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

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.

Commodore C64

[bjourne]

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

Re:Commodore C64

[MosesJones]

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

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!

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.

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".

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:RealSound? Covox?

[turing_m]

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

Ah, memories.

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.