50 middle tech products of all time. Which are the most mediocre? Which products excel at mediocrity? Inquiring minds want to know!

But once you saw the list, you'd think that it was just a giant Microsoft marketing campaign...

Re:50 best, 50 worst... ho, hum

[andphi]

Which products excel at mediocrity? Inquiring minds want to know!

I see you've already picked number 1 on the list. Emphasis added.

Re:50 best, 50 worst... ho, hum

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need a special PC World article for that. Just walk into any office in the world and look around.

What about Debian?

[rolfc]

I have been using Debian since 1995 in production and it has yet to disappoint me. For me, it is the best operating system around, and I would put it on top of the list!

That is not the outcome !

[__aahlyu4518]

It is the order of the list on which you can vote !!!

Re:That is not the outcome !

[mr_matticus]

What are you talking about? The list posted in the comments and the excerpt are both correct, ranked orders as reported by PC World. Who modded you informative?

Re:That is not the outcome !

[__aahlyu4518]

So if I click on the 'vote' link in the article I can still vote but it won't infuence the outcome?

Re:That is not the outcome !

[MarkByers]

> So if I click on the 'vote' link in the article I can still vote but it won't infuence the outcome?

Yeah, that's how voting works these days. How do you think Bush won?

Re:That is not the outcome !

[Skrynesaver]

Presumably someone who read the page and clicked on the vote link

Re:That is not the outcome !

[mr_matticus]

The vote link allows you to choose your favorite of the 50. In other words, "what is your number one pick."

They've already provided and ranked the 50. The poll is simply for comment purposes.

Re:That is not the outcome !

[mr_matticus]

Yes. The poll is to give your opinion on which YOU THINK is number one. It's not like the reader-unpopular choices are going to be kicked off the "top 50" list to make a "top 34."

RTFA. The top 50 is presented alphabetically, chronologically, and in ranked order. QED, the ranking is done.

Re:That is not the outcome !

[__aahlyu4518]

On slashdot it is presented as a closed thing e.g. this is the result, which it is not, as you can still vote.

Re:That is not the outcome !

[mr_matticus]

You cannot change the ranking of the products. Voting is for commentary purposes only.

Voodoo 3 sucked.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The Voodoo 3 lacked 32 bit rendering and came out months before nVidia brought out the GeForce card.

It was, in short, the beginning of the end for 3dfx. Why would you promote that?!

Re:Voodoo 3 sucked.

[El_Muerte_TDS]

I agree. It was the Voodoo2 that was a huge success. Even though nVidia's Geforce came out not long after it nVidia's TNT2 was vastly superior to the Voodoo3.
Quake3 used OpenGL, not 3dfx' Glide. People with a Voodoo card needed to install an additonal drive to translate the OpenGL instructions to Glide just to be able to play Quake3. The TNT2 understood both Direct3D and OpenGL.

Re:Voodoo 3 sucked.

[pslam]

Indeed, that surprised me too. Voodoo 1 was THE watershed graphics card - it blew away everything the competition had by an order of magnitude in high performance, features AND low price. It was even fairly unique in sitting on a separate card slot with the entire VGA signal looped through it and switched on demand. Instant upgrade for your PC. Genius marketing they had back then.

Sadly, they started drinking their own cool-aid too much. Voodoo 3 was THE bankrupting card. It was too expensive, too poor on features (16 bit rendering when everyone else was 32 bit), too poor on RAMDAC speed (poor output quality) and way too late to market. To make matters worse, their marketing department was making laughable attempts at convincing customers that they didn't really need all those extra features (what people want is render SPEED not QUALITY! Oh you already have 60fps? Hmm). You could buy an nVidia TNT2 for the same price, and it had the same performance, better quality output and better quality rendering. Even the drivers were better. I think Voodoo3 vs TNT2 marks the point where 3dfx LOST the fight. Strange that the list says it marks the pinnacle.

Sadder still, rather than recovering, they brought out the Voodoo 4/5 which added very little apart from a huge power supply burden, massive cards, and even higher costs, right when upstarts like nVidia and ATI were bringing out damn cheap, fast and single chip cards that did better.

As an aside - the CEO who bankrupted them by running the company on pure hopes and wishes alone (Greg Ballard) did the same to the company I worked for (SonicBlue/S3/Diamond). I suspect they brought him in due to his history of running a market leading company into the ground in less than a year. Job done.

Re:Voodoo 3 sucked.

[sa1lnr]

Voodoo3 was a lot cheaper than a TNT2 here in the UK. That is why I bought one. ;)

Plus I had invested a fair ammount in glide games. Didn't switch untill the GeForce 256 came out.

Re:Voodoo 3 sucked.

[sznupi]

Glide was a simplified (tailored towards games) subset of OpenGL (just look at the name...GLide), so there was much sense in not doing OpenGL the direct way...

Re:Voodoo 3 sucked.

[Hachey]

You're making me feel pretty foolish for buying a Voodoo3 card back then.

Re:Voodoo 3 sucked.

[Cochonou]

too poor on RAMDAC speed (poor output quality)
Beware: RAMDAC clock speed is not directly linked to output quality, but to the refresh rates that can be used at specific resolutions. You could have a very fast RAMDAC clock speed, but a noisy DAC and therefore end up with bad output quality. The opposite is also true.
For reference, a 250 Mhz RAMDAC can output 1600x1200 at 75 Hz. By the way, I do think that the Voodoo3 3000 RAMDAC was clocked at a higher rate than most TNT2 RAMDACs (350 Mhz vs 300 Mhz).

Top X lists...

[Anonymous Coward]

belong on Digg.

And everybody knows time starts in 1970.

quibbles

[R2.0]

IBM 700c: way too low. Laptops are a gigantic market (far more significant than mp3 players) and this one set the standard.

Also, where's the Model M?

Re:quibbles

[Corporate Troll]

Also, where's the Model M?

Exactly! Instead on place 50 they talk about some completely unknown keyboard to me.

Re:quibbles

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM 700c: way too low. Laptops are a gigantic market (far more significant than mp3 players) and this one set the standard.

The PowerBook created this form-factor a year earlier. Every laptop since has looked basically like a PowerBook 100. The recipe for designing PC laptops seems to be "start with PowerBook 100, add lots of ports, add some plastic doodads that can snap off, and add lots of Dell/Microsoft/etc stickers".

Before that, we had, what, NEC UltraLite and Compaq LTE? You can use Windows, but if you want to actually do anything with them, you have to find your own mouse.

If the IBM set the standard, it's only in bringing what the Mac world already had into the PC world. It's the Windows 2.0 of laptops.

Misleading title

[zensonic]

Its not the best tech products of all times at the title states, its the most influential products of all time.

And even with that in mind I think the list is bogus. With criterias like:

So what's the best tech product to come out of the digital age? And what qualifies a product as being "best"? First and foremost, it must be a quality product. In many cases, that means a piece of hardware or software that has truly changed our lives and that we can't live without (or couldn't at the time it debuted). Beyond that, a product should have attained a certain level of popularity, had staying power, and perhaps made some sort of breakthrough, influencing the development of later products of its ilk. you have to wonder where mp3 (software and hardware), television (hardware), tcp/ip (software) and cellphones (hardware) are. But then again. I may have misunderstood what this is all about.

Re:Misleading title

[mr_matticus]

It's not a list of the 50 best technologies of all time. MP3, television, and cell phones aren't the aim of this particular list.

Instead, implementations that changed how we use technology ARE on the list. For example cell phones = Motorola StarTAC; mp3 = iPod; tcp/ip = Hayes modem/Compuserve/Netscape; television = Tivo and so on.

The purpose is not immediately clear maybe, but there's a reason why it's the 50 "best" *products* and not 50 best technologies.

WoW?

[Eddi3]

How can they put WoW up there before Starcraft? What Nerve! I demand a recount!

Re:Best operating system = Vista

[rolfc]

Vista may be best for you, but I cannot understand why it takes 7 minutes to reboot a modern computer. Besides, my tools doesnt work on vista, so I have to use an other machine to do my work.

One page link

[bobdotorg]

Unless you enjoy wading through 11 pages of served ads:

http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,130207 /printable.html

50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[Anonymous Coward]

How about ... the WHEEL?

Re:50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[aadvancedGIR]

And the Segway! Evereyone forgets how it changed the face of our cities.

Re:50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[pklong]

How about you RTFA.

Re:50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[wkk2]

The horse collar should be high on the list since it allowed the animal to pull a heavy load without choking.

Re:50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[dances with elks]

Soap

Re:50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[Glowing Fish]

Sure, I think "The Wheel" and "The Inclined Plane" are great technically, but marketing never found a way to really get their brand loyalty started in the vital 18-24 demographic.

Re:50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[Giometrix]

I was thinking the same thing. And I really hate the phrase "tech product," what does that really mean? Anything is a "tech product" when it first comes out.

Re:50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[$RANDOMLUSER]

And they did say "of All Time" ;-)

Re:50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[Hoi Polloi]

RTFA:

"Note that we're looking only at technology that has arisen since the dawn of the personal computer, so don't expect to see the cotton gin and the transistor radio on the list."

Re:50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's in charge of giving out points to people? Because they're just as bad as people who don't read the article and then think that they're witty for leaving comments like this.

This list is from PC World. Not from Scientific American or Popular Science or something like that. They preface their article by saying that they're only choosing from products created since the advent of the personal computer (you know like PC world? not cave man times...)

Sincerely,

Anonymous Cranky Bitch

Re:50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[greenguy]

What are you talking about? All I wanted when I was 18 was a set of wheels!

Re:50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[Nimey]

What's that?

Re:50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[dances with elks]

My understanding is that its some sort of explosive

Re:50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Now be honest. You only wanted the wheels so you could get the girls.

Re:50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[MyOtherUIDis3digits]

So, which is it? Arrogance that makes you believe you can intelligently comment on an article you obviously didn't read, or stupidity/lack of comprehension in that you did read the article and made that comment anyway.

Lucky for you, many moderators see no more need to RTFA to intelligently moderate than most of those commenting see it as a requisite for intelligent comments.

Now mod me to hell, and the cycle will be complete...

Bad list, forgot all of the most important tech

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Fire, circa 200,000-400,000 BC
2. Wheel, circa 6000 BC
3. Papyrus, circa 4000 BC
4. Gunpowder, circa 1050 AD
5. Printing press, 1440 AD

etc.

Re:Bad list, forgot all of the most important tech

[Anonymous Coward]

YES, I know it said digital age in the second paragraph, but the list is titled "OF ALL TIME".

Re:Bad list, forgot all of the most important tech

[giafly]

6. Weaving 7. Stone tools 8. Metal tools 9. Farming 10. Money

Re:Bad list, forgot all of the most important tech

[ideonode]

You know, if we're talking about digital technology, then I reckon that the best digital technology of all time would be opposable thumbs.

Re:Bad list, forgot all of the most important tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not forget,
11. The wheel
12. The square wheel (inspiration for most of Microsoft's technologies)

Re:Bad list, forgot all of the most important tech

[Anonymous Coward]

That was so bad I think you gave me cancer.

Re:Bad list, forgot all of the most important tech

[quorn_is_fungus]

You got that right. Somewhere further down the list should be the automatic laundry washing machine, since it helped free women to do something more meaningful.

Re:Bad list, forgot all of the most important tech

[HarvardAce]

You know, if we're talking about digital technology, then I reckon that the best digital technology of all time would be opposable thumbs.

A perfect example of why Slashdot needs a "+1, Groan" moderation.

Re:Bad list, forgot all of the most important tech

[Petrushka]

2. Wheel, circa 6000 BC

The axle, or bearing if you prefer, is a far more important invention than the wheel. If you want "wheel" to stand as a shorthand for a "wheel, axle, and bearing" combo, I'll be happier :-) And the plough should be at least number 2!

Commodore

[eddy]

At least the Amiga gets a mention... though it placed just under McAfee VIRSCAN. WTF?

It's a shame...

[Travy.b]

It really is a shame that two pieces of software in the top ten are no longer.

Word Perfect was used almost universally over MS Word in the 80's early 90's, as was the case with Lotus 1-2-3 over Excel (in fact, Excel allowed you to use the 1-2-3 commands should you so desire - wonder if that feature still exists).

Something I thought that would make the list but didn't is Quarterdeck's desqview. It allowed multitasking through DOS and a number of companies used it at the time... It wasn't perfect, but heck it was a better tech product than some of the things on that list ;)

Re:It's a shame...

[Farmer Tim]

Excel allowed you to use the 1-2-3 commands should you so desire - wonder if that feature still exists

If there's anyone who actually needs that feature, I demand to know which cryogenic facility they just stepped out of.

Re:It's a shame...

[laejoh]

Actually, Excel still alows you to do this. Search for lotus in the help and you'll find out how to activate the lotus 1-2-3 style of commands.

Re:It's a shame...

[Travy.b]

There would always be demand. Those switching from 1-2-3 to excel yet still using 1-2-3 commands are doing so because they don't want to learn yet another way of doing the same things, as a result there is always going to be that large user base still using 'old' commands.

If such a thing doesn't still exist today it's purely because there is now no real alternative from the point of view of most users.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

red hat - 1994
windows 2000 - umm, 2000?

West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[tekrat]

I hate lists like this, because they are usually revisionist history. Again, there's a heavy West Coast Bias, as if the IBM PC and Apple and Microsoft were the only tech companies that ever existed.

Where for example (as others have pointed out) is the Commodore 64, the "Model T" of computers? It's simply the single most successful computer of all time, selling more than 33 million units of a single "model" of machine, more than any other single model of machine.

And while they mention the Amiga 1000, where's the Video Toaster and Lightwave 3-D, the software that revolutionized 3-D animation on reltively cheap low-power machines? Oh sorry, that technological marvel came out of Kansas, and nothing high-tech comes out of Kansas, right?

And here's something that was developed on the west coast that deserves praise (is it on the list?) The Palm Pilot -- without which, we'd probably not have half of the other items that *are* on the list.

It always seems to me that the editors of such "lists" only remember what they themselves "played with", and if they didn't touch it with their own hands, it didn't exist and therefore isn't worth mentioning.

Also, exciting innovations such as the mouse which are made at academic think-tanks or research departments of large companies are also not worth mentioning. Do you think these editors bothered to research anything happening at MIT's media lab? Of course not. MIT after all, is on the EAST coast.

This list makes me sad that we're already forgetting important history from just a few years ago. In twenty years, people will be saying the Bill Gates invented the computer and taking that as fact.

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[ekran]

I'll second that! And I don't even know what the Blackberry is doing on the list, it's not even for sale here in Europe.

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[imsabbel]

And if you widen your horizon even more, you might notice that there is a whole world outside the us, too.
("west-coast bias". Snicker...)

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, the list is missing NeXT, the LaserWriter, the Mouse, Linux, the lisp machine, System/360, etc, etc...

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[freemywrld]

I agree with you, and have to add: why are specific versions of software listed?! I mean, for example, Photoshop 3.0? If Photoshop is revolutionary compared with all else in its class (which some I'm sure would argue that it is), then why not list 1.0 - since that is where all subsequent versions arose from. And could they really say that 4.0 was less innovative than 3.0? What about modern versions which can do so much more? I fail to understand what exactly they are basing their choices on, but I can surmise that its a fairly arbitrary decision-making process.

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree with you on this.. furthermore there seems to be a very US-centric lean to to the technology that rather sticks in my craw. What about the ZX-81 & Spectrum and the ubiquitous and fantastic Z80 processor which is STILL in use today, where as you can hardly say the same for 8086 and the like. Sorry, but list like this are just a waste of time and if you want a true representation of what were key technologies, you need to look at what it is we are still using today because they still have not come up with anything as good. Just my ha'penny's worth.

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[trash eighty]

Photoshop 3.0 introduced layers... nuff said.

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[LordSnooty]

Sad, sad USians. To them, the world really does begin and end on their shores. Tell me OP, do you really think this list was compiled with a West coast bias in mind? Or do you just think it was 50 products slung together in an afternoon to meet a deadline. Hmm?

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[eganloo]

Again, there's a heavy West Coast Bias, as if the IBM PC and Apple and Microsoft were the only tech companies that ever existed. The IBM PC was developed in Boca Raton, Florida, two counties away from the southeasternmost tip of the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[MasterOfMagic]

Key example: they list the Northgate OmniKey Ultra instead of the IBM Model M which came out five years earlier and was much better.

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[eganloo]

I hit the submit button too soon. Here's the full reply:

Again, there's a heavy West Coast Bias, as if the IBM PC and Apple and Microsoft were the only tech companies that ever existed. Read a map. The IBM PC was developed in Boca Raton, Florida, two counties away from the southeasternmost tip of the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC

And here's something that was developed on the west coast that deserves praise (is it on the list?) The Palm Pilot -- without which, we'd probably not have half of the other items that *are* on the list. Read the article. The Palm Pilot is #18.

Also, exciting innovations such as the mouse which are made at academic think-tanks or research departments of large companies are also not worth mentioning. Do you think these editors bothered to research anything happening at MIT's media lab? Of course not. MIT after all, is on the EAST coast. Read the title. The list is for the 50 best tech products. Innovations in academic labs aren't products yet, until they are sold commercially. The list does include products that were inspired by MIT's Media Lab's work.

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[Anonymous Coward]

The Jobs RDF is in full effect..

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you from New Jersey, by any chance?

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[Armageddonoutahere]

Revisionist history yes. But also if you dig deeper i`m sure you`ll find they used Diebold voting machines.

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[Anonymous Coward]

West coast bias? Six (Napster, Lotus 1-2-3, Hayes Smartmodem, Motorola StarTAC, WordPerfect, and Tetris) of the top ten were developed beyond the west coast of the United States. The #1 product (Netscape Navigator) was largely based on work done in Illinois. Tetris wasn't even created in the United States.

By my count, 28 of the products were created outside the west coast of the United States. 13 of products were not created in the United States.

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[clickclickdrone]

>it's not even for sale here in Europe.
I don't know where in Europe you are but in this part, you can't move for the damn things. Every commuter trip is a joy with people clacking away on their Blackberries like their life depended on it. Not. I reckon maybe 1 in 4 people use them around here?

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[kabocox]

This list makes me sad that we're already forgetting important history from just a few years ago. In twenty years, people will be saying the Bill Gates invented the computer and taking that as fact.

Hey, it's just like Gore inventing the internet. If you say it enough, some people will start to believe it. In 20 years when kids search about creators/inventors of the internet, Al Gore will pop up instead of the numerous techies that did build the internet.

I'd apply the same thoughts to global warming, environmentalism, religion, and evolution in general. You get "one thought" stuck in some one's head and just repeast the message over and over and over and over, and it becomes part of their belief. They might not actually "believe" in it or the presented facts of any given issue but overall the entire banner of the repeated message will be stuck in there and will be a basis for the thoughts. Think of it as those "raised Christian" but later become nonbelievers. They might not believe in Christainty, but alot of their viewpoints have been established around that mindset.

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[soliptic]

... Which has never had a chance to buy a Tivo, so putting it in the top #3 of "all time" products seems ... er... f***ing retarded.

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[sconeu]

No, they didn't. The proof is the fact that Diebold voting machines aren't even on the list. Had they used Diebold machines, it would have been #1.

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[JelloJoe]

I was with you until you said Media Lab. Maybe just use MIT next time.....the only things that have come out of the media lab are legos and stupid robots

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[Anonymous Coward]

"Again, there's a heavy West Coast Bias"

Damn Liberal Media!

Re:West Coast Bias and Revisionist History

[king-manic]

Al Gore claimed "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system." Which can be easily miscontrued as "I invented the internet." But he was stating he hand an important hand in getting the internet up. He was instrimental in the efforts to create the early internet (darpnet) so his quote is true but mincontrued and blown out of proportion.

50 Best Tech Products of All Time

[$RANDOMLUSER]

They forgot:

1. the hearth
2. the knife
3. the rasp
4. the stirrup
5. the saw
6. the steam engine
7. the light bulb

etc.

Cue:Cat

[kerouacsgp]

What no CueCat?
http://cuecat.com/

Nothing too contentious in there

[91degrees]

Surprised about the lack of Visicalc. Perhaps the Apple ][ Visicalc combo would have been a better #2. Nobody ever wanted the Apple 2. They wanted the software. People would go into computer stores and ask for "A visicalc".

Re:Nothing too contentious in there

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. I agree that Apple II should top the list as it was the peak of Apple's quality and innovation, before all things shiny took over...

However, I wanted the Apple II GS for the programming capabilities, "high res" graphics, text "windows", though the sound was somewhat lacking. Visicalc was not what I was after.

Aside: I cannot believe that RedCrap made this list.

Software choices

[tekrat]

Isn't it odd that they list applications as "tech products", as things we couldn't live without, but they completely miss software that we can't live without such as MP3, ZIP, TCP/IP, and instead list ipods, email, chatting software, etc., all of which couldn't exist without the underlying "tech products".

Re:Software choices

[east coast]

Maybe they consider it a given that the products are supported by other technologies. After all, if they didn't take some tech "for granted" (in the eyes of some slashdot users) we'd have to fill up 49 slots with other underlying technologies just to get the StarTAC on the list. Even at that point some cell-geek would be screaming that they fumbled the ball and left out a lot of stuff.

So show an ounce of forgiveness here, top list the product and the associated technologies would become an exercise in tedium. This list is more of a leisurely approach.

Re:Software choices

[eganloo]

Isn't it odd that they list applications as "tech products", as things we couldn't live without, but they completely miss software that we can't live without such as MP3, ZIP, TCP/IP, and instead list ipods, email, chatting software, etc., all of which couldn't exist without the underlying "tech products". Netscape Navigator is a product. So is Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS, Tetris, Adobe Photoshop 3.0, and the rest.

MP3 is not a "product." It's a compression format and the algorithm used to encode it. ZIP is not a "product." It is a compression format. TCP/IP is not a "product." It is a set of communications protocols.

You're complaining that a list of products should include things that aren't products.

We can't live without field irrigation either. But field irrigation isn't a "product," unlike Kellogg's Corn Flakes.

Re:Software choices

[Princeofcups]

>Isn't it odd that they list applications as "tech products", as things we couldn't live without, but they completely miss software that we can't live without
>such as MP3, ZIP, TCP/IP, and instead list ipods, email, chatting software, etc., all of which couldn't exist without the underlying "tech products".

I wouldn't call them software. MP3 is a music format standard. ZIP is a compression standard. TCP/IP is a network protocol standard. Software would be the application that implements the standard. If were looking at standards, how about ASCII, QWERTY, and Postscript.

jfs

Flash drives

[edwardpickman]

I think flash memory drives should have at least made the list. They really changed how a lot of people work. It's easy to transport files from office to home and back again. With such a large percentage of people working at least part time at home the drives make it much easier. I use them all the time to shift files from my desktop systems to my notebook. Also they credit Zip Drives but fail to list Syquest. That was really the landmark drive and they were more stable than Zip drives they just happen to be Mac based.

Revisionist history

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no Commodore products on the list. Apple is hip, but Commodore 64 outsold the Apple II with a great margin. Commodore 64 had a major influence on the generation (of nerds?) growing up in the 80's. PET existed before Apple II, and it was in the same price range as an equally equipped Apple II. What made Apple II the 'Best tech product'? The logo?

Commodore Amiga was the first real multimedia computer, it took a while for the PC's to catch up. When did the Mac get a color screen or (real) multitasking?

I see a pattern here. Commodore is ignored, and Apple is claimed all the credit.

And yes, I have an iPod and a Mac. This is still very disturbing. When the IBM PC was celebrating it's 25th birthday, many newspapers run stories on how the 'home computer' is now 25 years old. Soon people will grow up thinking that Apple invented the computer and Microsoft invented software.

Re:Best operating system = Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista may be best for you, but I cannot understand why it takes 7 minutes to reboot a modern computer.

The longer it takes to reboot, the more powerful it usually is. Seriously. Desktop machines usually POST and boot up in a minute or two, but powerful servers take 5-10 minutes just to POST through all the memory checks, RAID and SCSI interface initialization and so on. It's a wacky situation, but I guess they figure most people aren't rebooting their quad dual core Xeon system with 32 gigs of RAM and a 10 TB attached disk array much.

Keyboards?

[Anubis350]

I'm typing on a 1984 IBM M-Series right now, I like OmniKeys, but seriously, why not the Model M?

RealSound? Covox?

[Animaether]

That's not entirely true... keep in mind that Access Software (Links golf, Countdown, and various other both visually and sound-wise impressive titles) offered an option called RealSound for sound playback. This sound would go through the PC Speaker (in the era of 386 and 486, this was an actual cone speaker) and produce reasonable sound output.

In addition, long before the SoundBlaster, there was the Covox - a parallel port piece of electronics you could build at home with the right components and a soldering iron - which produced superior sound. Eventually a stereo version was able to be made and addressed as well.

Now, I'll agree that the soundblaster line of products actually kicked off the real audio revolution as finally you got great quality -without- the parallel port fidgeting.. just plunk in the card and pray you get the address, irq and whatnot settings set up right; but once they were, off you were.

Re:RealSound? Covox?

[turing_m]

"Looks like he... hit the tree Jim!"

Ah, memories.

Re:RealSound? Covox?

[hansamurai]

Hoooooly crap, and all these years here I thought I was the only one to ever hear that...

Re:RealSound? Covox?

[WMD_88]

I've heard it too. The game is pretty tough to get working these days...natively, it only works in pure DOS, and DOSBox performance with it isn't great.
The really amazing thing was that, sound aside, the game was horrible - and I couldn't stop playing!

Re:RealSound? Covox?

[elgatozorbas]

Ooohhh. Can't be too happy 'bout that one!

Re:RealSound? Covox?

[Sigma 7]

That's not entirely true... keep in mind that Access Software (Links golf, Countdown, and various other both visually and sound-wise impressive titles) offered an option called RealSound for sound playback. This sound would go through the PC Speaker (in the era of 386 and 486, this was an actual cone speaker) and produce reasonable sound output.

I remember something like this used for other games. There's a few problems, though:

- It has one physical channel.
- It's volume is fixed - you can't adjust it without turning it off.
- It does not work with Windows - attempts to do so will cause the game to hang at best.
- It's slightly more CPU intensive than the earliest of soundcards, especially when mixing MIDI and digitized sound.

An example of sound played through the speaker going wrong would by Silpheed (the original Dos game.) There was an attempt to play digitized speech, but it's hard to make out on modern systems due to the speakers not being sufficient.

Re:RealSound? Covox?

[Trogre]

Hey you remember the same game I do.

Absolutely marvellous putt!

Re:RealSound? Covox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool. I hadn't realized they made a PC product too. When I had my 8-bit Atari, they were the hot setup for it too. The Covox Voice Master was setup so you could record speech into the machine, and have your program play it back at appropriate times. The Atari had the music and sound effects covered OK. Maybe it even used the same technology? The Atari had some crazy expansion ports, so it could probably have hooked in parallel port style to one of those.

Huh?

[MadTinfoilHatter]

45. Red Hat Linux (1994)
Picking a watershed Linux distribution is tough. Literally hundreds have existed over the years, though only a few have advanced the state of the art. Red Hat was critically important for beginning the move (however tentative) toward making Linux beginner-friendly and easier to install. While development of Red Hat was discontinued in 2003, it directly spawned successors like Ubuntu, which aim to make desktop use of Linux commonplace.

WTF!? Ubuntu is based on Debian, not Red Hat. Also, development of Red Hat didn't stop in 2003 - it was just split into RHEL & Fedora. Pretty har to take an article that flawed seriously.

Re:Huh?

[TheNetAvenger]

Compuserve?... That bloated, expensive, pretend internet thing that became AOL... that Compuserve? In the top 50?


Prior to the days when kiddies expected a specific Compuserve interface that was bloated, there were the days that Compuserve was a rather robust community BBS system that was complete text based interface giving access to extensive forums, news searches, stocks, weather and other services.

Even MS required beta testers to have Compuserve IDs to participate in Beta programs prior to the Web.

For its time Compuserve was the king of online communities and did it better than anyone else. Remember this is from the timeframe when the 'Internet' was limited to gov and edu exclusively, and not everyone had access, compuserve was the 'commercial' version of connecting regular people.

Also this is where Al Gore comes into play when he worked to get the internet opened to everyone, and thus resulting in there no longer being a need for Compuserve as a content provider or connection point.

Re:Huh?

[sharkey]

And, apparently the display of version info and a copyright warning in a modal dialog in IE is evidence that Microsoft are using some of Netscape's source code.

Re:Huh?

[BlueTrin]

Compuserve? Compuserve?... That bloated, expensive, pretend internet thing that became AOL... that Compuserve? In the top 50? *Checks date to see if it's still 1st April*

Obviously, by reading your post and trying to determine its utility, I know that you were not on Compuserve.

Re:Huh?

[Kjella]

Translation: Red Hat dropped the ball on the Linux desktop, Fedora became a mostly unknown testbed for RHEL. Face it, they haven't done much to make Fedora the Linux desktop. As for Ubuntu, it is much more a succssor of RHL than Grokster was to Napster, at least in the code sense.

Re:Huh?

[sanyacid]

WTF!? Ubuntu is based on Debian, not Red Hat. My english isn't very good, but I think that you have misunderstood that phrase. What they say is that Ubuntu is one of the next successful distributions that came after Red Hat. They are not saying that Ubuntu came out of or is based on Red Hat.

Re:Huh?

[solanum]

And surely Slackware should be there rather than Red Hat(not that I've used it in 8 or 9 years) as they invented the idea of a Linux distribution. I'm not sure there would ever have been Red Hat if it wasn't for Slackware.

Re:Huh?

[clickclickdrone]

Compuserve was pretty special back in the day. I used to use it in the UK and it was worth the humungous call fees back then because of what it provided in terms of forums, files, chat rooms etc. There really was nothing else like it and in these days it's all too easy to forget that. Everything else was basic BBS's.

Re:Huh?

[TrappedByMyself]

Both of their statements are correct unless you go out of your way to misinterpret them.

Re:Huh?

[east coast]

Bloated? My VT100 terminal software on my C=64 and Amiga was bloated? CompuServe was one hell of a service at a point in time. Granted, it's a shell of what it use to be but let's not forget the past just because they're no longer the front runners in present.

Or don't you know of the past where CompuServe was as close as some people got to the internet without being students and such?

It's odd to look back now and realize that I'm dealing with the up and coming generation who never knew BBSs, user groups and CompuServe.

Re:Huh?

[bhsx]

Slackware didn't invent the idea of Linux distributions. IIRC, Yggdrasil was out before Slackware was, but Slackware was based on Softlanding Linux Systems(SLS). Yggdrasil was the first one I remember trying out, and it was a pain in the neck; but it was a distro. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution

Re:Huh?

[moonbender]

I can still remember my very first forays onto the real net, way back then, using my older brother's Compuserve account. I had lots of experience with local Apple BBS, but Compuserve was a whole different beast. Horribly expensive, too, mostly because there was no local dial in port, so I was limited to a few 10 minute sessions. It was tantalising, only just enough time to see there was so much out there, but far too short to have any idea how to really use the medium. I think all I did apart from clicking around with wide eyes was download two or three really small shareware games.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if I can try interpret what they meant was that Redhat abandoned trying to create a desktop version around then (workstation version is targetted for tech users and not the general desktop). Redhat had the market and by leaving that niche they left room for other distributions in that area, Ubuntu being one (and likely the best).

I'm not going to argue the point as I don't really care what the heck they meant... But the literal and non literal interpretations can be very different.

Anony posting word... coliseum... was that located near bacterium?

no google, no search engines at all

[bazorg]

So... Compuserve deserves a spot on the list as the first major BBS, Napster is the best thing since sliced bread because it shaped the way consumers use music, but there are no search engines on the top50. The people who wrote this list must be Gopher zealots or something.

Re:no google, no search engines at all

[tekrat]

Yeah, their software selections seem pretty random too. For example, they list hardware (Apple II) and then explain that it ran Visicalc in the description for the Apple II. But they list the IPOD and ITUNES as seperate items. WTF? Would the iPod have ever caught on without iTunes? Ugh.

Then of course, they list email programs, but they completely ignore Adobe Acrobat and the PDF file format, arguably more important than Macafee Virus Scan or Spybot.

In all, I find this list to be really, really bad.
I could have come up with better choices and written it in one evening.

Re:no google, no search engines at all

[cibyr]

Would the iPod have ever caught on without iTunes? I tend to think of it the other way - would iTunes have ever caught on without the iPod? I love my iPod, but I can't stand that software.

Huh?

[owlnation]

Compuserve?

Compuserve?... That bloated, expensive, pretend internet thing that became AOL... that Compuserve? In the top 50?

*Checks date to see if it's still 1st April*

Re:Best operating system = Vista

[rolfc]

I am talking about a desktop, dual core , 3,5 Gb memory, Sata disks. HP top line

It's 2007. We don't reboot no more.

[MarkByers]

> Vista may be best for you, but I cannot understand why it takes 7 minutes to reboot a modern computer.

Why reboot? Use hibernate. You'll be up and running in a matter of seconds, and even better... all your applications are still open.

Re:It's 2007. We don't reboot no more.

[rolfc]

Yes we do, since reboot is needed for updates and hibernate doesnt handle login-scripts so we have to logout. Once a week I reboot. ;)

Re:Best operating system = Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't let him "squirt" on me! Yes OK, Windows Vesta is the
best OS!

Hey! Don't diss the Voodoo 3

[Anonymous Coward]

It was an excellent card for its price. I would still have use it if not for buggy XP drivers, hell for FPS stability it beat out the GF4mx that replaced it.

Re:Hey! Don't diss the Voodoo 3

[Rastignac]

I'm still using mine ! It works fine.
And there are unofficial XP drivers still being developped: SFFT drivers (for Voodoo 3/4/5). See http://www.3dfxzone.it/news/puntatore.php?uid=4580

Re:Hey! Don't diss the Voodoo 3

[imsabbel]

I owned one myself.
It was not _bad_. It was just really average. Thus it sticks out in a "best of all time" list.

Re:Hey! Don't diss the Voodoo 3

[rtechie]

You're not remembering correctly. The Voodoo3 was critically panned at release because a Voodoo3 was marginally slower than a single Voodoo2 and dramatically slower than 2 Voodoo2s in SLI. So for the gamer that had already invested in a 2D card (like a Riva TNT2) and 2 Voodoo2s in SLI the Voodoo 3 actually represented a step backwards. The Geforce, which was released shortly after, was widely regarded as being superior due to it's support for hardware transform & lighting.

3DFx never really recaptured the success of the Voodoo2. It's THAT card that should be regarded as the "best of all time".

Who really cares?

[PHAEDRU5]

The trip down memory lane is sort of nice, but who really cares?

That said, I was happy to find a link to the CVT Avant Stellar keyboard.

Re:Who really cares?

[weaselope]

I agree with Photoshop, but what about Kid Pix!

Where was zsnes?

[pi4arctan1guy]

Seriously, what the hell? Why didn't zsnes make the list?

The Voodoo *3* ?!?!?

[DrYak]

I can't understand why they specifically choose the Voodoo 3 to represent 3Dfx.

I can understand that they choose to mention 3Dfx : the company played a key role introducing hardware accelerated 3d to the masses who up to that point mostly had only software flat shaded pixelated polygons.

They could have picked up the Voodoo Graphics, as the first affordable 3D card, whereas before hardware 3D was something only used by movie studios.
They could have picked up the Voodoo 2, one of the most popular 3d card (and from a technical point of view, whose dual pipelines where behind the shadow map used by most FPS games) and with very good longevity, thanks to the SLI technology.
They could have picked up the later Voodoo 4/5, the first card to introduce the antialiasing effects and similar (was a small revolution in term of quality) and initiator of open-source compression (still found in Intel's chips).

But the voodoo 3 ? It has almost no new characteristics (appart from a slightly better pseudo-22bits filter), it's not even the first all-in-one 2D & 3D card nor the first AGP (both from 3Dfx - previous was the banshee - or from concurrence).
It's a nice card, with a couple of nice features (better quality at 16bits thanks to filters), but it basically looked like any other card on the market.

(Note: Have all the line from Voodoo 1 to Voodoo 5. Though no leaked Rampage prototype).

Re:The Voodoo *3* ?!?!?

[Junks Jerzey]

The Voodoo 1 was a huge deal. It put 3D cards on the map for personal computers. All that 3D research from the 1970s and 1980s suddenly came to the forefront. There were other 3D cards at the time, but nothing so capable.

The Voodoo 2 was a tremendous leap in power. One generation of improvements and it was over 3x faster.

The Voodoo 3 was more of an incremental improvement. It was better, but not amazingly better and 3dfx was losing market to NVidia by that time.

Re:The Voodoo *3* ?!?!?

[linzeal]

The voodoo 3 sold more copies than the other two. You can still see them in Fry's Electronics every blue moon it seems they find 10-12 more of them to sell for 20 bucks.

top 50 ?

[chrisranjana.com]

What were the basis of their ranking ?

Re:top 50 ?

[YrWrstNtmr]

What were the basis of their ranking ?

Apparently, it was who smoked the most crack that morning.

I don't think so...

[bacon55]

World of Warcraft, before the NES?!?! Were the writers huffing paint? The NES was pretty much the best console for a decade - WoW isn't 4 years old yet, and doesn't have a quarter the market that Nintendo pretty much created. Atari barely scratched the surface until that thing came around and introduced something beyond the basic arcade game to the home user.

Re:Best operating system = Vista

[SenseiLeNoir]

Ok, I am not a Windows or a Linux zealot, I use both OSes and also Mac OSX. EAch OS has their strength and weaknesses.. but I cant stand the typical "Linux Zealot" mentality.

7 Mins to start an OS? That is an exaggeration?

Neither my Windows or Linux boxes take that long to start, even with Vista. In fact, currently, my Linux Boxen take on average longer than the Windows ones, that is including starting X.

and the typical "besides, my tools don't work on Vista"

Tell me, what is wrong with Re-Compiling the tools using Cygwin, or whatever? It shouldn't be difficult right? Especially if you are already a Linux so called "power user"...

I have all my platforms containing all the tools I need, recompiling where necessary, and i have a growing collection of Java based tools which don't need recompiling.

Yggdrasil?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what made the author decide that Redhat was so noteworthy, Yggdrasil dates back to 1992 and is the first CD based (live) distro - predating Knoppix by years. And this is back in the days of OS/2 coming on 30+ floppies.

Re:Not 'best' but 'innovative'

[BlueTrin]

They should have called it, "the most innovative we just remembered during our coffee break this morning after partying until 4AM"

No search engines?

[meringuoid]

I see browsers and ISPs, but no search. Where in the name of all buggeration is Google?

Re:No search engines?

[Rasgueado]

I agree. Although I would personally suggest webcrawler, which (I think) was the first user friendly and widely used search engine.

Re:No search engines?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Mountain View.

No, really. See, it's a service, not a product.

Re:No search engines?

[Traa]

Perhaps because Google search is a service, not a product.

Mosaic Browser

[Lex-Man82]

According to this article Netscape code is used in Internet Explorer!

Re:Mosaic Browser

[Guerilla* Napalm]

That explains everything. Doesn't it?

The basis of their ranking

[unity100]

is that they are publishing/designer people, and all their choices reflect that.

one major example they chose amiga over commodore 64. commodore was a precedent for all to follow. many programmers who are regularing slashdot have cut their teeth on that. we have seen the rise of the cracker scene and groups on that. many people, trend and groups who have set today's IT made their advent on c64.

but those people chose amiga. why ? because they are graphics/designer/publishing people. and all the choices reflect that - almost a third of what they chose as software and hardware are publishing/designing items.

a very biased, and failed article that is.

Re:The basis of their ranking

[BuR4N]

"is that they are publishing/designer people, and all their choices reflect that. one major example they chose amiga over commodore 64."

I think that Apple have seven spots on the list proves it better.

From the article:
"The Apple II may not have been the first personal computer, but it was the spark that ignited the personal computing industry."

Its one of the computers that ignited it, there are other more important contributors then the ridiculs overpriced (at release US$1298) Apple II. For example the VIC 20, C64, TRS 81 and the Sinclair Spectrum.

Re:The basis of their ranking

[unity100]

yes. despite being just ~31 years of age, i remember playing zx spectrum

Re:The basis of their ranking

[Anonymous Coward]

unity100 wrote:
>
> but those people chose amiga. why ? because they are graphics/designer/publishing people.
> and all the choices reflect that - almost a third of what they chose as software
> and hardware are publishing/designing items.

Um... the Amiga never even made a dent in the graphics/designer/publishing market. That market was and continues to be dominated by the Mac. The markets Amiga was significant in were gaming and video.

So please get your facts straight before you accuse others of revisionism.

Re:The basis of their ranking

[unity100]

thats worse then.

someone pointed out there was 7 places for apple in their top 50. minus one amiga from my analysis, that makes them more mac fanboys.

Re:Best operating system = Vista

[rolfc]

No, I wrote 7 minutes to reboot Vista. 5 minutes to close it down and 2 minutes to boot. Besides that, I dont mind compiling my tools, but that is only necessary if you have the source, so I cannot Re-Compile.

That said, most things work on Vista but not everything. So in order to take my assignments from helpdesk, I need another machine with XP or Windows 2000. I cannot choose tools always, and I cannot force other people to choose the tools I want.

Debian is a beauty in this aspect. It comes with all the tools we need for building servers, upgrades are easy och stability good. There is no better Operating System.

Now I am going on holidays, and wont waste more time here. ;)

Nothing earlier than 1977?

[Eevee]

No Multics? No VAX or PDP systems? No SUN? So we magically jumped from the mainframe data center to the personal computer with nothing in between? Hell, there's not even a token mention of the mainframe. Complete load of crap from people who haven't a clue there is more to the world than the desktop.

Mentioned under IIe, but they have it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

They mentioned it under the IIe. But they have it wrong calling 'em toys. (Save that for Franklin, TI, and Tandy.) The Commodore 64/128 and Atari XL/XE series had more computational oomph to them than any cruddy Apple IIe or typical 8-bit PC of the time. (I don't think the IIe or early pre-486 PC's had the sound channels, graphics modes, sprites, blitter/interupt, basic programming supporting shorthand, etc.) Don't confuse the computer's power for lack of software support for apps other than games in most of the U.S. Honestly, Apple wasn't anything remarkable until the Mac came about. ...Also where's mah optical mouse?!

snes

[Oxygenswe]

snes should definitely be on that list... many good memories

Time started in 1980, apparently...

[argent]

There's only two products in that list released before 1980, and they're both products that would have still been interesting to teenagers in 1980. It looks like none of the people having anything to do with this list were aware of anything that happened before then.

My List

[rlp]

My list would include:

1) Personal Computer
2) Word Processing
3) Ethernet LAN
4) Mouse
5) Graphical User Interface
6) Laser Printer

In other words, products from Xerox PARC.

Re:My List

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that Apple LISA should be on top of the list!

Re:My List

[evilviper]

3) Ethernet LAN

Meh. Ethernet is good, but if not for ethernet, something _better_ might be in-place today. It certainly wasn't the only networking technology of the time.

4) Mouse

Boo!!! I'd be much happier if the mouse was never invented. Everything could be done much faster. Now everything is built for the mouse, keyboard navigation is utterly neglected. Links is the only web browser with good keyboard navigation, but it is feature-lacking today.

Re:My List

[ABoerma]

To which I would like to add:

7) UNIX & C.
8) The fax
9) The transistor

In other words, stuff from Bell Labs.

Re:My List

[rlp]

> In other words, stuff from Bell Labs.

And the Laser, C++ (originally "C with Classes"), and the Windowing UI (BLIT).

Re:My List

[Myopic]

That's not a bad list, but it's a list of technologies, whereas the list in The Fucking Article was a list of products.

So, instead of the Personal Computer, they list a couple personal computers; instead of Word Processing, they list a word processor; instead of the GUI, they list a couple GUI operating systems.

And behind the internet ...

[mikeraz]

DNS? No listing for the software that allows us to type "www.pcworld.com" instead of "70.42.185.10"? Sendmail? Where is our email without the server software? Apache? Where's youre #1 pick without web servers to connect to? Not even a generic plumbing or infrastrcutre listing for these vital programs that make the Internet function. Shame on those guys.

No, Creative did not invent the sound card

[dabadab]

And what exactly had the SB16 to do with "realistic polyphonic sound/music"?... For music, mostly its FM synth was used which was everything but realistic-sounding. It had a single digital channel, which, in fact, did not differ much from the internal speaker as far as technology goes.
SB16 was introduced in the same year (1992) as the Gravis Ultrasound, which, in contrast, had a 32 channel sample-based synthetiser with antialiasing and this card was largely responsible for creating the PC module scene. Since the GUS came with detailed programming information (very unlike the SB16) and it could off-load sound mixing from the CPU (mixing a few digital channels to 44.1 kHz 16 bit stereo sound was a big task for a 486DX2-66) it quickly became the de-facto standard in the demo scene and the games which natively supported it sounded really good when compared to the beep-beep of the SB16.
But, going a little bit further, there was the Paula, the sound chip of the Amiga which also offered HW-mixed sample playback in the mid-80's.
And, finally, there's the SID, the music chip of the C64, designed by Robert Yannes (Ensoniq co-founder) which - despite its relatively simplistic design - was the first audio chip in home computers that enabled creating complex music.

Going on an other direction, Aureal was the company that brought real 3D sound to the PC (although GUS also made some early attempts) that was superior to Creative's technology.

(Oh, yeah, both Gravis and Aureal was driven out of business by Creative's less than admirable tactics, in the case of Aureal only to buy the technology and let it rot. That's really something that helped the advance of the PC sound, isn't it?)

So, well, i am not sure what the hell does SB16 on this list, since it was neither really innovative, nor really good, not even a good quality product (it was awfully noisy).

Re:No, Creative did not invent the sound card

[atrizzah]

Sure the Soundblaster wasn't state-of-the-art, but it definitely did set the standard for PC audio. For years afterward, every game had a "Soundblaster-compatible" option. Any other card was hit or miss.

Re:No, Creative did not invent the sound card

[Anonymous Coward]

(Oh, yeah, both Gravis and Aureal was driven out of business by Creative's less than admirable tactics, in the case of Aureal only to buy the technology and let it rot. That's really something that helped the advance of the PC sound, isn't it?)

Creative did the same thing with 3dfx. Assholes.

Re:No, Creative did not invent the sound card

[StikyPad]

nVidia bought 3dfx.

The list in misnamed

[brokeninside]

It should have been titled, the fifty most commercially influential consumer grade ITproducts of the last thirty years. Electrical power plants, water treatment plants and the internal combustion engine (just to name three technical innovations) have far more impact on every day life than any of the products on that list. Or even relational databases and computer warehousing. Here's another example, the credit revolution that began in the eighties was entirely dependent on large mainframes being able to interconnect with various data sources to compile a credit score that has changed the way people work, shop and live far more than the number one product on that list, Netscape Navigator.

Re:The list in misnamed

[gordo3000]

but then even things on the list don't match that. something like the apple airport is meaningless as it had almost no impact on the wireless market. I actually never heard of apple's networking gear until about 2005 and I never heard a single person in my life say apple was the company that brought wireless networking to the forefront.

I also find it odd iTunes made the list as well as Napster. Napster basically created the entire market for downloadable music. All apple did with iTunes was provide a place to pay for music, one of many that was spurred into development by the rise and fall of Napster. my point isn't that iTunes is undeserving of credit for being the online music store today. My problem is taking one market that is still in its infancy and basically giving it two spots on the top 50 list.

And of course, if you are going to credit someone with realizing an idea like selling movies or music online, you probably have to credit Enron for trying with its internet services arm(which had at one time a deal with Blockbuster to sell movies over broadband). They were the first to attempt implementation(though it did fail).

OSS one?

[oliverthered]

What about OS X, that was based on OSS and so was the TIVIO.

and if I'm being really picky windows contains some once BSD licensed code.

Notable Snubs

[EveryNickIsTaken]

NCSA Mosaic Sony Playstation 2 Novell Netware MySQL

Where's the wheel?

[Grebekel]

Any "Best tech of all time" list that does not list the wheel is bogus. What would I do if my chair didn't have 5 sets of wheels on it? Walk? As if...

Re:Where's the wheel?

[Rashdot]

And what about beer?

And birth control? Oh sorry, wrong croud.

Re:Where's the wheel?

[BertieBaggio]

What would I do if my chair didn't have 5 sets of wheels on it? Walk? As if...

"Mr Grebekel, sir? There's a Mr Ballmer on the line for you..."

USB...

[Aphrika]

Ok, while strictly not a product in its own right, USB was one of the defining moments in the 90's for technology - even my digital radio has a USB port on it.

I suppose if you were to associate USB with any one machine, it'd be the iMac, which did a lot for propelling it forward by ditching the ADB ports and floppy, ushering in a new age for peripherals (which unfortunately came in crappy gel colours too)...

Windows 95

[MECC]

Windows 95 makes it (better looking than MacOS? Give me a break...) but not WindowsNT/OS3warp? What the hell kind of crap is that? That kind of ignorant oversight taints the entire list.

Re:Windows 95

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly! Windows 95 is on the list yet Windows 2000, widely considered the best M$ OS ever is left out? This makes no sense... Windows XP was also better than Windows 95. I say this list is bogus.

Re:Windows 95

[borkus]

OS/2 and NT were the technological predecessors to '95. However, Windows 95 made the several key features of 32 OSes availabe to the masses.

1. A built-in 32-bit IP stack. Before 95 when you had to actually buy a winsock stack (or you could use the amazingly obtuse one in Windows for Workgroups). With 95, every desktop PC had TCP/IP and with it, the ability to connect to the Internet.

2. Improved stability. Okay, improved stability relative to Windows 3.1, but that was still a big milestone. I remember teaching a class of desktop support folks about Windows 95 and one of the stunts I'd do would be to pull out the network cable and try to browse the network in Win95. Of course, you wouldn't get any resources, but the whole system wouldn't freeze up either like it did in DOS/Win 3.1.

3. Driver support beyond the DOS upper memory limits. I can remember beating on config.sys and autoexec.bat files to get a PC to recognize a network card, a sound card, a mouse and a CD drive under DOS. Driver support was far from flawless under Windows 95, but the initial version of Plug-N-Play was a vast improvement.

Built-in network connectivity, system stability and support for multiple peripherals are a given for most OSes today, but back in the mid-90s it wasn't the case.

Calculator - missing??

[richardoz]

Seems to me that these should be on the list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculator/

Re:Calculator - missing??

[C_Kode]

It's not there because the Abacus kicks it's ass. ;)

mod up

[duffel]

The parent comment is the most insightful comment I've seen in a long while. Where are those points when you need them?

One of the best lists I've seen

[smchris]

As an old guy who was playing with a Commodore at home before he got his hands on a green screen 4.77 mhz dual-floppy IBM PC at work I can appreciate the depth of thought that went into this selection. A lot of people may never have seen a lot of these programs or hardware but they were huge at the time.

I would have liked to have thrown Borland a bone. If not for all the people who learned Turbo Pascal 3, maybe for Quattro Pro for Windows 3.1 instead of Xcel. I can still remember when PC Magazine gave them top honors for best tabbed Windows spreadsheet before they went all-Microsoft all-the-time.

Lotus 1-2-3 USB?!

[Anonymous Coward]

How is an ancient piece of software a better technological advance than the development of something like USB or DRAM? These things still impact our daily lives world wide, even if you don't own a PC! Come on, its like the editor just ran through a list of things he likes from when he was younger and then just added anything after 20!

30. Apple Mac OS X (2001)?!?!!

[Anonymous Coward]

COME ON!?!?! The entire list is crap if this item made it. OSX 10.0 was so freaking bad apple didn't even ship it as the primary OS on its systems until OSX 10.2!!!!

On top of that the original OSX 10.0 was so shi**y they quickly (within 8 months) pushed out a FREE version upgrade called OSX 10.1- frankly OSX 10.0 was so buggy and bad it was insult.

I'm so sick of these Apple fanboys. This one is over the top though. When OSX was first released it was without a doubt one of the crappiest OS releases the world had ever SEEN! WAY WORSE than anything MS has put out.

Like I said, it was so bad Apple gave away 10.1 within the year, and since then has charged for all their other OS upgrades 10.2, 10.3, etc. I'm not comenting on the quality of OSX 10.4 today, but back in 2001 it was complete crap. This article was written by ankle grabbing apple fan boys-

and no Google Maps or Google Earth, either

[chrism238]

As mentioned by others, there's no search engines, but what about Google Maps or Google Earth? They provide an amazing software service where you don't need to visit a 10 year old atlas, when you can visit a 2 month old actual photograph (Katrina withstanding)! Some amazing omissions in their list!

A few missing

[nightsweat]

The transistor. The silicon wafer. Internet porn.

you don't get it

[amyhughes]

You don't get it, and that's why you'll never create anything as memorable as any of these. What kind of metric would you propose be used to compare spreadsheets to ipods?

Each of these was (or still is) important in its time, but ranking things so diverse is a subjective and emotional thing. No surprise, subjective and emotional things make for memorable products, too.

Go ahead and calculate the next big thing, though. Someone with more imagination will kick yer butt in the market.

Re:you don't get it

[motumboe]

You don't get it, and that's why you'll never create anything as memorable as any of these Can you explain this consecution? Cheers, Marco

Re:you don't get it

[thsths]

> What kind of metric would you propose be used to compare spreadsheets to ipods?

While I agree that it is difficult, exactly this was done to create the list. For example, they decided that the iPod is more important than GMail. How would you do that? I don't know, but they think they do. For course the fact alone is only half-news (half-true?), unless you can also follow the reasoning. Which is exactly the point the grandparent made. There you are.

Re:you don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

But they claim their ranking is more than subjective "Many have laid claim to being the "best ever" in their respective fields of work, but only one can top the list."

Re:you don't get it

[Sj0]

If you can't determine a metric, then it's your own lack of creativity doing so. I can think of a number of quantitative benchmarks which could be used to determine the impact a product has; Number of imitators, market penetration, number of articles in the press after a set time period, the initial acceleration of sales, lots.

Go ahead and be an artsy fartsy 'Nothing can ever be determined, everything is completely random and unknowable', Ian Malcom.

Apple multimedia

[PrayingWolf]

I'm glad they have HyperCard on the list (41st). Apple really led the way in multimedia in the early 90s. The earliest "multimedia" PCs were pretty pathetic when viewed by a Mac-user who was used to real sound (not beeps) and high-res graphics.
FTA (30.):

Many observers claim that Microsoft Vista's Aero is a brazen rip-off of OS X's Aqua interface.

Amen. Still just a poorly made copy. Vista is not on the list...
sig?

Re:Apple multimedia

[mdwh2]

Apple really led the way in multimedia in the early 90s. The earliest "multimedia" PCs were pretty pathetic when viewed by a Mac-user who was used to real sound (not beeps) and high-res graphics.

You mean "led the way" as in "better than rubbish PCs", just like all those other platforms led the way also.

Re:DSLR

[mwvdlee]

The Canon Digital Rebel is on the list because it was the FIRST digital SLR to be affordable.

Most of the items on the list were chosen not because they were the best (which is subjective anyway), but because they were the first or because they significantly changed our world or the market.

Microsoft bashing is de rigeur for slashdot.,.

[way2trivial]

I'm sick and tired of all the anti-microsoft slant to slashdot..
continually minimizing microsofts effort to the world of personal computing...

Microsoft did not have TWO, they had at least 4 of the above.
Microsoft deserves credit for #36 and #24 as they were directly responsible for bringing them about.

And Netscape 1.0 wasn't just as buggy?

[brokeninside]

The list was supposed to be of the top products that changed the way people compute. Several buggy crapfests were on the list from Microsoft's Excel and Windows 95 to Netscape Navigator 1.0. But buggy or not, these products were best of breed and fundamentally changed the consumer technology marketplace. OS X has not only radically altered Apple's product line but also has greatly influenced Microsoft's Windows and many of the operating environments for *nix.

Now, you might have a point if they defined `top' as `most defect free.' But they didn't.

Automotive ECU and other embedded devices

[tcgroat]

The embedded microprocessor came to the fore at the same time as the gadgets on the list, yet it gets no respect from PC Magazine. In particular, that embedded controller known as the "ECU" has caused dramatic improvements in automotive fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions, and automatically adapts to maintain that performance for years between tune-ups. That's an important innovation in my book.

Is PC Magazine more impressed by chrome than by what's under the hood?

``all apple did was provide a place to pay''

[brokeninside]

That fundamentally altered the way the way people think of music and the internet. Same for Napster. Sure, there was file sharing before Napster and online purchasing of music before ITMS. But before Napster and ITMS, this was the realm of the geek rather than the everyday joe. Napster and ITMS fundamentally changed the way that most people looked at these things.

I suspect that you don't talk about computers very often to everyday people. For many, if not most, Airport is synonymous with Wireless networking. If I tell my father-in-law that I bought a new 802.11g wireless router, he looks at me in bewilderment. If I tell him it's like an Airport, he knows what it is despite the fact that he doesn't own any Apple hardware or software. (His computer is Dell.)

And you yourself point out why Enron was not influential. They failed. Not only did they fail, the failed without even making a big splash in that particular market. All the products on the list were winners for quite some time and the ones that eventually failed only did so after tremendously influencing the competition.

Look at their choices for the top digital cameras. They chose the ones that made it easy for people rather than the first out of the gate. Efforts like the Sony Mavica (and its floppy drive) brought a certain mass appeal to the market niche that previous efforts lacked.

Re:``all apple did was provide a place to pay''

[rtechie]

That fundamentally altered the way the way people think of music and the internet. Same for Napster. Sure, there was file sharing before Napster and online purchasing of music before ITMS. But before Napster and ITMS, this was the realm of the geek rather than the everyday joe. Napster and ITMS fundamentally changed the way that most people looked at these things.

It's STILL the realm of the geek. Virtually nobody uses iTunes to purchase music. (And that's according to Steve Jobs himself. 97% of the music on iPods doesn't come from iTunes). iTunes was simply slicker than MusicMatch and bundled with easily the most popular MP3 player available. People are using it because it's the default, and because Apple has made it difficult to use other music organizers.

However, non-geeks DID use Napster, because it was easy (they could handle downloaded tracks however they wanted and downloading tracks was really just click and drag for many users) and, much more importantly, it was FREE so it was available to kids. It's only very recently, through cell charges, that paid downloadable music became available to kids. And iTunes doesn't support that (not until the iPhone anyway).

I suspect that you don't talk about computers very often to everyday people. For many, if not most, Airport is synonymous with Wireless networking.

I've never met a single person who identified wireless with the Airport or Apple in any way. That includes Apple employees. Where I live, networking in general is almost symonymous with Cisco and Linksys. In fact, I've encountered some confusion regarding Apple products as most people I've talked to are more familiar with the concept of "wireless routers" rather than separate hotspots.

And you yourself point out why Enron was not influential. They failed. Not only did they fail, the failed without even making a big splash in that particular market.

Enron was very influential. Their "energy market" business model completely changed the way the energy business worked and those changes remain today in other companies. Enron was a very successful company, in no way was their business model unprofitable or unsuccessful. They just got greedy.

TiVo???

[bradavon]

Tivo is only big in The Statess. In the UK for example it's virtually non-existent with Sky+ the dominant PVR. Sky+ and Tivo being very similar. It's not as if Tivo is even unique, it's just a brand of PVR. Pioneer, Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba all produce one too.

Re:TiVo???

[swordgeek]

The same could be said about pretty much any of the products on the list, but the nod should go to the one that had the greatest impact. Tivo isn't available in many countries, but where other PVRs are the norm, Tivo is still the one that started the revolution, and deserves to be recognised as such.

Oh fuck!

[xtracto]

Well, that list is kinda wrong... the first place should go to the TV ... or more generally to the "display Screen " as none of those "technologies" would exist without it, then, how can "Compuserve" be in that list? "Microsoft Excel??" QPro was 1. First and 2. Better by a million times... "IOmega Zip Drive"?? that was a COMPLETE FAILURE... bah

Anyway, those kinds of Top X lists are stupid...

Redhat != Ubuntu

[jshriverWVU]

"While development of Red Hat was discontinued in 2003, it directly spawned successors like Ubuntu, which aim to make desktop use of Linux commonplace." Nice article but not always correct. Ubuntu is a decedent of Debian not Redhat.

Re:Redhat != Ubuntu

[tripa]

"While development of Red Hat was discontinued in 2003, it directly spawned successors like Ubuntu, which aim to make desktop use of Linux commonplace." Nice article but not always correct. Ubuntu is a decedent of Debian not Redhat.

Descendent and successor aren't the same thing.

Re:Redhat != Ubuntu

[jshriverWVU]

Descendent and successor aren't the same thing. I'll concede to that. Didn't look at it that way.

email

[Anonymous Coward]

email has had an enormous impact on the way people live today.
Eudora made it on the list, but eudora wouldn't have been conceived if sendmail hadn't made email between various architectures possible.
Sure, I'm a postfix guy these days, but I'd be willing to bet that sendmail has always had more "users" than eudora.
In fact, if it we'ren't for sendmail I doubt the netscape IPO would have been what it was.

123 beats Visicalc?

[massysett]

Strange they forgot Visicalc. It was the first big-time spreadsheet. Arguably more important than 123.

Even more strange is that they forgot Visicalc but then gave top rank to the Apple II. Visicalc was the killer app for the Apple II. People bought Apple II just so they could use Visicalc. WIthout Visicalc, who knows if Apple II would ever have been so big?

Oh well, I will just join all the other people on here who will leave comments about how dumb the list is. Dvorak is often an idiot, but he is right when he says that the editors just sit around in a room with donuts and jot down what they think should be on a list. How else should they do it, anyway...

No shit. Where's Slackware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slackware was the distro that jumpstarted the rise of Linux. In the D/FW Texas metro area, Slackware was already gaining lots of popularity amongst computer enthusiasts by late 1993. That's when I downloaded my first set of Slackware floppy images from a dialup BBS using a 2400 baud modem.

PS: At least they did get the order of two items in the list correct... DooM was more important than Windows 95 ;-P

My list of tops

[JoeCommodore]

MicroSoft BASIC (1976ish) - Most BASIC dialects and computers of the 80s were either running a variation of MicroSoft BASIC or something quite similar. Many of us /.ers got our first computer experience programming BASIC. Commodore 64 (the sound chip was something not seen before on a computer) Atari 800 - The gamer computer of the day (four joyports! Star Raiders) TRS-80 model 100 - A laptop computer w/modem running for tens of hours on 4 AA batteries. Nuf said. Epson 740i - as a quality color inkjet printer, and versatile interfacing (three interfaces, Apple serial, USB and Parallel) ClarisWorks/Appleworks - Office suite integration that was weay ahead of most other programs. iMac - shows that you can have both computer performance and style (too bad the new iMac is so ugly). FoxBase +/Mac - before Microsoft Windows-compatibleized FoxPro (lamed it for Windows API compatibility) this was the model for foxpro tech and it was fantastic. (Some flash drive model) - this totally revolutionized the storage market. TBBS - The Computer Bulletin Board System (1978 - Christensen & Suess) connecting the home computers for many a year.

My take on some choices

[C_Kode]

I would take the Diamond Monster 3DFX over the 3DFX Voodoo3. Sure the Voodoo3 was a big step forward, but the Monster Card started the revolution. Same goes for World of Warcraft. (A game I never played) Everquest started the revolution and deserves the credit before WoW. You could say the same thing about Wolfenstein, but it doesn't always have to be the first, it just has to have the biggest impact on change. Doom had that over Wolfenstein, Diamond Monster 3DFX had that and Everquest had that. I don't have a problem with both Lotus 123 and Excel both in the list, because each were huge steps forward. IMHO, you can't have WoW without Everquest. You can't have graphic accelerator cards without having the Diamond Monster in the list.

PC World Bias?

[Fujisawa Sensei]

As an innovative product the Amiga beat Win 95 for Gui where clicking the start button to shut down the system is a bad design. It was ahead of Voodo3 for GFX subsystem, and Sound Blaster for Audio sub-system. The Voodo3 may have been more advanced, but it was much later. Also it was the first platform to have a desktop video: the Toaster.

When talking OS GUI, Win95 wasn't even close to OS/2.

Also where are the KoalaPad? I mean the included the Compaq 386 an number 25?

List has a lot of problems with omitting originals

[michaelmalak]

Why the LaserJet 4L instead of the original LaserJet?

Why Lotus 1-2-3 instead of Visicalc? I this is a slight to Dan Bricklin (but he's probably used to it by now).

Totally bogus

[Anonymous Coward]

They need to get real.

1. Fire
2. The wheel ...

Re:Totally bogus

[celkin]

Fire was a discovery, not a product.

Not only that...

[DG]

...but the C=64 outsold the Apple IIe by an enormous margin. They were *everywhere* - the first computer sold through mass-market distribution outlets like Sears and Target. You could literally go to the local department store and buy one off the shelf; no need for specialist stores.

And they were *cheap* (by which I mean "affordable") You didn't need to sacrifice an arm and a leg to get your paws on one.

The C=64 singlehandedly introduced an entire generation to the concept of the "personal computer" as something that everybody could own and use. Without the C=64 leading the way, the PC would have wound up as an expensive bit of office furniture, like an electric typewriter or a photocopier, instead of something found in every home and school.

Sadly, Apple has done a great job rewriting history to cast their middling success with the Apple II in the part actually played by the C= 8-bit machine - strange irony from the company that produced the "1984" ad.

DG

Re:Not only that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, everyone I knew had Apples and they all ended up in the tech biz. I never saw a C64 in anyone's home or school growing up. Maybe the C64 people just played games on them and it was the Apple people who tried programming.

Re:Not only that...

[macshit]

Sadly, Apple has done a great job rewriting history to cast their middling success with the Apple II in the part actually played by the C= 8-bit machine

The Apple II predated the C64 by five years (an eternity in this context); really the C64 is an entirely different generation of computers. While the C64 was a great machine, and really did a lot for popularizing computers, it wasn't pioneering in quite the same sense that the Apple II was.

Re:Not only that...

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw the exact opposite.

Maybe the people with Apple IIs just had more money.

READ THE F***IN ARTICLE

[Wisconsingod]

People, People, People, Does no one read anymore?
First of all, I apologise to pedestrian crossing for putting this response on his wonderfully reproduced

1. This list is the opinion of PC World Editors, they are asking the readers to comment and vote for themselves....From TFA

   Agree with our take? Great. Disagree? Even better. Take our poll and let us know what your number 1 tech product is. You can vote for any of the 50 in our story--or click "Other" and enter any item you love as a write-in.

2. Some say the Title is wrong:.... From TFA

   Note: We define "all time" as starting from the earliest days of the personal computer...so don't expect to see the cotton gin and the transistor radio on the list.

3. Some say
   PC Mag doesn't know what they are talking about. ... I say RTFA

   And, oh yeah, you may think our choices are ridiculous or that we've left out much more important products. Have at us. Smack us down righteously.

4. Some say
   what are the metrics? .... Again RTFA (See a pattern here?)

   So what's the best tech product to come out of the digital age? And what qualifies a product as being "best"? First and foremost, it must be a quality product. In many cases, that means a piece of hardware or software that has truly changed our lives and that we can't live without (or couldn't at the time it debuted). Beyond that, a product should have attained a certain level of popularity, had staying power, and perhaps made some sort of breakthrough, influencing the development of later products of its ilk.

so now that I have basically re-written the entire article that is in TFA before the list, goto the article, read through their reasoning for each product, and vote for your favorite!

Once again where's the HD?

[HockeyPuck]

Why is it that whenever someone comes out with a top X computing products of all time, they always leave out the hard drive? Yet somehow these boneheads listed the zipdisk, which a) didn't kill off the floppy drive (USB thumb drives did) and b) only lasted few years.

How about giving props to IBM, Seagate etc where it's due. Not only did they give you fast, reliable, RANDOM access (remember we used reel to reel tape before this) but its been increasing in capacity and speed ever since, not to mention going DOWN in price. 100GB laptop drives anyone? It wasn't that long ago when 'high performance' disk drives were in the 9 and 18GB range for disk arrays. Not for laptops.

Remember without it, you'd be trying to boot your PC with punchcards, floppy disks or tape.

-Storage Admin since 1982.

Apple II entry insulting

[elrous0]

I, for one, find the Apple II entry pretty fucking arrogant, with its insult of the C64. The writer forgets that the C64 offered comparable performance to the Apple II for a FRACTION of the price (maybe the writer was from a more well-to-do background in the early 80's, where price was no object). He also forgets that the C64 outsold the Apple II by a HUGE margin. Hell, if you added EVERY MODEL Apple sold in the 80's, it probably still wouldn't have come close to the number of C64's out there.

Re:Apple II entry insulting

[Anonymous Coward]

The list isn't there to make C64 fan boys happy. It doesn't matter what the C64's price was, it was the Apple II that had the greater affect on the tech world.

Re:Apple II entry insulting

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. Hell, there's STILL a C64 demo scene around. The communities built around the Commodore were far more than anything the AppleII ever spawned. THAT'S how much of an effect it had on people.

Of all time?

[zombieflesheater]

I wasn't aware that time was at an end...

RTFA

[djtack]

Note that we're looking only at technology that has arisen since the dawn of the personal computer, so don't expect to see the cotton gin and the transistor radio on the list.

Re:Best operating system = Vista

[MarkByers]

> Now I am going on holidays, and wont waste more time here. ;)

Have a nice holiday! When you come back, maybe you will love Vista! ;)

Re:Emulators?

[Anonymous Coward]

While ZSNES is a nice emulator and all, it is definitely not a top 50 tech product. ZSNES (along with Snes9x) were big steps in the emulation community making an emulated system playable and accurate but they were not the first or the most widely known.

If you had to add emulation to this list, you would probably see the following:

MAME - This is just about a no brainer.
MESS - possibly just for being a subset of MAME
Nesticle - Playable NES emulation when other emulators were struggling to display a title screen
UltraHLE - Playable N64 emulation in a time when it was just a pipe dream

There are many more. Don't get me wrong, ZSNES would be on a list of 50 best emulators but that's about as far as it goes.

Many of us knew Apple IIs well when C64 came out.

[Richard Steiner]

While C64's may have outsold Apple II's in the home market, remember that the basic Apple II model predated the C64 by almost five years. I remember seeing Apple II's in the libary and in certain classrooms in both my junior high school and high school in the late 70's/early 80's, and I don't recall ever seeing a C64 in that environment. Apple II's were everywhere, and the C64 was the subsequent wave.

Oh look at us, we're still relevant

[ankarbass]

I swear the only time I ever read their web site at all is when they post one of these dumb lists. I feel so dirty afterward.

Reality has a West Coast bias...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a challenge for you. Name a tech company that's based on the East Coast.

Yeah, that's what I thought. There aren't any. Sure, there are a couple of branch offices for major players, but if you want tech: it's West Coast or bust.

I suppose next you'll be claiming Slashdot was a West Coast bias since almost all the stories posted on Slashdot involve West Coast companies. Or it may simply be that nothing interesting happens on the East Coast (let's face it, Congressional debates aren't interesting), and all the active tech development is on the West Coast.

Re:Reality has a West Coast bias...

[orb_nsc]

"Here's a challenge for you. Name a tech company that's based on the East Coast." IBM is based in Armonk, New York. What do I win?

Re:Reality has a West Coast bias...

[Anonymous Coward]

You win a "and where does IBM do their research?" follow-up question.

Answer: Not on the east coast.

Plenty of companies are "headquartered" in locations that have the least taxes, but do all their research elsewhere. IBM is no exception.

So nice try, but it proves the point.

Re:Reality has a West Coast bias...

[orb_nsc]

Fair enough. Then I'll propose a different one: Bell Labs. Bell Labs gave us Unix and C among others. And they're based in New Jersey.

Re:Reality has a West Coast bias...

[scottv67]

Here's a challenge for you. Name a tech company that's based on the East Coast.

Here's my guess:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Equipment_Cor poration
What do I win?

Re:Reality has a West Coast bias...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, look, it's another company that moved all their research over to the West Coast prior to folding!

I suppose I should have said "name an east coast company that's been at all relevant in the past 10 years that actually did its tech on the east coast instead of simply having the headquarters in the east coast to dodge taxes".

Re:Best operating system = Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a Windows or a Linux zealot, I use both OSes ... but I cant stand the typical "Linux Zealot" mentality

If it weren't for this “typical Linux Zealot mentality”, as you put it, then you wouldn't have “Linux”. The original developers would've been happy with running proprietary software, being locked into virtual slavery to the developers of the proprietary products, and they never would've been inspired to write an entirely free operating system.

You're welcome.

Assuming that we are looking at ALL tech

[WindBourne]

Then everybody seems to miss

1. The first intel chip (IIRC, it was the 4004. It massively lowered the CPU costs).
2. Heathkits from the 70's and early 80s that rightfully started the PC and indirectly the OSS revolution.
3. the first disk drive that was sold at IBM (I used the 1 MB one that was refrigerator size in the 70's).
4. I think that Wang's Word Processor should be in there. It was core to taking down the typewriter and easing the transition to a PC based word processor. Interesting that other dedicated use WP are making a comeback.

I really think that they mislabeled this. It should read "50 best PC products with a few competitors thrown in as decided by a bunch of marketers".

If only the defined it better

[Jozef Nagy]

A lot of the arguments about what should be on the list could have been avoided if PC World had better defined the criteria for the list. The criteria appear to be consumer, end user technologies that did well commercially regardless of their innovative nature. It seems true what Dvorak always says on TWIT; that it's just a group of editors sitting around at lunch compiling a list.

the beginning of time

[rainmayun]

I thought time began on January 1st, 1970?

Visicalc

[Night Goat]

They do mention Visicalc. It's under the Lotus 1-2-3 section, where they say that 1-2-3 was much better than Visicalc. So I think they picked one product to be the home spreadsheet vanguard, and their decision was to go with Lotus.

Re:Visicalc

[residieu]

On the other hand, they said the big draw of the Apple II was it ran Visicalc. So they recognized its importance, but not enough love for its own spot on the list.

Re:Visicalc

[vistic]

But Visicalc was first, wasn't it? It sort of opened the door to Lotus. I don't get why Netscape got top spot instead of, say, Tim Berners-Lee's WorldWideWeb browser for NextStep (or even NCSA Mosaic, for that matter).

Re:Visicalc

[Night Goat]

I think they were going for the watershed products as opposed for the pioneers. They mention this in their entry for "Doom" and they allude to it a bit in the "StarTAC" entry. They are giving preference to the programs that took what existed before and added that extra bit to make the product really important.

Re:Visicalc

[vistic]

I don't even think that. If you look at Netscape versus, say, NCSA Mosaic... it didn't (as far as I recall) offer some huge paradigm shift or some huge extra features. It was just what happened to be the most in use at the time when the web really took off.

Re:Visicalc

[Night Goat]

That's a good point. I wonder why more people gravitated toward Netscape? I know I used it because it came on the floppy disk that my ISP gave me. If Mosaic was on there, I would have used that.

Simply ignorant

[dfoulger]

If one considers this as the "Top Fifty PC Products of the PC era", one can argue what should or shouldn't be on the list, but that's about it. Everything there meets the test of being among the most important PC Products of the PC era. I'd put different things on the list. So, I gather, would a lot of other people, but that's it.

My problem with this article is its incredibly overreaching statements, starting with the headline. Others here have addressed the problem with leaving the wheel and other fundamentals out of the "Top Fifty Tech Products of All Time", but what of getting dates wrong. CompuServe predates 1982. I was writing a newsletter on CompuServe then and it had already been around for several years (1979 is probably a better date). There is depth of invention under CompuServe that goes back to the 1830's and the first digital communication network, the telegraph, but the telegraph is hardly PC era, so its profound inflence as a tech product can be safely ignored. Heck, the writer probably wasn't around to have seen the telegraph in practical use (or even CompuServe in early operation), which explains most of it.

A deeper problem, and one that prevents me from taking the article at all seriously, is its depiction of the demise of Netscape as not being able to "keep up with the times", a statement the author immediately contradicts by referencing Mozilla. Netscape was doing just fine keeping up with the times. Netscape, the companies, only problem (its only real problem) is that its cash flow was choked off by predatory marketing practices on the part of Microsoft, which bundled a just good enough browser with its operating system and invoked license terms that prevented PC makers from bundling any other browser with its machines without paying a huge penalty to Microsoft.

Once you get past that, its easy to understand why they would have left off so many of the top 50 Electronic Tech Products of all time, including the telegraph, the telephone, the light bulb, radios, the amplifier, hifi, telex (the true beginning of e-mail), and televisions (which still outsell PC's by a huge margin). Once you get past that, its easy to understand why they would have left off so many of the top 50 Computing Products of all time, including the IBM 360, the Mouse (Doug Englebart in the 1960's), Computer Conferencing Software (Murray Turoff, 1971).

Its not that those who ignore history are bound to repeat it. Its that they are bound to be myopic, and this article certainly is.

I have owned/used 25 of those products...

[grumpyman]

... has anyone owned/used every single one of them?

Where's my flying car!?!??!

[FreakerSFX]

Or has this been asked already?

"of all time" seems to only go back 20 years

[ChrisA90278]

When they say "of all time" then they need to include stuff like "clothing". That was a great invention it allows people to live in place where they otherwise could not and not die by freezing in winter or of sunburn in the summer. Right after that comes "fire". Fire lets us eat things we other wise could not and so survive in more places. "language was a useful invention too. Lets us communicate ideas. Because of language one smart person can help many and we can pass on experience to later generations. Together I think clothing, fire and language beat out Lotus 123 for a spot on the top 10.

OK so you want more recent stuff. Like automobiles. The car has changed the way we all live. What about the Jet airliner? It's changed the way we think of the world. Cell phones too. Electric power needs a place on the "all time best" list too.

Think about it this way: Which would you rather loose. Give up your spread sheet software, or have to walk naked to work in the snow because there was never a car or clothing invented.

Word Perfect 5.1!!!

[lord_mike]

Good choice! WP5.1 pushed the old, venerable PC as far as it could go! It actually had a multitasking print spooler that could print in the background while you continued working on documents! It had independent printer drivers (including postscript) and a menuing system (that was always turned off by default for some reason), so you didn't have to look at your stupid F-key template (ever notice how there was no rhyme or reason where the functions were placed). It did not have WYSIWYG, but the print preview was quite accurate... and you could embed Lotus 1-2-3 graphs, charts and even clipart in it's DOS interface. Despite it's power and later date of release, it could still run like a charm on a PC XT with 512K of RAM, hercules monochrome graphics, and a single DD floppy drive.

Because of it's power, and ability to print postscript to any laser printer, WP5.1 was the default word processor at not-for-profit organizations... many of which run their offices on hand-me-down computers. Even in the late 90's WP5.1 was still the system of choice at poor non-profits. I wouldn't be surprised if some offices are STILL using it.

It was a program that was ahead of it's time... and the most powerful DOS program to date. It essentially was it's own "operating system" for the machine, and really pushed the envelope of the original x86 platform.

Thanks,

Mike

Products that marketed changes to technology

[danilo.moret]

... instead of products that really changed technology and our lives. That's why the "dawn of the personal computer" doesn't include the mouse and the hard disk. And I'm not saying that because those crazy m... ranked Windows 95 above NES! 8)

Something's missing here

[Anonymous Coward]

So, 2/5ths of the items listed here are either systems that were derived from, hardware components popularized by their use in, or applications / OS'es that were primarily used on IBM PC's and descendants. Then, where is the IBM PC, and why is it not in the top 5? Wouldn't the development of an open architecture computer that became the de facto industry standard (an architecture that even the great Apple Mac was eventually forced to adopt) put it somewhere above everything else?

Somebody missed the boat BIG TIME here.

"Yes."

[argent]

Is PC Magazine more impressed by chrome than by what's under the hood?

"Yes."

PC World, not "PC Magazine". We're talking "Wired for dull people".

Re:"Yes."

[maxume]

And Wired is "Wired for Spazzes"?

Commodore 64?

[argent]

Commodore 64?

It wasn't best at anything, and it wasn't first at anything, it wasn't particularly distinguished in any way, it was just popular because it was slightly cheaper than the competition.

You might as well complain that there's no Dell products in the list.

Re:Commodore 64?

[unity100]

just like apple was.

commodore 64 was the first widespread used gimmick that can be called a computer, which everyone were able to buy.

it introduced zillions of people to the concept of computers, programming and gaming.

no other entrant in that list has done that.

Re:Commodore 64?

[argent]

commodore 64 was the first widespread used gimmick that can be called a computer, which everyone were able to buy.

Commodore 64 - 1982
Apple-][ - 1977
TRS-80 - 1977
Atari 800 - 1979
Commodore Vic-20 - 1980
Sinclair ZX-80 - 1980
Commodore PET - 1977
BBC-Micro - 1981

By 1982 Apple was showing off the Lisa, the IBM-PC was taking off like a rocket, and basically every other 8-bit product line was well-established.

Not the first, not the best, just a little bit cheaper.

Re:Commodore 64?

[unity100]

you still didnt get the point. you are probably too rich (and your parents were too) to understand what price means in these matters.

all the entries you named close down on the $1000 barrier. mere mention of buying something $1000 for their children to "play with" (as they understand it) was enough to give a heart attack to many dads.

commodore was around just $200. its acceptable and affordable. THIS is the reason commodore is the spearhead of the computer thing. ibm pc was a clone of a business machine, and it took around 4-5 years for it to transform itself to a in-home machine, and then again it was not affordable by middle and lower middle classes.

but c64 was.

Re:Commodore 64?

[argent]

Kid, the Commodore 64 was not dramatically cheaper than its contemporary 8-bit peers... there were dozens of comparable machines in the same price range, and lower-end products for less. Sinclair, Atari, Radio Shack, and even Commodore itself had cheaper products than the C=64.

It wasn't "the spearhead" of anything. It wasn't even the spearhead of Commodore's efforts in the market: they already had the PET and the Vic-20. It was also not "$200", it was over $500 when it was released. It didn't drop down to $200 for a couple of years and it took less than a year for Atari to matched Commodore's price point - without losing money on every sale. And need I remind you that Jack Tramiel's price war ended... after he was forced to leave Commodore, and after his quixotic lawsuits against his old company... driving both Commodore and Atari out of business?

Yes, the IBM-PC and Apple Lisa were more expensive, but they weren't on my list. The only product in that list that was still over "the $1000 barrier" by the time of the 8-bit price wars was the Apple II... the "over $1000" market had moved to 16 bits by then.

Re:Commodore 64?

[unity100]

Paps, you still dont get the point. Let me phrase it in an exact way ; "c64 was the first cheap piece of gimmick that could be called a computer to be marketed & advertised to great extent and received well with the middle and lower middle classes as a result of cheap cost and versatility"

there were msx computers at that time too, comparably cheap and twice the memory capacity. however they were not marketed as successfully. hence, even after 1 year of presence of msx on the market, people were still buying c64s.

It was the spearhead of computer age, at least in europe. as an example in my generation there were no vic 20s, only 1 people i know owned atari computer, and they were rather rich, nobody else i know or even heard of atari computers being around, or even msx ones, everyone knew c64s, even arcade saloons were employing c64s which were modified to operate with coin-slot gimmicks.

you are talking about industry-wise stuff. public does not care for price wars or industry interrelations or movements.

Re:Commodore 64?

[argent]

I wasn't in Europe, I was in Australia and the US. In Australia the effective marketing was Dick Smith's, and in the US the C=64 was a latecomer to a crowded field and was only able to hang on through the price wars because Tramiel was willing to lose money to buy market share. I mean, it didn't even show up until "the computer age" was already well under way.

Re:Commodore 64?

[unity100]

"the computer age" for the geeks, technically involved and business people started in mid 70s.

the computer age for 'the people', which really matters in this debate and the article in question (if it does not represent a narrow publisher/designer crowds' selection as i proposed) did not take effect until late 80s. and pc age, a sub-section of computer age if you will, did not take effect until mid 90s. and even by then in many homes youngsters were playing with c64s, or amigas if their family was well to do.

Re:Commodore 64?

[argent]

What part of Europe are you living in? Commodore 64s in the mid '90s?

(and what does the Amiga have to do with anything? The next-generation successor to the Commodore 64 was the Atari ST... the Amiga was produced by the Atari 800 team)

Regardless of the answer, the subject isn't "50 most popular tech products", it's "50 best tech products". Where "best" is a measure of quality or priority... and (as in the VisiCalc versus 1-2-3) they apparently consider that quality has precedence over priority.

The Commodore 64 was neither the first nor the best.

Re:Commodore 64?

[unity100]

What part of Europe are you living in? Commodore 64s in the mid '90s?

turkey. you go figure.

(and what does the Amiga have to do with anything? The next-generation successor to the Commodore 64 was the Atari ST... the Amiga was produced by the Atari 800 team)

you and i are looking into the issue from totally different perspectives. you are approaching in business & technical, i am approaching it just like a kid who has grown up in the era and which stuff had what impact in his life.

i played, LIVED with c64s. i have HEARD of a computer "atari" exists, and thats by coincidence. i SAW amigas, but was never able to play with them, they were rich family kids' toys. i have seen lower middle class youth trying to do assembly programming on c64, trying to code hacks and stuff. i have learnt basic on msx, i would prefer c64, but my father was had electronics hobby and thought 2x the memory would be better, having no idea of the concept of software abundance so bought msx instead.

Regardless of the answer, the subject isn't "50 most popular tech products", it's "50 best tech products". Where "best" is a measure of quality or priority... and (as in the VisiCalc versus 1-2-3) they apparently consider that quality has precedence over priority. The Commodore 64 was neither the first nor the best.

if "best" would be a measure of quality and priority, there would be tons of products there that the article never mentions enough.

and more and more the article pumps up stuff as to how they changed and affected our lives. so, it is clear that the evaluation has a GREAT deal of the concept of "popularity" in it, since impacting lives requires popularity, but that popularity apparently is restricted to their own circle of designers/publishers, with 7 places awarded to mac only. i am sitting in front of a computer (pc) since 1993, with hours varying from regular 4-5 hours to regular 14 hours, doing international web development, running 2-3 considerable traffic websites, adminstering a linux server that can handle
this should be an indicator that the article is rather biased.

Re:Commodore 64?

[unity100]

earlier post was cut in the last part due to a special sign i put in, so im reposting this :

What part of Europe are you living in? Commodore 64s in the mid '90s?

turkey. you go figure.

(and what does the Amiga have to do with anything? The next-generation successor to the Commodore 64 was the Atari ST... the Amiga was produced by the Atari 800 team)

you and i are looking into the issue from totally different perspectives. you are approaching in business & technical, i am approaching it just like a kid who has grown up in the era and which stuff had what impact in his life.

i played, LIVED with c64s. i have HEARD of a computer "atari" exists, and thats by coincidence. i SAW amigas, but was never able to play with them, they were rich family kids' toys. i have seen lower middle class youth trying to do assembly programming on c64, trying to code hacks and stuff. i have learnt basic on msx, i would prefer c64, but my father was had electronics hobby and thought 2x the memory would be better, having no idea of the concept of software abundance so bought msx instead.

Regardless of the answer, the subject isn't "50 most popular tech products", it's "50 best tech products". Where "best" is a measure of quality or priority... and (as in the VisiCalc versus 1-2-3) they apparently consider that quality has precedence over priority. The Commodore 64 was neither the first nor the best.

if "best" would be a measure of quality and priority, there would be tons of products there that the article never mentions enough.

and more and more the article pumps up stuff as to how they changed and affected our lives. so, it is clear that the evaluation has a GREAT deal of the concept of "popularity" in it, since impacting lives requires popularity, but that popularity apparently is restricted to their own circle of designers/publishers, with 7 places awarded to mac only. i am sitting in front of a computer (pc) since 1993, with hours varying from regular 4-5 hours to regular 14 hours, doing international web development, running 2-3 considerable traffic websites, adminstering a linux server that can handle over 2 million uniques per month, and i have yet NEVER SEEN or USED a mac, nor i have felt the need. and there are many people like me.

this should be an indicator that the article is rather biased.

Re:Commodore 64?

[argent]

i am approaching it just like a kid who has grown up in the era and which stuff had what impact in his life.

Yes, I understand that. You have exactly the same problem as the original authors... they believed time started in the early '80s, you believe time started in the mid-late '80s. If the article had been titled "50 Best Tech Products of the past quarter century", or "50 best technical products available in Turkey in the past two decades", you'd have a point.

But when you're claiming you have the "50 Best Tech Products of All Time", or arguing that something should be included in a list of the "50 Best Tech Products of All Time", then you can't cut out 90% of the world or 90% of the information revolution.

Re:Commodore 64?

[unity100]

yes i do believe time in regard to public computer usage started in the late 80s, in the context this article is put forth, or our discussion. because prior to that hi-tech stuff was limited to businesses, and even than to the more 'modernized' ones.

if "best tech products of all time" is going to be spoken of, then the article should incorporate aircraft, gps, lightbulb, wheel and more. if its "all" time, thats that. if not, then we fall back into the context of what made the technology public, and used widespread.

Re:Commodore 64?

[argent]

if "best tech products of all time" is going to be spoken of, then the article should incorporate aircraft, gps, lightbulb, wheel and more.

Friend, I already said pretty much the same thing.

prior to [the late '80s] hi-tech stuff was limited to businesses

Maybe in Turkey, but by the late '80s every single 8-bit computer I've mentioned had already been superceded and most of them had been completely discontinued. And apart from the Apple II none of them were business machines.

Re:Commodore 64?

[unity100]

Maybe in Turkey, but by the late '80s every single 8-bit computer I've mentioned had already been superceded and most of them had been completely discontinued. And apart from the Apple II none of them were business machines.

i dont get it - WHERE there were lower-middle classes being able to buy pcs and similar level computers in late 80s ?

Re:Commodore 64?

[argent]

WHERE there were lower-middle classes being able to buy pcs and similar level computers in late 80s ?

United States.
Australia.
England.
Canada.
Japan.
Basically, the first world.

Re:Commodore 64?

[unity100]

come on. LOWER middle classes. not suburban families. people who live in condos. you are talking about middle classes, and even upper ones.

Re:Commodore 64?

[argent]

By the late '80s there were several under-$1000 PC-compatibles, and the second generation Atari ST and Amiga were half that price.

Re:Commodore 64?

[unity100]

you are seeing something "under $1000" as buyable by lower-middle income levels ?

Re:List has a lot of problems with omitting origin

[demi]

There's a balance between influence (whether through popularity or whatever) and originalness, in lists like these. The first mouse, the first computer-to-computer network, the first version of Unix... these things are interesting but not in themselves influential. Then, the most popular later iteration of these things are also not influential. It looks like they're trying to pick the products where a particular technology "came into its own", for some subjective value of that measure. I don't think they did that bad a job, but for my part I would have picked the Laserjet II for this and not the 4L.

Enron most certainly did fail

[brokeninside]

Look at the context of the great-grandparent post. It wasn't speaking to Enron's energy commodity business but ``its internet services arm (which had at one time a deal with Blockbuster to sell movies over broadband). That arm was neither successful nor influential.

Also, you've made quite a few assertions that don't have anything to do with each other. That 97% of the music on iPods is from cd rips and pirated downloads says nothing about the whether or not the people buying from ITMS are geeks or not. ITMS customers are disproportionately 12 to 17 year olds which is not a demographic known for being IT geeks. They're also more likely to drive VWs and read Wired, FHM and Rolling Stone. I'm not certain that any of those are good indicators of geekdom except (and only arguably) reading Wired. In fact, I'd argue that the opposite is true, that the more tech savvy someone is, the less likely he or she is going to purchase music from ITMS. It isn't the gearheads who wander into the local CVS or Walgreen and pick up a ten dollar iTunes card as an impulse buy in the checkout lane.

Lastly, anyone who knows what a Cisco is and just what it has to do with wireless is probably is closer to being a geek than not a geek. Given how wrong you are about the ITMS user demographic, I have doubts that you're closer to the truth than me with regards to Airport.

Re:Enron most certainly did fail

[rtechie]

That 97% of the music on iPods is from cd rips and pirated downloads says nothing about the whether or not the people buying from ITMS are geeks or not. That's true. Common sense tells you that sophisticated online purchases remains a somewhat geeky activity.

ITMS customers are disproportionately 12 to 17 year olds which is not a demographic known for being IT geeks. Did you read the article you cited? It talks about ITUNES USERS, not the people that purchase tracks through iTunes. An important distinction as (according to Steve Jobs) the vast majority of iTunes/iPod users never purchase a single song through iTunes.

Tivo? Yeah right.

[dasnub]

There is no way the Tivo should be anywhere near the top, let alone at #3 on this list. It's simply a more modern version of the cassette tape that can hold more information- how is that innovative? The only reason Tivo wasn't around in 1985 is because hard drive technology wasn't advanced enough yet. Shouldn't hard disks be above Tivo? You could make the argument that a product like the ipod, #6 on the list, is the same thing... an advancement of an idea that already exists. But at least people WANT that technology- Tivo hasn't even caught on with most of the population that can afford it. I won't even pay the extra $5 a month to my cable company to have a Tivo built into my box- that says a lot about its value.

The Paper Clip

[scruffy]

Where's the paper clip that you stick in the tiny little hole to get the damn floppy out?

Future of PC World's List

[shouniar]

Although I agree that the Apple II should be number one on the list, I think PC World will have to rewrite their list in the coming years. Apple's iTunes definately top the list one day. Not only did iTunes have an impact on the technological market, but music artists from all around the world are aching to have their music on iTunes. iTunes even has the EU argueing over new laws regarding the product. Also, I can't remember the last TV show I watched without it saying "download this episode on iTunes" at the end of a show. Along with revolutionizing the music industry, iTunes has had its impact on every recent entertainment product.

Wired is...

[argent]

Wired is slashdot on dead trees.

You get to decide which suffers by the comparison.

Obligatory Ballmer joke.

[Anonymous Coward]

developpers, Developpers, DEVELOPPERS!!!!

Palm Pilot ***is*** on the list

[Roadkills-R-Us]

The Palm Pilot 1000 is there. Did you read the article. or just scan the list someone posted on /.?

You seem to be confused

[Roadkills-R-Us]

No, they listed *products*. You are referring to *technologies*. Technology products are built on top of technologies. They are different things.

Another basis to consider

[Roadkills-R-Us]

You seem to have chosen a hacker or geek basis for ranking. Sure, the C64 came first, and I learned Basic on it, too. But it didn't impact the public the way the Amiga 1000 did. Go back and reread their criteria.

I'm not saying I agree with everything they picked, just that I disagree with you on what their basis is. Their goal was to find the things that affected John and Jane Q. Public, not just Fred and Freda X. Hacker.

Consider the source!

[Roadkills-R-Us]

This is, after all, PC World. What's their context? It starts with the days of the PC (and I don't mean the IBM trademark). So for them, time started somewhere in the 70s, but the 70s products were too primitive to directly impact a huge portion of society, even if they did change a lot of our lives. I never built an Altair, but I lusted after such kits, and designed them on paper.

So I wouldn't expect their definition of "tech products" to include steam trains, electric tools, gas grills, etc.

There are older things with greater impact

[A*Seer_in-hiding]

I would have included the "C" programming language, Wordstar, and Visicalc. I am not sure that small desktop computers would have caught on in buisness without the early applications like Wordstar and Visicalc. If I have to explain the impact of the C language then there just isn't any use in debating with you.

You could also include integrated circuits. I used to work on discreet systems and LSI/VLSI changed the world. It was no fun working hardware any mosre so I became a programmer.

In Soviet Russia...

[celkin]

Engine searches you!

Ha! Ha! Ha!

You can if you know where to shop.

[Kadin2048]

The heck you can't.

As someone who once worked at a Big Box store, those are my favorite kind of customer. You wanna buy some Ethernet? No problem; I got some great Ethernet right over here. Fresh off the truck... it's "deLink" -- that's French, the best kind. Now, you want some tubes with that?

The DCS100 really deserved it, not Rebel.

[Kadin2048]

I agree with you that the Rebel is a very odd choice. It's yet another thing on the list which makes me think that the people writing it have very short memories, and/or didn't bother to do any more research besides "hey, what's the first product that comes to mind when I think of $CATEGORY" regardless of any other merits.

Someday someone might even build a DSLR that is as good as a film body.

I think that it's already been made. A few years ago, Kodak made the last in a series of cameras that had begun with the first true DSLR. They were called the "DCS" series, and the last 'real' one was the 760: It started off with a Nikon F5 chassis, which is probably the best SLR body around (and I say this as a Minolta man myself, but the F5...you could literally pound nails with it), and then put a 6MP sensor in (and this was in 2000ish, when that was ridiculous), along with Firewire, and a serial port for interfacing to your GPS for geotagging or to your cellular/satellite phone for remote uploads. I don't know what hardware it actually had inside, but it had a 256MB buffer (again, ridiculously large) and would shoot continuously at 1.5 fps.

It also shot in what was effectively a RAW format, long before that was an option on most cameras. And it had a microphone, so you could do voice annotations; a feature that I just can't believe that more manufacturers, consumer and professional, haven't picked up on. (I can't tell you how many times I've wished my camera did this.)

In short, it marked what I see as a sort of turning point; it was the last digital camera that was made for film photographers, based directly off of a stock film-camera body, to compete in a market where film was still the standard for measurement, even if it was obviously on the way out.

If you trace backwards from the 760, which I see as the last of a breed, you get to the Kodak DCS100, which was the first DSLR (1991, 1.3MP, SCSI, based off of a Nikon F3 -- manual focus!). Some people even claim that it was the first real commercially available "digital camera" in anything like a recognizable form today. (It was several years before consumer cameras started to pop up, e.g. the Apple Quicktake, but those were barely recognizable to most people as cameras.)

So what I find so fascinating about the DCS series, is that the trace an arc across a decade that was really the transition between film and digital for a large part of the professional and consumer market. In 1991, you had the first DSLR, and in 2001 you had the last one that wasn't designed from the ground-up as digital.

New contender for best tech gadget

[satirist]

Forget the iPod and iPhone! There's a whole new frontier in home entertainment: the new iProne. Man, you gotta love them apples! Here it is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7706408@N08/445138582 Enjoy!

Commodore should get more of a spotlight

[default luser]

I never owned a Commodore computer, but that's because I lived in East Bumblefuck while growing up, and was poor-as-dirt. The fact is, because they're not around today, people have forgotten Commodore's contributions.

From what I've read, the Apple II was a slow-seller, and got left in the dust of the VIC-20 and Commodore 64.

From what I've read, these "top" items on the list were heavily influenced by Commodore:

Hayes Smartmodem (1981): derived from the VICModem, the first sub-$100 modem. Commodore contracted Hayes to design a cut-down modem without the acoustic coupler as a cheap add-on for the Vic-20, and they worked together to build the product. A MILLION VICModems were sold.

26. CompuServe (1982): is it really a surprise that Compuserve began to boom after the introduction of a million+ VIC-20s and modems? Not when you consider the fact that Commodore invented the idea of bundling "free" trial accounts with their VICModems. Each VICModem came with trial accounts to The Source, Compuserve and Dow Jones. The VIC-20 users were so numerous, a special Commodore Information Network section of Compuserve was created, and that section alone posted the highest traffic of anything on Compuserve at the time.

42. Epson MX-80 (1980): preceeded by the TX-80, Epson's first US-marked dot-matrix printer. The TX-80 was built by request for, you guessed it, Commodore. Commodore brought Epson in because Centronics refused to make a printer for the PET, and untimately Epson's entry into the US market opened the door for other Centronics clone makers.

Did you notice how iTunes users were defined?

[brokeninside]

Visitors to the iTunes store.

Re:Did you notice how iTunes users were defined?

[rtechie]

It used to be that the moment you installed iTunes it took you to the iTunes store. All this is tracking is whether or not people installed iTunes (essentially) which they HAVE to install to use their iPods. Steve Jobs says that the Apple isn't selling very much DRM music. This jives with statistics I've seen from the record labels. I will consider this definitive until I see significant information that PROVES otherwise.