To celebrate the 25th birthday of the IBM PC coming in August, eWEEK Labs considered assembling a Top 10 list of the most influential products that iconic machine ushered in. But we couldnt do it: A list that short omitted far too many innovations with far too great an impact to be ignored.
Having agreed that 25 products for 25 years provided a pleasing symmetry, we then found ourselves in a debate that sounded like a dictionary editor brawling with a technology historian. What was an “influential” product? Did it need to be the first of its kind, or should it rather be the first implementation that others found worth imitating? Must it have been a popular product in its own right, or should it rather have been the one that showed the way—whether or not it was ever effectively marketed? Is Linux a product or an idea? Is Wi-Fi a product or a marketing campaign?
In full knowledge that what we omit will spur as much comment as what we include, eWEEK Labs puts forward this list of the 25 most influential products of the first 25 years of enterprise personal computing—not only as a look back, but also as a spur to innovators to continue to come up with products that make things work better.
Click here to see eWEEK Labs picks of the top 25 products of the last 25 years.