Another walk down memory lane here. Here are some technological breakthroughs, in rough chronological order. They may seem mundane now, but amazed me when I was growing up and in adulthood.
The VCR. I remember when Dad first leased a VHS VCR. Yes, they were that expensive when they first came out. It had all mechanical buttons, but it was very cool to rent movies and watch them at home. Seems common place now, but not in 1979. I also remember recording TV shows, like Dr. Who.
The Amiga computer. I remember seeing one of these demoed in an Electronics Boutique. It was playing a 3D flight simulator in full color, at 640×480 resolution…in 1986. It was way way ahead of its time. We never owned one, but I still remember it.
The Atari Lynx. I still one two of these and crapload of games. Full color, stereo sound, 3d graphics, and portable. All in 1988. 20 years later, it still is remarkable.
Windows 3.0 (3.1?) Don’t laugh, but it was a huge step up from a plain DOS prompt. I remember Mr. Coleman in high school had a couple of computers running this in the back of the physics lab. I still remember how different and modern it looked.
The Sega Genesis. At the time, it was a giant leap from the 8 bit consoles. Still bitmapped graphics, but it was very impressive looking with great sound. The controller was pretty modern as well.
Doom. Yes, Doom. I don’t think people realize just how groundbreaking this game was. A true 3D game with lots of killing. Still fun to play today. IDKFA.
The Sony Playstation. Another huge jump in home video games.
America Online. Yes, I did use AOL. When it was new(ish) it was the easiest way to get to the Internet.
Winamp. My first introduction to MP3’s. It was and still is a rock solid MP3 player. MP3’s really revolutionized the music world and Winamp was part of it. I use XMMS in Linux.
Mandrake Linux (V7.0). The Linux version that started it all for me. After a bad security failure running Windows 98, I switched to Linux in 1999 and haven’t looked back. It was (and is) stable, secure, and free.
The Olympus C-3000Z. A 3.1 megapixel digital camera. Our first ‘real’ digital camera that looked better than film. We took thousands of photos with this camera. It was replaced with our C-5060WZ, a direct descendant.
DVD players. A nice way to rap up the list, since it more or less replaced the VCR. The picture was a hell of a lot sharper and the sound was about 10 times better. I think Blue Ray won’t replace it, but online media will.
Honorable mentions:
The Pentium processor
Mac OS 7.0,
An Acer laptop (486X4, 100Mhz), the first active matrix laptop I used.
The Motorola StarTac. Beam me up Scotty.
The Sony Diskman.
Okidata color printer.
Netscape 3.
Seiko Kinetic watches.
Calculator watches.
Fuel injection. Anyone who has driven an carbuerated car appreciates this one.
LCD computer screens.
The iMac (goose head model).
et al.
Let me know what amazed you when you were growing up.