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

[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.

Commodore C64

[bjourne]

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

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: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.

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.

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

[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]

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

[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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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*

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: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.

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.

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.

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.

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...