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The 10 Best Tech Products of All Time

1. Netscape Navigator (1994)

-In 1994 Andreessen launched Netscape Communications, offering his new Navigator Web browser (based on Mosaic) to the world. Finally, users outside of the academic world would get a taste of HTML, and nothing has been the same since.Netscape was the reason people started spending hours a day on the Internet, leading to the boom (and bust) of many a Web site. The advent of the browser also led to the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust suit against Microsoft, after the company embedded Internet Explorer into Windows. And Netscape's August 9, 1995, IPO is universally considered to be the official start of the dot-com era.

2. TiVo HDR110 (1999)

-It's hard to believe but it's true--TiVo has been around for almost a decade, making it nearly geriatric in the world of technology. The premise is simple: TiVo (and its competitor ReplayTV) replaced the VHS tape with a monster hard drive, recording shows to disk instead of to analog media. That meant you could pause and resume live TV, skip through commercials in an instant, and record an entire season of shows with just a few clicks of the remote control.

3. Napster (1999)

-No, we're not talking about the current Napster subscription service, which pretty much has nothing to do with Shawn Fanning's groundbreaking file-swapping software. Say what you will about how Napster facilitated copyright violation on a massive scale (it had 60 million users at its zenith), but piracy was around well before Napster came along and has continued to thrive without it. Rather, Napster is of critical importance not only for inventing peer to peer technology, but also for forcing record labels to play ball and work with tech companies to make file-sharing practices in the digital music industry legal.

4. Apple iPod (2001)

-Portable music players were old hat by 2001, having been around for several years and already a staple of cheap knockoff specialists. But Apple thought it could do better, and it came to the game determined to shake things up. Mission accomplished. The Ipod was an instant success, reinventing the clunky and utilitarian digital music player as a stylish--not to mention elegantly simple--way to listen to music.

5. Motorola StarTAC (1996)

-Before the StarTAC, cell phones were enormous bricks that users were almost embarrassed to be seen with. Then came this svelte little number, weighing about a mere 3.1 ounces and sporting a clever clamshell design that had never been seen before. It soon became the cell phone to own, remaining so for half a decade and inspiring a legion of cell phones to follow.

6. Tetris (1985)

-In the beginning, the goal in most video games was to shoot aliens, race through a maze, or beat up thugs. None of the games required much thought, just a deft hand on the joystick and a pocketful of quarters. Alexey Pajitnov's independently developed Tetris was one of the first games that required actual use of your brain, and it shook up the gaming industry in profound ways.

7. Atari VCS/2600 (1977)

-You can't underestimate the importance of the original Atari, which made home gaming what it is today. All modern games console owe some part of their heritage to this machine of simple design (not to mention awesome wood-grain paneling). The VCS (later renamed the 2600) was a cool curiosity (until Space Invaders arrived in 1980), with sales hitting 8 million units in 1982 alone.

8. Apple Macintosh Plus (1986)

-Two years after the release of the first Macintosh computer, Apple finally hit its stride with the venerable Mac Plus, which corrected several defects of the original Mac and became one of the company's most-loved (and used) products. The stylish all-in-one box featured a Motorola 68000 processor, a built-in 9-inch monochrome display, and a 3.5-inch floppy drive.

9. Microsoft Windows 95 (1995)

-Yes, we know that plenty of Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows 98 SE, and Windows 2000 fans exist, but Windows 95 first brought us long file names, legitimate multitasking, and a dramatically improved GUI, which arguably represents the brief and final moment in time that Windows actually looked better than a Mac.

10. Blizzard World of Warcraft (2004)

-Who'd have thought that a massively multiplayer online RPG based on a strategy game would become such a hit? It's hard to believe that World of Warcraft has been around for only two years, but what a ride those two years have been. WoW has more than 8 million players worldwide, and it even inspired a South Park episode. WoW is easily the most popular MMORPG ever made, handily bypassing progenitors like Ultima Online and Everquest. True, both of those games paved the way for WoW, but each topped out at well under a million players.