Almost everybody who checked out Palm’s eleventh hour comeback pitch at CES 2009 loved it, and the almost universal fawning over the Pre set me to thinking about other gadgets that have received universal love or, like the high school over-achiever, had so much success that love was not needed.
Here’s a list of history’s honeys, machines which were not only big sellers but earned themselves a place in the hearts of the buyers. If you are the kind of person who names your dead, inanimate devices, its likely that you christened at least some of these.
Photo: Jonathan Snyder/Wired
Palm Pre
It’s not available yet, and won’t be for some time. We don’t even know what it will cost. But the reaction so far says that Palm has a winner on its hands in the cute little smartphone. So successful have these first days been that there is even a new class of product in the gadget hack press — the "Pre Killer".
Sure, this might just be anticipation of the easy headline puns afforded by the name (and all the Pre launch parties), but it seems that Palm has seduced with its open, web standards based applications, its cute appearance and even its cut’n’paste (take that, iPhone!). Even the hardware innovation is smart and friendly — the Touchstone wireless charger is a truly neat solution to wire spaghetti.
We’ll have to wait until it launches before we’ll know for sure, of course, but the signs are pointing to a Rocky Balboa-like comeback for Palm.
6 Reasons Why the Palm Pre Is Special
Sony Walkman
Despite the long list of crimes Sony has committed against its iconic brand (ATRAC, anyone?), the Walkman is still much loved. But none so much as the original, a device which let people truly carry their music with them wherever they went.
Before the Walkman you’d need a huge boombox, a small suitcase full of batteries and the will to annoy everyone in the street with your choice of tunes (a habit fast returning amongst cellphone owning teens).
There was, of course, the portable transistor radio, but the Walkman marked the beginning of a tailored radio station on the go, and without it we wouldn’t have the iPod today. And so…
iPod
Us tech writers might complain about DRM lock-in (a poor argument now that the iTunes Store is DRM free) and lack of features (no FM radio, as if anyone listens to that any more), but the buying public totally digs the iPod, as can be seen in the monstrous sales figures.
But the sales are half the story. The iPod somehow hit that sweet spot between ease of use and cuteness which turned it not only into a fashion icon but into the only MP3 player anybody wants. Think about it — if you were going to buy a portable music player today, what would you get? I’m betting its not a Zune.
Game Boy
The Game Boy is almost an adult – it turns 20 this year – a fact clearly shown in its quaintly spelled name (released this year it would be the CamelCased GameBoy). The 1989 original was big, uncomfortable to use and had a display that makes the tobacco-stained cinema screens of my childhood look like plasma TV, yet it was a hit. A huge hit, running through generations in much the same way as Nintendo’s other long-lived hit, Mario.
Perhaps, like everything we see in this list, it was all about the portability and instant gratification. More likely it was down, at least in the beginning, to Tetris — a game so addictive even my curmudgeonly father ("Those things will make your eyes turn square!") managed a marathon four-hour session the first time he picked it up.
Photo: SqueakyMarmot/Flickr
Polaroid
Poor Polaroid, we will surely mourn you. Even the crappy PoGo camera/printer hybrid won’t save you, so awful is it. But you gave us a camera which not only fascinated us but entered into our popular culture.
From the nudge, wink jokes about pictures that never needed to be sent to the lab, to its immortalization in the Outkast song Hey Ya! (shake it!) your instant camera was surely one of the most beloved boxes of all time. Heck, you were useful, too, allowing pro photographers to "chimp" their pictures back when "digital" still referred to fingers.
In fact, I’d like to pick the Polaroid for the the Gadget Lab Most Loved Award. It has it all — it was cute, it was portable, it was instant, it was a genuine innovation, it had a strange ritual (shake it!) and it even had a nerdy robot reference in the name. Thank you Polaroid. We’ll bring some flowers to your grave.
Now, of course, its your turn. Are you heartless enough to hate any of the above? Have we missed something important? Let us know in the comments.
For this week’s Photoshop Contest, I asked you to use our photos of Ballmer’s CES keynote as source material. Man, do you guys love Photoshopping Ballmer.
Second Place — Burrito Tech
Third Place — Derrick Villalpando
