Best of the Decade: Gadgets

Posted by Taylor Cox on November 23, 2009 · 1 Comment 

Note: The following is a post I just wrote for the Amalgamblog.  You can find the original post here.

The world is changing faster than we can appreciate or realize. To the average person, this can be unnerving at times. To the gadget lover, it’s a playground. In the spirit of the latter, I bring you the Best Gadgets of the Decade.

One thing to notice about nearly all of these items is that they were released against a flood of skepticism. Many were considered to be busts, or even downright bad ideas. I suppose that shows what we know.

10. Camera Phone
Sometimes technology takes us to new heights; sometimes it takes us to new lows. You could argue that the camera phone has done very little to impact society in a positive way, but it’s had an impact nonetheless. And while phone-mounted cameras are still probably a few years away from being able to actually take decent pictures, the ability to capture any image at anytime and then instantaneously share that image with everyone has made the world a slightly smaller place. As long as there is adequate lighting.

9. GPS
Male-kind cried out in despair: “I’m not asking for directons!” And it was given the GPS. Ironically, this can also serve as a bit of an obituary to the traditional GPS. Smart phones come standard with GPS chips, and now Google wants to give you the maps and turn-by-turn capability for free. Nice knowing you, TomTom.

8. Guitar Hero/Rock Band
I can stand in my living room and convince myself that I’m actually playing Free Bird. They should give out medals for that sort of progress.

(The VGAs do not count.)

7. The Wireless Router
At the turn of the century, when Apple first released the AirPort Base Station, I simply did not understand the appeal. Our little purple iMac had one cable going between it and our dial-up modem. I didn’t think that life would improve that much by getting rid of that cord. This, of course, was before the Laptop exploded in popularity (but more on that later). But can you now imagine life without Wi-Fi connections? It’s crazy how quickly we’ve come to take this capability for granted.

6. Wii
When the Wii was formally announced in 2005, it was a laughing stock. The name, the dinky little remote, the underpowered graphics architecture, the family friendly games– it was pronounced dead on arrival. Naturally, that little white glossy box is now a worldwide cultural phenomenon. Nintendo realized something very simple and yet industry-shifting– games should be about play, about playing together, and not about realistic-looking headshots. The Wii shows us that, despite what we all may think, it’s not always about the biggest, newest, most-expensive technology– there’s still a very important human element at play here.

5. HDTV
Another one for the “predicted failure” bunch. Prices were high, government deadlines were delayed countless times, and the majority of the general public just had a hard time seeing the advantages. The HDDVD-Blu Ray war, with it’s $1000 players and $40 movies, didn’t help either. Yet HDTV somehow survived it all, and it’s now the de-facto standard. Count me among the happy– watching Pixar movies on my budget plasma with my budget Blu-Ray player nearly rivals a theater experience.

4. Internet Video
“Hulu”… silly name, serious business. This ad-supported internet television portal was called a failure just weeks after its release in 2008 (and financially speaking, it still is). But after just over a year in service, Hulu has long-entrenched cable and satellite TV operators scrambling to remain relevant. In the face of tough economic times, Americans are ditching their paid TV service by the millions in favor of free internet alternatives. Most in the know say that it’s only a matter of time before internet TV is brought to actual televisions in a major way (rumors of an Apple a la carte “pay-per-channel” service have gotten popular recently). So while YouTub, Hulu, and Netflix streaming helped make internet TV one of the biggest technologies of this decade, look for even more noise in this space in the next….unless we break the internet first.

3. iPhone
The number of advancements pioneered or popularized by the iPhone is staggering – touch computing, mainstream wireless data adoption, mobile applications (good ones, anyway), mobile phone gaming, etc. Technologically speaking, the iPhone may be the single most influential device since the personal computer itself. However, I don’t think the scope of that influence has yet been truly realized so… sorry iPhone, you’re stuck at #3. And, not to sound like a broken record, but even the iPhone was called a dud after its unveiling… by jealous Verizon and Microsoft executives.

2. Notebook Computer
Sure, we’ve had notebook computers since the 80s, but no one cared until now. Notebook computers were always too underpowered, or had too little battery life, or too cruddy a display to sell to anything more than a niche market of Excel-obsessed traveling businessmen. However, technology finally caught up in the 2000s, and now it’s the desktop computer feeling slighted. Compact, light, sleek computers with large high-res displays, powerful yet efficient multi-core processors and hours-long battery life… unless you’re a scientist or you’re doing some pretty intense 3D, video, or design work, a laptop is really all you need these days. I should note, however, that popularity of this scale would not have been possible without the go-anywhere-connectivity provided by the laptop’s best friend, Wi-Fi. So, laptop– take Wi-Fi out for Starbucks or something. Then again, you’re probably already there.

1. iPod
Except maybe for the Wii, no product on this list was blasted so much, at least initially, as the iPod upon its unveiling in 2001. People just did not get it. MP3 players were around, but hardly popular, and most held a whopping 15 songs, in order to keep them small. In comparison, the iPod was a brick. It was still handy, but you had to rip all of your CDs into iTunes (iPod’s then-simple, Mac-only companion) in order to even make the device useful. But a couple of years later, the iTunes Music Store launched, and the rest is history. With their powers combined, the iPod and iTunes completely changed the face of the music industry. They changed the way we listen to music, the way we get music, and our general expectation for acquiring content in general. Now we expect (and often do) to get movies, TV shows, books, games, and applications in the same manner. iPod/iTunes also helped save a music industry crumbling under the weight of illegal downloading by offering a legitimate, instant, cheap alternative with the same by-song selection method (record company executives simply had to give Steve Jobs their first born child in return). The iPod claimed many victims in its domination– the CD, the album, Napster, the Walkman, radio, and many others. For better or worse, the iPod brought us kicking, screaming, and dancing into the digital age.

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