TIME magazine has released its Top 10 lists for 2014, including Gadgets, Video Games, and Toys.
Apple products take three of the ten places:
#1: Apple Watch: The Apple Watch wants to do to your wrist what the iPhone did to your pocket: stick a computer there. For at least $349, watchwearers will access apps, weather, photos, texts, emails, payments and, through Apple’s HomeKit software, control thermostats, door locks, televisions and lights. The watch’s sleek interface is mounted on a customizable strap, and it actually doesn’t make you look like a geek. First revealed this year but not on store shelves for a few more months, it’s a daring foray into the wearable market: Apple could be the first company to make wearable computers ubiquitous.
#5:iPhone 6 Plus: Bigger is better, or so the critics cried, calling for Apple to make a supersized phone. That was before Apple quieted them with the release of the iPhone 6 Plus in September, the company’s largest iPhone ever. With an alluring 5.5-inch display that makes it feel something like a portable iPad, the phone is is a challenge to Samsung’s larger models. Along with a powerful 8-megapixel camera and longer battery life, the phone is more a statement than an answer.
#9: iPad Air 2: Apple is continuing its run of putting cutting edge technology into the smallest space possible, like stuffing fresh toppings into a tiny burrito. The iPad Air 2 is the thinnest iPad ever and it’s also the most powerful, containing an A8X chip, an 8 megapixel camera and at least 16GB in a 6.1mm-thin frame. The Air 2 runs 40% faster and starts at $499.
The rest of TIME’s Top 10:
#2: SmartThings Starter Kit
#3: DJI Phantom Vision+
#4: Oculus Rift Development Kit 2
#6: HERO4 GoPro
#7: Mophie Space Pack for iPhone
#8: Jawbone UP3
#10: The Doorbot
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
How can a product that hasn’t yet been sold be on a list of the top ten products of the year? What are they smoking?
It’s like they’re click-baiting. Or something.
Apple has never done vaporware, but you’re right, until TIME can test it themselves they’re just blindly accepting the hype. What if the Watch is one of Apple’s (rare) duds?
So lets look at the “duds”
1. Newton. This later became other products, like the iPod and iPhone which they learned how to make based on experience with the Newton, many patents from the Newton were relevant to the iPod and iPhone.
2. Cube, this became the Mac Mini and also allowed them to learn a lot about miniaturizing and compacting computers. That experience has been used repeatedly throughout their products.
Those are the only two high profile “failures” and both had some benefits to the company. I guess you could stick Apple III in there if you want to go all the way back to the 1980s. They have had some product recalls and failures, but nothing recent. Certainly nothing from a flagship launch.
You forgot about the Apple ///. The machines had a failure rate around 50%
You know what they are smoking. With DUMB wishful reporting and an unconvincing brainwash qualifier that is laughable — they may someday go the way of Newsweak and U.S. Blues.
Better to talk about a something they know will take the market by storm than something currently available like Google Glass that, well, you know.
To be fare, the Oculus Rift (#4) is also not available till next year.
Um…because THEY have actually seen it, likely played with and tested it. So to them, it’s a real product. To you and me, we have to wait until 2015, where no doubt it will likely be on the list next year as well. So THAT’S how it gets on the list silly.
Um … The media does not receive a reviewable product this far out from an undetermined launch day that could be more than a year away. Nice try, fanboy. 😉
Um…I didn’t say the media received a watch…they’ve likely seen it and played with it under Apple’s supervision, especially TIME, who has a good relationship with Apple. Maybe you should learn to read instead of casting aspersions and calling people fanboys, which is likely your fallback position because you have nothing better to do with you life but troll Mac sites. Seriously, you kids need to get lives.
Um … Apple allowed Time reporters into their inner sanctum in Cupertino to PLAY with a prototype Apple watch a year before launch?
Um … your rebuttal is even more ridiculous than your original post.
Um … if Apple extended the invitation and Time reporters accepted a private review and as a result were swayed to anoint the Apple Watch as No. 1 on their gadget list — do you even have a microscopic scintilla of a clue how wrong, collusion and international journalistic malfeasance this would be, fanboy?
This list should apply to products for SALE in 2014, not just introduced for sale in 2015.
Nowhere do I see that is says it has to be a shipping product. Just because you want it to be, that doesn’t mean it isn’t. It’s a real product, that current exists and is prepping for production. That’s apparently all that matters to TIME. And by your definition, Google would never accomplish anything. After all, their productions are always only in beta or vaporware.
Interesting that every other time on the list is available NOW doncha think? Has Google Glass ever been on this list? (No, it was on a Time Best 2012 INVENTIONS list as the Apple Watch should be for 2014, at most.) Google hasn’t accomplished much anything anyone cares about of course.
I would not put ANY company product on a best gadget list for a product that is not in the hands of consumers in the year the list lists. It defies logic.
I think TV should be on the list before the WATCH
This is not fair, for the Apple Watch.
1. If you want to give someone something to complain about the Apple Watch, put it on a top ten list, touting “what?” before it’s released. It’s a 2015 product, not 2014. All this list does is give something to pick on.
My preference would be, Apple 6 and 6 Plus, taking two slots, the iPad Air 2, and actually CarPlay, as at least you can buy that, now. But lets give the Apple Watch a chance at least, and when it’s ready and not before then.
——————
5 Greatest Achievements of Man Kind.
1. Landing a human being on Mars.
See, it doesn’t work. It’s on the check off list, but that does not make it an achievement. The Apple Watch is not a gadget of 2014.
TIME to GO …
Also, the second and last items on their list do not work well. Reviews on these devices SmartThings and Doorbot (now Ring) are terrible.
I have personally used the SmartThings and the weakness there is the use of Z-Wave technology.
Z-Wave uses a mesh network tech that loses 25% of its signal efficiency for wall that it passes thru, thus pretty
much every connecting Z-Wave
device must be “line-of-sight” in order
to continually work properly.
It looks like a list of product sponsors with a few Apple products thrown in between to add a false air of legitimacy. Especially GoPro. They’re just a bunch of cheap marketeering scammers and will stoop at nothing to boost their nasty little products.
Good ideas club or product announcements with potential?
Either way Samsung doesn’t feature.
I wonder is Google glass ‘last year’ or do they just not feature.
So, they talk about the iPhone 6 Plus screen size (yea, that’s obvious even to a 6-year-old) but ignore Apple Pay built into the phone? In the years to come, THAT will be seen as the introduction of a game changer. Not a screen size.
Thank you TIME for not making me click through ten pages to view your top 10 list.
Thanks MDN for saving me from visiting their website
of course time would pick a watch.