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Mobile PC: PowerBook 100 #1 Gadget of All Time; iPod #12
by , 2:35 PM EST, February 22nd, 2005
Mobile PC magazine has named Apple's PowerBook 100 the #1 gadget of all time, and the original 5 gigabyte iPod the #12 gadget. In an article titled "The Top 100 Gadgets of All Time," Mobile PC looked at mobile devices that definitively changed our lives. Entries include everything from the Rubik's Cube, the Honer Harmonica, Mattel Football II, and the telephone. Apple products were listed four times.
Citing the 1991 original PowerBook 100's size, ergonomics, and design, Mobile PC said the rest of the industry "aped Apple," and that the PowerBook 100 "turned notebook computers into mainstream products and ushered in the era of mobile computing that we're still living in today."
The article called Apple's decision to move the keyboard toward the screen the "greatest and most lasting innovation" for mobile computers as it offered proper and more natural room for the user's wrists.
The article's listing for the original iPod (2001) is more direct, saying: " It wasn't the first hard-drive audio player, it was expensive, and it worked only with Macintosh computers. But the original iPod cracked the portable audio market wide open with its ease of use and to-die-for aesthetics."
The PowerBook 500 (1994) was named the #22 top gadget of all time, with Mobile PC listing several firsts for the laptop computer industry, including the first stereo speakers, the first touch pad, the first expansion bay, the first PC Card slot, and the first "curvaceous case." The magazine said that the PowerBook 500 set the design agenda for portable computers for the next 10 years.
Apple's Newton MessagePad 120 (1994) was named the #39 gadget, and rounds out Apple's fourth listing. Noting that the Palm Pilot changed mobile computing, Mobile PC said "the Newton MessagePad 120 did everything the Palm Pilot did, except sell," and that it came out two years earlier than Palm's entry into the market.
Apple had more entries than any other company in the list except Sony, who contributed six (two Walkman models, the Sony CD player, the original transistor radio, a digital camera, and the boom box). Other products listed include satellite mobile phone, the abacus, the MagLite flashlight, the original Fuzzbuster, Texas Instrument's Speak & Spell, and many more.
Observer Comments
Tue Feb 22, 2005 4:40 pm Subject: The problem is...
The problem is that because most of the writers who made this list lived in the '70's/80's/90's they chose consumer technology from that era rather than looking at the long-term historical perspective. How can the Powerbook 100 be the #1 gadget of all time when compared with for instance the Abacus, which made financial transactions possible throughtout the eastern world for milennia. I think this list is very short-sighted and most items on here would not appear on a list compiled 100 years from now.
Tue Feb 22, 2005 4:51 pm Subject: They Missed One...
Tue Feb 22, 2005 9:35 pm Subject: Doods, you're all forgetting the most important. Fire.
From the rules they set down on page one of the list:
"It has to be a self-contained apparatus that can be used on its own, not a subset of another device. The flashlight counts; the light bulb does not. The notebook counts, but the hard drive doesn't."
Why is #5 the computer mouse?
Why is #38 the compact flash card?
Neither of these are "self contained apparatus that can be used on its own".
OK it's a picky matter about a trivial listing in a magazine that I'd never heard of but still...
Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:54 am Subject: Apple *did* have a clue - and came up with the design
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