Ten Gadgets That Defined the Decade

Corpuscavernosa writes "As 2009 winds down and we try to come up with new and clever ways of referring to the early years of this century, there's really only one thing left to do: declare our ten favorite gadgets of the aughts and show them off in chronological order. It's arguable that if this wasn't the decade of gadgets, it was certainly a decade shaped by gadgets — one which saw the birth of a new kind of connectedness. In just ten years time, gadgets have touched almost every aspect of our daily lives, and personal technology has come into its own in a way never before seen. It's a decade that's been marked the ubiquity of the internet, the downfall of the desktop, and the series finale of Friends, but we've boiled it down to the ten devices we've loved the most and worked the hardest over the past ten years. We even had some of our friends in the tech community chime in with their picks on what they thought was the gadget or tech of the decade."

Comments

XP and OS X?

[bsDaemon]

Are Windows XP and OS X really "gadgets" though? When I think of gadgets I think of physical things, usually. Maybe I'm just out of touch with the times.

Re:XP and OS X?

[Opportunist]

Uh.... scuse me, but how or what did XP define? Maybe someone could shed some light on how XP represents such a leap ahead that it warrants being called a "decade defining tool"? Basically it's Win2k with more color.

Re:XP and OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

It defined the end of the Win 9x line. For the first time most people's PCs became relatively stable. For those of us that were Linux or Unix users, it wasn't a big deal, but for the average user it was very significant. Windows XP, unlike the 9x line or Vista, focused more on being a stable operating system than being an application. After the optical mouse and the old 1980s Olympics game, it might be the best product Microsoft ever released. And for Microsoft, it was probably their hardest business decision: build an operating system that people won't feel they need to upgrade from or lose angry customers to Linux and Unix derived lines (like Mac OS X).

Re:XP and OS X?

[Opportunist]

Sorry, but the product that married the stability of the NT line with the flexibility and compatibility of the 9x line was Win2k. If any product deserves the "decade defining" title, it's Win2k. But not XP.

Re:XP and OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. The term "widget" has existed for far longer than any real computer technology.

Re:XP and OS X?

[trickyD1ck]

here you go: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/widget

Or, as Wikipedia has it: "An indefinite name for a gadget or mechanical contrivance, esp. a small manufactured item"

Re:XP and OS X?

[Opportunist]

No. Sorry, but no.

NT4 sorely lacked two core features that pretty much shot it for the consumer market. Namely, DirectX support past version 3.0 (IIRC) and USB support. Not to mention the fairly poor support for "legacy" products, i.e. products that didn't really care too much for MS programming standards, which basically meant that NT4 was entirely unsuitable as a game platform, which was (and still is) a core application for home PCs.

Win2k offered all of that (nearly every game that ran on a Win9x machine ran on 2k) and thus was the first true blend between the NT and the 9x line.

What I have to give you is that there was no "home" edition of 2k, which suckered far too many into using ME. This again, though, I blame on the way 2k and ME were perceived, especially by the relevant media who pictured 2k as the "office" system and ME as the "consumer" product.

The iPod?

[Anonymous Coward]

No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

360?

[Darkness404]

Really, the 360 as the video game console of the decade? The PS2 really changed things more than the 360 for the simple reason of the DVD player. Before the PS2 most people didn't have a DVD player, why switch? The VHS format was still going strong and while it was clear that DVD was the way of the future, most players were simply too expensive. Then the PS2 came along and changed that. Similarly, the PS2s library is -still being added to- giving it a pretty long shelf life. Of all the current-gen consoles the Wii defined and changed the decade the most, and one could argue that the PS3 changed more than the 360 did.

Engadget's justification is rather lame

but Microsoft's audacious approach to charging people to play online with Xbox Live Gold actually ended up as the console's greatest strength, and a key to its staying power

Charging people wasn't its strength. Its strength was it was the one online service that didn't totally suck. Lets see, Nintendo's online service lets you play with friends if you send them a random string of letters and numbers as a "friend code", won't let you type messages on most games, oh and the one game that would have had online as a killer feature, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the online mode is so messed up because it compensates for lag on one player's end by making the entire match laggy for everyone. Yeah Nintendo sure raised the bar high. PSN is good, but has too many flawed features. For example, PlayStation Home. The idea is good, take human avatars to a new level, the implementation is flawed. It is nothing but ads.

Engadget also manages to glance over the RRoD issue that plagued early Xbox owners.

I mean, is Microsoft buying Engadget off? The 360 as the console of the decade? Hardly. The 360 as the console of this generation? Possibly. But not the console of the decade, not by a long shot.

Re:360?

[AuMatar]

It doesn't even come close for this generation- its far behind the Wii in sales and in originality. Although I agree for the decade it has to be the PS2, due to its dominance last gen. Obviously written by someone with an MS hard on.

Re:360?

[0xdeadbeef]

But not the console of the decade, not by a long shot.

There's still 23 hours left for the PS3 to outsell it! Go, fanboys, go!

Re:360?

[TheLink]

The Red Ring of Death may still be remembered well into the next decade.

IMO that's about the most memorable and defining thing about the xbox 360 ;).

FWIW, "exploding" batteries from various gadgets were rather more common in this decade than previous decades.

Re:360?

[dangitman]

Really, the 360 as the video game console of the decade? The PS2 really changed things more than the 360 for the simple reason of the DVD player.

For that matter, the first Xbox was a lot more influential than the 360, because it was new competition for Sony. The 360 was just an incremental update.

Re:360?

[Osty]

It doesn't even come close for this generation- its far behind the Wii in sales and in originality. Although I agree for the decade it has to be the PS2, due to its dominance last gen. Obviously written by someone with an MS hard on.

It really depends on how you measure it. By sales, the PS2 is definitely the winner, with the Wii a close second. In terms of innovation, though, the 360 had quite a bit more "firsts" than either of those.

• Achievements and gamerscore. Whether you like it or not, people love this. It's completely e-peen bragging rights, but players gobble it right up. So much so that others have started doing the same thing -- PS3's Trophy system, WoW's achievements, Steam achievements, etc.
• Downloadable games. XBLA has definitely been a killer app for the 360 since day 1. People joked that they were buying a $400 console to play a $5 game (Geometry Wars 2), but they still bought it. Sony and Nintendo were late to this, and initially focused only on back-catalog games (Wii's Virtual Console, PSN's PS1 games) while Microsoft came out of the gate from the very start with original new games. All three have dipped into the retro well to a certain extent, but Microsoft has done that far less than others. (I'm not mentioning Games on Demand since Sony actually did that one first -- full retail games available for digital purchase.)
• Donwloadable content, demos, etc. A bit of an addendum to the last point, but the 360 was the first time you could download demos of games online rather than having to buy a DVD of demos. That single-handedly put several magazines completely out of business, since a lot of game rags relied on demo discs for subscriptions.
• XNA and community/indie games. The Xbox 360 is the first console that you can legitimately (without hacking) develop homebrew games for without having to buy development hardware (like the Net Yaroze during the PS1 timeframe). Yeah, the PS3 had Linux (the Slim got rid of Linux support), but without access to the GPU there's not a whole lot you can do with it.
• The 360 was the first console to add significant features completely via software. Video streaming (originally the Xbox could only stream Windows Media files), XNA indie games, installable games (optionally installable, unlike many PS3 games with forced installs), Facebook and Twitter, etc. There's surely more to come in the next few years, with Natal on the hardware side.
• Streaming video and "owning the living room". Sony took the first step by making the PS2 a DVD player, but the 360 took it much, much further. The 360 is the best (only?) Media Center Extender on the market. It can stream most formats natively (and pretty much any format with a transcoding av server). It was the first console to have Netflix streaming (and still the only one to have a native interface -- the PS3 streaming disc is simply BD-Live trickery, and the native installed app is still a while away). The new Zune video store seems to defy reality with 1080p instant-on streaming that actually works.

Of course there have been failures. RROD issues, backing HD-DVD rather than Blu-Ray, continuing to use the DVD9 format for games rather than HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, lack of HDMI on early console hardware, the hard drive as an optional component, no built-in wifi, etc. But to say that there's no innovation, or that they haven't moved the industry forward by huge strides, is just completely wrong.

Re:360?

[Comatose51]

Have you read the part about Windows XP being so great right off bat that people aren't switching to Windows 7? They seem to have forgotten about the fiasco before SP2 for Windows XP and how Firefox got its start around that time because IE was such an easy target and pop-up friendly. I really think Microsoft is a big client of theirs.

GPS

[TubeSteak]

In the last 10 years, portable GPS navigation has become ubiquitous in cars.
They're so cheap nowadays that I got one as a gift.
I'm sure there's one that could be pointed to as the breakout device.
/I still have in the car paper maps for ~5 States

The list

[xaosflux]

Canon Digital ELPH (2000)
Apple PowerBook G4 (Titanium) (2001)
Microsoft Windows XP (2001) / Apple Mac OS X (2000)
Apple iPod (2001)
TiVo Series2 (2002)
Motorola RAZR V3 (2003)
PalmOne Treo 600 / 650 (2003 / 2004)
Microsoft Xbox 360 (2005)
Apple iPhone (2007)
ASUS Eee PC 900 (2008)

Gadgets

[cbuhler]

Sometime in the mid-90s the guy I was training and I were having a discussion about the future of technology while we were driving down the road in rural south Texas. I had a bag phone and an IBM Model 70 portable (lugable). He had a Zarus. We both carried pagers. A big part of the conversation was about how someday, we wouldn't need to carry all that crap just to do our job. We both knew that someday all of this stuff would be a single device. Just not a clue what that device would be or how it could work.

Today, about 15 years later, we still work together. I carry a Palm Treo and he has a iPhone. Different job, but mostly do the same thing, just not consultants anymore. I don't think either one of us could do our job without these gadgets. The ability
  to ssh into our systems is key to our jobs, and it doesn't really matter what device we use anymore. The gadgets are getting to be more than just a convenience for both of us. They almost define our function in the job. Even if we're out of the office, we still take care of issues, now, not when we get back.

The gadgets have raised expectations for a lot of positions. If I still worked like I did back in the 90s, people would be waiting either until I got there, or got where I could hit a phone line and modem. Now, with the internet (ultimate gadget) and a smart phone, I can fix most problems at 70mph running down the road (as a passenger, of course, not going to break any laws, ha). And that's become almost an expectation.

So, yes I kind of see this as the decade of the gadget, but the gadgets mostly control us.

God help us all.

Re:Gadgets

[Darkness404]

The big thing about being an admin now, is that time is critical. One security exploit left unpatched for just an hour on a server facing the internet could be compromised. If something as small as a fileserver goes offline for an hour that could mean one hour that a lot of people, not just one or two, can't do their job. Back in the '90s, if the computer was down most people would just shrug and work on the things that didn't require the computer. Today there is very little that doesn't require a computer in an office setting. Entire meetings can be done over video conferencing, bills can be paid online, even trivial errands people might be sent on can be done over the internet. Most offices, schools, hospitals and even homes simply can't function without the internet today. Every bit of down time is now mission critical.

Re:Put the gadgets in the summary!

[thenextstevejobs]

I'll bite

Since you cant be troubled, the list is as following:

Rock Band

Tony Hawk: Ride

Wii

Wacom tablet

iPhone

Johnny 5

UTF-8

The Internet

Debian Etch

RIAA universal communication surveillance

One killer "gadget"

[Darkness404]

The one killer "gadget" of this decade is price. Everything is cheap. Back in 1999, even a cheap desktop would have cost you a lot of money. Today, you can buy a new desktop with HDMI out for $200. You can buy a cheap laptop for $300, or less if you catch a good sale. An iPod touch that would have cost you over $1,000 back in 1999, now is a typical Christmas gift. HDTVs are now cheaper than their standard def tube equivalents were. Storage is now dirt cheap, back in 1999 1 TB of HD space would have cost a lot of money, yet now many desktops ship with that much. RAM is cheap with a gig of RAM costing no more than $15. Software is even cheaper, back in 1999, your choices were either to buy (or pirate, but again, it being 1999 it was a lot harder to pirate it than it is now) Windows, or get an expensive Mac. Today, you can have Linux which is actually easy to use and detects most hardware quickly and easily. Torrent sites are also a killer "gadget", the ability for decentralized downloads have made things much easier to download than back on shady Usenet groups. Openness has also shown to be a quickly rising killer "gadget" with an explosion in open or simi-open phones such as Android, WebOS and even Symbian is opening up.

I think the 2000s will be remembered for cheap (in both meanings of the word) tech.

Re:One killer "gadget"

[Opportunist]

Cheap is not new. Cheap already was part of the whole economy deal when Japan started cranking out cheap knockoffs of quality products in the 50s and 60s (yes, before they took over the electronics edge they essentially copied everything and flooded the market with cheap, in both meanings, copies).

The 2000s will be remembered as the decade of "nothing but cheap", though. Because even the "quality", brand named, products are cheap. Dropped from the same sweatshop conveyer belts than the cheap generics. Back in the 60s, you had the choice, going for cheap and knowing it will break apart in a few months, or investing into something with quality. That option does not exist anymore. Everything is basically cheap crap. The price difference does not mean that the product itself is of higher quality. At best, it means that your hassle when trying to get it replaced when (not if) it breaks down is less.

The 2000s will be remembered as the decade of throwaway electronics, with nothing of lasting value. And why not? By the time your cheap crap croaks the next gen version is here already anyway.

Playstation 2 = Gadget

[WarpedCore]

I think what bothered me with the 360 making the list versus the PS2 is the fact that Engadget editors measured the 360 based on Live, which is a service, NOT a gadget. Gmail was awesome, didn't make the list... neither did DropBox or a bunch of other ways to communicate data. The Dreamcast pioneered the whole console gaming internet thing a bit earlier in 1999 before the PS2 literally nailed the last piece in its coffin in 2001. Microsoft merely took the online idea and threw more money than Sega had to make it happen. Microsoft merely took Sega's evolutionary dead-end and sparked it back to life. PS2 should get honors for standardizing DVD playback, moving forward game based storage to DVDs, and generally offering a baseline standard for what "next-gen" should of been back in 2000. Wii... should get an honorable mention because Nintendo took a dated and... well not a hot selling platform (GameCube) and MacGuyver'd it into something that would sell and drive Nintendo back into a profitable home console platform. The DS came in the wake of the dying PDA craze in 2004 before multi-touch. The pen/stylus setup probably was a risky direction to take since... say the Sony Clie was pulled out during the same time. DS proved that touch-based inputs could work for a massive audience... sparked the direction the Wii took. Today, we have Microsoft and Sony trying to catch up with their motion based interaction setups. Apple and other handheld makers have introduced touch-capable devices on everything under the sun. DS was engineered by people that liked neat things and this happened to be a hit. I mean, TWO screened handhelds seemed a bit unrealistic too. The DS success made Sega's VMU and Nintendo's GBA-GC two screen system link ideas feel like they didn't go to waste. Supplemental screens work if they're designed in every system.

Re:The decade isn't over yet!

[Hungus]

2000 was so last millennium also, but welcome to post modernity where 10 "gadgets" include 12 things: 2 of them were not in this decade (OS X and Canon Digital ELPH) and 2 are not even gadgets (OS X and Win XP).

Re:The decade isn't over yet!

[thenextstevejobs]

So you consider 1990 to be part of the 'eighties'?

Simple Simon games

[DNS-and-BIND]

I remember visiting Japan for the first time in 1999. Of course I wandered in to a video game arcade to check out the scene. I laughed at the poor Japanese and their imitative video games - look, that guy is just touching the controls in the exact way that the machine tells him to! What a retarded game! It's no game at all, he's just mindlessly copying what the machine tells him to do in exact sequence...no more "fun" than working on an assembly line. A children's game, really...we had the same thing called Simple Simon when I was a kid...these Japanese video games even have the same four colors. I mean, there could at least be a dozen colors or something, make it difficult. And the controller shaped like a guitar? Oh man, how pathetic: if you're going to be cool and play the guitar, be cool and learn the goddamn instrument, it ain't that hard. Only Japanese people, with their tolerance of tedium and their relentless drive to copy, could possibly "enjoy" such a "game".

This Christmas, I'm passed out from wine, and when I vaguely become aware, I hear these overplayed classic rock tunes accompanied by clicking. I go out, and sure enough, three family members are staring at the TV, imitating the colors on the screen, each lost in his own world with no communication. Just this eerie clicking, accompanied by this sound that I identified from when I was in marching band and the drummers had practice pads. There is no talking, no rocking out, no jumping around the room flailing at an ax like Eddie Van Halen on coke. Their faces are stone masks of concentration. The song finishes, and my family grins at each other, "Wow, we sure had a fun time interacting. What a great game that brings us together!"

Shows you how much I know. I also thought "Magic: the Gathering" was a stupid game because it was so wildly unbalanced. Who would want to play that, a game where you can win not by superior skill or even dumb luck, but simply by spending more money than your opponent?

Only one

[FranTaylor]

The LCD display.

The only thing that's really changed is that we have finally gotten rid of CRTs.

Everything else is just a bigger or smaller version of stuff we already had.

Most of our new toys are finally possible due to cheap and tiny displays.

This list is leaving out the most important gadget

[scourfish]

I do believe that the writers at engadget have shown gross negligence for overlooking the significance of this decade's most important gadget: The Fleshlight.

Nokia N900

[faragon]

The Nokia N900 is the first { Linux + X11 + phone } that works nicely (OpenMoko was a poor attempt), and it's Debian based! (Maemo).

Re:The decade isn't over yet!

[harlows_monkeys]

Dammit, people. The decade runs through 2010. 2001-2010. Next year is the end of the decade. Not this year.

2001-2010 is a decade. So is 2003-2013. Or 1998-2007. However, the decade generally means a set of years such that floor(year/10) is constant for all years in the set. Or, as the New Oxford American Dictionary says in one of its definitions, "a period of ten years beginning with a year ending in 0".

Yes, I know, you are going to say something about there being no year 0. That has no relevance whatsoever to how we choose today to group our years into a disjoint set of decades.

Obviouslyerer...

[denzacar]

The one gadget that DID define the decade.

IED

[michaelmalak]

More soberly, I would say the IED is the gadget that most "defined the decade" as Engadget's headline touts.