We published a poll on Thursday asking readers to vote for their favorite Apple product of all time. And the results of this contest, timed to the tech giant’s 40th anniversary today, are in.
Drumroll please.
Apple’s iPhone was a clear cut winner with 50% of the 787 votes cast. Apple’s iPad came in second, with 12%. Rounding out the list was the MacBook with 9%, iPod with 9%, iMac with 7%, Macintosh with 7%, Apple II with 3%, Apple Watch with 3%, Apple TV with 1%, and iBook with no votes.
Apple has deservingly received acclaim for innovation over much of its 40 years. The Macintosh introduced the mouse to the mainstream, and an interface that nearly everyone could understand. Remember, if you’re old enough, how complicated it was to use computers before the Apple era. Meanwhile, the iPod put countless songs in our pocket. The iPhone, well, the iPhone changed how people access the Internet around the world.
For more read A Look Back At 40 Years of Apple
A separate internal poll among Coins2Day staffers and contributors showed the iPhone, again, is the favored Apple product. However, the MacBook came in a close second, followed by the Apple TV and the iBook.
When we asked Coins2Day contributor Don Resigner about his favorite Apple product, he said: “Gotta be the first-generation iPhone. It changed the smartphone industry forever, killed or seriously injured a couple of companies, and created an entirely new industry for app developers to explore (and make tons of cash on).”
For more on Apple’s history watch our video.
Editor Caitlin Moriarity was also firmly in the iPhone camp, saying: “My favorite is the iPhone, because I’ve had my current one for years and it just keeps going. Reliable and easy to use. I had two different Android phones before I got my iPhone and both of them broke before my two-year contract was up.”
The decision wasn’t as clearcut for tech editor Rachel King. “Oh goodness I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think of something that isn’t the iPhone, but truly when I first moved to New York City in 2007, and then the iPhone came out, it shrunk this city exponentially,” she said. “I feel like that made me like a local faster and made me a better traveler in general.”
But King also had some nostalgia for the Macintosh. “Then again, there was the Macintosh in grade school, and without that, I would never have enjoyed the magnificent odyssey and cultural touchstone that was “The Oregon Trail,” she said. And who could blame her?
Newly hired senior reporter Aaron Pressman noted that the iBook as his favorite product, and one that brought him back to Apple. “This one brought me back to the Mac after many years in the Windows wilderness. It was serious enough looking to use for work and vastly better thought out than the competition’s laptops at the time,” he said.
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Senior writer Leena Rao went against the grain. “I love my iPhone, iPad and Mac Air but I’m going to be a renegade and say Apple TV. It’s so easy to access any type of content from the TV. Especially with a kid—one day she wants to watch a YouTube video, and another day she wants a cartoon show from Netflix,” she said. “The next she wants to watch photos of her family we can do all of that from our Apple TV!”
For me, I’d have to firmly claim the iPhone as my favorite Apple product. I’d grown up to develop a love for technology, and started covering technology on a daily basis shortly after the iPhone was introduced in 2008. Before the iPhone, BlackBerry was seemingly invincible. Then iPhone happened, and seemingly every company was immediately forced to reconsider its approach to cell phones.
If you’re in the mood for a trip down memory lane, be sure to read about Apple’s ups and downs, as chronicled by Coins2Day in the ’80s. First there’s a 1981 article about the “young upstart.” Next, a 1984 story about the turmoil within Apple leading up to the announcement of the Macintosh. And lastly, a 1989 article about a struggling Apple failing to find an identity and direction under former CEO John Sculley’s leadership.
