Neither inspired or greatly contributed to a shift in their industry and/or became a well known public commodity associated with a shift in the industry?
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TIME Names iPhone Most Influential Gadget of All Time
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Nope.
The mobile phone movement was kicked into high gear by Nokia and then towards the "connected device" by blackberry. Without those guys, the world would be completely different now. Where as the mac was a failure by all commercial measure. I'd say windows should be the one that listed as changing the world. "a computer in every home".
The mobile phone movement was kicked into high gear by Nokia and then towards the "connected device" by blackberry. Without those guys, the world would be completely different now. Where as the mac was a failure by all commercial measure. I'd say windows should be the one that listed as changing the world. "a computer in every home".
There cold be others on the list and/or the order can be different perhaps, but I don't think we can deny how much of an impact as far as shifting the design and use of a smartphone and it becoming a completely ubiquitous device that the iPhone has had, for examplace.
Almost every entry is oddly phrased if you're old enough to remember the gadget arriving on the scene.
Like they mention a simple pocket calculator, saying it blazed the trail for smartphones and electronics price drops. Eh? What? I'd think the transistor radio was an earlier example for those, although yes, later programmable calculators were portable computers in many ways.
The major impact of the pocket calculator was that within a very short time period, it obsoleted the slide rule as the calculating device of choice for engineers and students. An entire industry disappeared almost overnight, except for some specialized rules.
Like they mention a simple pocket calculator, saying it blazed the trail for smartphones and electronics price drops. Eh? What? I'd think the transistor radio was an earlier example for those, although yes, later programmable calculators were portable computers in many ways.
The major impact of the pocket calculator was that within a very short time period, it obsoleted the slide rule as the calculating device of choice for engineers and students. An entire industry disappeared almost overnight, except for some specialized rules.
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I'd rank the iPhone somewhere between 5th and 10th spot. Definitely not number 1 tho. But with that being said, iPhone's significance can't be denied. I still remember watching the iPhone keynote in January 2007 and pretty much was like "holy ****" the entire time. Companies like Blackberry and Microsoft were set in their ways. Apple pushed ahead. Fast forward years later and iPhone is arguably still King of the smartphone. What's ironic tho is Apple is now the blackberry of 2007 (set in their ways/don't wanna change) and companies like Samsung are pushing technology ahead. IMO the GS7 and S7 Edge make the iPhone look dated as hell.
And it's cool to see the OG Droid on the list as well. It single handledly pushed Android into the spotlight and solidified android as a viable iPhone competitor. And I loved those droid commercials. I got that phone and loved it.
I'd also rank the og Nintendo in the top 10
And it's cool to see the OG Droid on the list as well. It single handledly pushed Android into the spotlight and solidified android as a viable iPhone competitor. And I loved those droid commercials. I got that phone and loved it.
I'd also rank the og Nintendo in the top 10
Never take these thing seriously- they're just to fill the magazine up and create a bit of controversy without offending too many people.
There is some temporal bias at play here.
Yo Apple, imma let you finish, but the personal computer was obviously the most influential gadget of all time. OF ALL TIME.
It turned computers from text-based scientific terminals to exactly what they were called - personal computers, with word processing and email and the web. It made computers a mass-market product and catalysed incredible advances in technology over a very short span of time. Not only that, but it quickly became an essential component of modern life. Without these machines in virtually every home, the net would never have become what it is, and any information it had would be locked away away from everyday people.
Without the personal computer, there would be no iPhone. Nobody would even understand what they'd do with a portable computer. It would be some kind of Blackberry with a terminal interface, if it even existed at all.
Yo Apple, imma let you finish, but the personal computer was obviously the most influential gadget of all time. OF ALL TIME.
It turned computers from text-based scientific terminals to exactly what they were called - personal computers, with word processing and email and the web. It made computers a mass-market product and catalysed incredible advances in technology over a very short span of time. Not only that, but it quickly became an essential component of modern life. Without these machines in virtually every home, the net would never have become what it is, and any information it had would be locked away away from everyday people.
Without the personal computer, there would be no iPhone. Nobody would even understand what they'd do with a portable computer. It would be some kind of Blackberry with a terminal interface, if it even existed at all.
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Indeed, there's a huge amount of temporal bias in the article, which is why I derided it as being written by relative children, with little knowledge of life before/after these gadgets.
Time already made the Computer "Machine of the Year" in 1982.
Personal computers are up there with TV and radio as most influential gadgets (and I think you're right that smartphones are simply a child of devices before them... a subset of PDAs... and that Blackberry and Palm led the way), but PCs are still nowhere near as ubiquitously owned or used as TVs and radios.
TVs and radios... especially the latter... are found even in remote villages with no reciprocal comms, some under a dictatorship, and radio especially has had a profound influence on society and life and travel... even into space. Radios have brought hope, news, music, theatre, opinion and help to billions for well over a century. Every other gadget pales next to radio.
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I hate to say it (here) but the Nokia 3210 is my favorite phone of all time. It was JUST A PHONE but sturdy as all hell, battery lasted for days and days (and could be swapped out in 5 seconds) and fit ever-so-neatly in my pockets (every pocket!). I happily traded my Motorola flip-phone for it...
So which particular product line would that be, given that's what the list appears to be about?
I would say that it's undeniably the most influential gadget of modern times (last 30 years of so). The world has totally changed with how we consume and share information in such a short amount of time. It's hard to even remember life in 2006 before the iPhone and the smartphone age that followed. One could even say the emergence of social media was tied to the iPhone (and later smartphones).
If you're talking about "most influential", probably the XEROX PARC Alto or IBM PC. The Mac was great, but it didn't have the global significance that IBM PCs and others did.
[doublepost=1462476106][/doublepost]It's a very strange list. Doesn't define "gadget." But, the inclusion of an early phonograph certainly demands that these gadgets belong at the top of the. Far ahead of the iPhone.
Telegraph
Radio
Motion picture camera
Motion picture projector
Light bulbs
Battery
Electrical generator
Electric motor
Refrigerator
Air conditioning
Well, again, it seems a particular product line that spurred a shift or jump in its industry (and/or beyond).
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Ah, you're brilliant. That would explain a lot (although now we'd have to look at the list again).
So, NOT the most "influential on people and their lives", but the most "influential in its electronic product category".
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Edit: oh, and they actually said that in the Time article:
"Think of the gear you can’t live without:
...snip...
Each (category) owes its influence to one model that changed the course of technology for good."
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D'oh! How many times have we said that we should all read the source article first!
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Amusing how the complete flop that was "Google Glass" is pushed RIGHT to the bottom of the rankings (if it could go FURTHER down the rankings no one would miss it, what a complete joke of a product.)
One can imagine that all the nerdy Google fanboy voyeurs are pretty annoyed with that. Ah well!
(if it could go FURTHER down the rankings no one would miss it, what a complete joke of a product.)One can imagine that all the nerdy Google fanboy voyeurs are pretty annoyed with that. Ah well!
Amusing how the complete flop that was "Google Glass" is pushed RIGHT to the bottom of the rankings
But the point is that it will have a big influence all such products that come after it.
For example, follow up glasses will probably have an LED to show if it's recording (although it was not that hard to tell with Glass anyway).
Google Glass was not a mass consumer product. It was an experiment, one that Google allowed a portion of the public to try out, if they wished.
Imagine how cool it would be if Apple allowed the public to buy and try out some of its internal R&D projects. That's what Glass was like.