The twelve greatest designs of the last 100 years

I stopped reading at "Apple Macintosh."

If the design was so great, it would have booted PCs from the marketplace by 1986.
 
Apple Macintosh if nothing else for the greatest Superbowl commercial of all time.
 
EdFred said:
I stopped reading at "Apple Macintosh."

If the design was so great, it would have booted PCs from the marketplace by 1986.
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Why? marketing marketing marketing and very stupid consumers.
 
Bob Noel said:
Why? marketing marketing marketing and very stupid consumers.
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Never could run a decent CAD program on it. "Yeah, I know you need these drawings to be professional and to scale, and sent to a laser torch, but I have a Mac, can I just do it in their paint program? No? Oh, the job is going to someone else because the mac sucks at CAD?"
 
EdFred said:
I stopped reading at "Apple Macintosh."

If the design was so great, it would have booted PCs from the marketplace by 1986.
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I thought that was because Jobs refused to allow the Macs to be cloned or copied, whereas any company could make a PC.
 
SCCutler said:
Airbus A380? Great design? Seriously. Broke no new ground, just big.

You want to credit a commercial jet, try De Haviland Comet, Boeing 367-80.
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Maybe better would be the 747 or the Concorde.
 
EdFred said:
Never could run a decent CAD program on it. "Yeah, I know you need these drawings to be professional and to scale, and sent to a laser torch, but I have a Mac, can I just do it in their paint program? No? Oh, the job is going to someone else because the mac sucks at CAD?"
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CAD is your only qualifier? Really? How one dimensional of you (no pun).
 
EdFred said:
Never could run a decent CAD program on it. "Yeah, I know you need these drawings to be professional and to scale, and sent to a laser torch, but I have a Mac, can I just do it in their paint program? No? Oh, the job is going to someone else because the mac sucks at CAD?"
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I wrote my first Origami book on one, all vector graphics.
 
Boooooooogus!

No greatest invention list is complete without zipties. :)
 
Battery powered hand tools.

And the new multi-tools that vibrate so fast it cuts. :yes:
 
Bob Noel said:
CAD is your only qualifier? Really? How one dimensional of you (no pun).
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Way more than just that. But it's what I was involved with at the time. The Mac sucked for a majority of things. Well I shouldn't say it sucked, because it would actually need to be able to do them. As in, the software either didn't exist, or wasn't to be found. 95 PC titles for every 5 Mac titles. Even today all of the automated lines we sell are still being run by Winboxes.
 
timwinters said:
Boooooooogus!

No greatest invention list is complete without zipties. :)
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The Twinkie.


twinkies.jpg
 
Geico266 said:
And the new multi-tools that vibrate so fast it cuts. :yes:
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Really? You like those? Every time I've tried them I've been horribly disappointed and just get the dremel out.
 
I love articles written by tech consumers that haven't really built anything for consumers that aren't going to build anything.
 
Damn chrome ate my answer. I think Mac should be in the list as the article is about great designs. Win95 aped the hell out of Mac and brought it to the masses, and apple made a product out of xerox research. So, if the article is about design, it is about design that has changed how we do what we do. A380 wtf?

Keurig - I don't like them but 100 different coffees to make most everyone happy at home or work.

Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada for designing and marketing beers that reignited the craft beer boom.

Tesla for making an electric car, and not trying to convert some Dino juice burner or make it some hippy statement (yes, you, Toyota and Chevy).

And the guy that made those sidewalk bumpy strips before the curb. Not sure why every city has to install them, but hat tip for pulling off that deal.
 
masloki said:
And the guy that made those sidewalk bumpy strips before the curb. Not sure why every city has to install them, but hat tip for pulling off that deal.
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The f'n moron that made those sidewalk bumpy strips belongs in hell right next to the scum that built and/or operate robodialers.
 
ScottM said:
The design was great, booted DOS from the home computing market.
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I guess that's why in the 80s, 90s, and 00s, 95% of the software was for PCs and not Macs. Especially games. I attended a metric crap ton of LAN parties. Number of Macs present: 0

Yeah, totally booted.
 
ScottM said:
The design was great, booted DOS from the home computing market.
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If one measures "great" software by how wide spread it gets used in terms of applications, then the design of the Unix operating system (and C computer language) is a strong candidate. If you are reading this on an iPhone, iPad, (BSD Unix) or Android device (Linux Unix) the underlying operating system design has roots going back to 1969.

Unix has been used for decades in what are known as Class 5 telephone switches (the machines that handle POTS telephone call routing) and were intended to be 99.999% reliable (known in the trade as five nines reliability.)

Unix was showing up in a lot of machines well before Linux arrived on the desktop.

Likewise the design/invention of the field effect transistor has to rank among the top ten design advances of all time.
 
EdFred said:
I guess that's why in the 80s, 90s, and 00s, 95% of the software was for PCs and not Macs. Especially games. I attended a metric crap ton of LAN parties. Number of Macs present: 0

Yeah, totally booted.
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How many GUIs did you use?
 
Jim Logajan said:
Likewise the design/invention of the field effect transistor has to rank among the top ten design advances of all time.
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Yeah, but FETs alone aren't all that compelling - It's when you combine zillions of them into an integrated circuit that the real magic happens.
 
EdFred said:
The Mac sucked for a majority of things. Well I shouldn't say it sucked, because it would actually need to be able to do them. As in, the software either didn't exist, or wasn't to be found. 95 PC titles for every 5 Mac titles.
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That doesn't mean the Mac was a bad design - It means that Bill Gates was a helluva lot better marketer, both to consumers and to developers.

Even today all of the automated lines we sell are still being run by Winboxes.
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A lot of out-of-sight, out-of-mind things are run by off-the-shelf Windows or Linux boxes, and rightfully so - What's the point of a great design if you're not going to be interacting with it? If you just need a random box to be controlling something, you're going to go with cheap, minimalist hardware and have the software developed by the dime-a-dozen types who develop on the platform du juor. When I think about doing geeky things, I don't think about a Mac, I think about a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino board or something. But for everyday computing, the Mac is reliable, easy to use, and easy to maintain (as in, practically maintenance free - I haven't reinstalled the OS, run a malware scanner, etc. in years and it just keeps hummin' right along).

So just because it doesn't do everything doesn't mean it isn't a great design. IMO the C-130 is a great design because it does its job exceedingly well, so well that it has been in production for over 50 years. However, I don't rag on it because it can't win a beauty contest or fit into my hangar.
 
EdFred said:
I guess that's why in the 80s, 90s, and 00s, 95% of the software was for PCs and not Macs. Especially games. I attended a metric crap ton of LAN parties. Number of Macs present: 0

Yeah, totally booted.
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Who still running DoS on their home computers in the '00?

The first real Windows UI was in 1995 hence Windows '95. The idea of CLI for home users was dead and Apple help to finally kill it. The only people left using CLIs were the techno-wonks. You measure software greatness by how it influences regular people. Mac did that. It changed the way regular people interacted with the computer and took it from being a number cruncher to being a tool that people use. It forced the M$ corp to change their UI in the process. That is great design!
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Yeah, but FETs alone aren't all that compelling - It's when you combine zillions of them into an integrated circuit that the real magic happens.
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But you can't combine zillions of them if you first don't have a design for at least one. Bipolar junction transistors existed but used too much power to scale to zillions in small spaces.

Anyway the list in the OP article was silly for too many reasons.
 
List like this and any other "most", "best", etc are generated to fill space and sell things. Their validity is essentially zero but they can be entertaining, not the least of which is reading the reactions. :D

Cheers
 
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