The more I talk to people that are enjoying Apple products, the more I am beginning to really take articles like this one to heart. Apparently, the BBC is reporting that the Apple Powerbook is the greatest gadget ever. Now this is obviously a pretty bold statement. What really sent me for a loop was that TiVo only made 10th place in the list of worlds greatest gadgets. Isn’t that wild?

The 1991 laptop was chosen because it was one of the first “lightweight” portable computers and helped define the layout of all future notebook PCs.

The magazine has compiled an all-time top 100 list of gadgets, which includes the Sony Walkman at number three and the 1956 Zenith remote control at two.

Gadgets needed moving parts and/or electronics to warrant inclusion.

The magazine staff compiled the list and specified that gadgets also needed to be a “self-contained apparatus that can be used on its own, not a subset of another device”.

“In general we included only items that were potentially mobile,” said the magazine.

“In the end, we tried to get to the heart of what really makes a gadget a gadget,” it concluded.

The oldest “gadget” in the top 100 is the abacus, which the magazine dates at 190 A.D., and put in 60th place.