I like the list of PCWorld.com – The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years but they conflate products with models so you have to be an early adopter for some products (to get the specific model they include) but not others.

For example, #16 Texax Instruments’ Speak and Spell. No model mentioned and there were millions sold so it’s relatively easy to “check” this one off.

However, #17 Texas Instruments SR-10 calculator is just one model of many (and I’m sure fans of the early Hewlett-Packard calculators would object to this being the archetype). Surely some of the other models are just as “great”.

Simply put, I don’t think it’s fair to compare a product with a very short life (e.g. #4 PalmPilot 1000) that was replaced with a similar model versus a product “category” (e.g. #2 Apple iPod).

Their top gadgets:

1. Sony Walkman TPS-L2 (1979)
2. Apple iPod (2001)
3. (Tie) ReplayTV RTV2001 and TiVo HDR110 (1999)
4. PalmPilot 1000 (1996)
5. Sony CDP-101 (1982)
6. Motorola StarTAC (1996)
7. Atari Video Computer System (1977)
8. Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera (1972)
9. M-Systems DiskOnKey (2000)
10. Regency TR-1 (1954)
11. Sony PlayStation 2 (2000)

Biggest omission in my opinion: digital cameras. While 2 “analog” cameras are included (#8 Polaroid SC-70 and #23 Kodak Instamatic 100) only one dubious digital camera is on the list (#45 Sony Mavica MVC-FD5 because it stored its images on a floppy disk).