macnn/electronista
07/31/2007, 9:45am, EDT
Tuesday, July 31stInternet Explorer beats iPod in tech poll
Internet Explorer is the most influential technology of the past quarter-century, according to a new CompTIA study of IT pros. The firm says that a full two-thirds of all results nominated the Microsoft web browser for the top spot, eclipsing the second place Microsoft Word, which obtained 56 percent. Notably, virtually all of the top five was dominated by Microsoft products, according to the survey; only Apple's iPod was able to crack the upper ranks of the poll, tying with Excel at 49 percent and falling just behind Windows 95, which reached 50 percent.
Exact reasons were not given for IE's popularity in the list, though the browser is commonly credited with taking over from Netscape Navigator (which reached ninth place at 31 percent) as the de facto basis for web browsing and growing use of the Internet from the mid-1990s onward.
Other top ten products included the BlackBerry messenger (39 percent), Adobe's Photoshop visual editor (35 percent), McAfee VirusScan (32 percent), and the original PalmPilot (31 percent), which helped pioneer the PDA and ultimately the smartphone. Most of the products on the list were chosen because they were the first in their class or the first to make a particular service extremely popular, CompTIA noted.
, 
, 28
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
Top
subscribe to comments
for this article
Even the iPod and iTMS changed the music business in ways that no other competitor has been able to.
The past quarter century, given that this is 2007, runs from what, 1982. The Mac really should be at the top slot in that list, as its release in 1984 heralded the introduction of WYSIWYG, the WIMP and the mouse to the computers in homes and offices everywhere.
I actually can't think of anything that had a greater influence on the way we use computers, and I'm not saying that because I like Macs either. I'd be of the same opinion as a user of Windows, GEM, X11 or any other window system.
which makes this poll especially bizarre. NONE!! of those products are influential. They may be dominant. They may be useful. But none of them influenced other products (they all copied other, ground-breaking products) or created new industries (like TCP/IP, email, the Newton, iTunes, etc).
Strange.
The iPod is the best outstanding most influential product that people can actually say they enjoy using.
what a fucking joke.
If the Mac were in the same position today that Windows is, half or more of their jobs wouldn't even be necessary because Macs don't require as much support. So of course that's why they worship Microsoft and their inferior products.