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Darren Waters

Who's in, out and on the list...

  • Darren Waters
  • 23 Jan 08, 13:44 GMT

Last night I participated in an Intel event to pick the 45 most influential people in technology over the last 150 years.

Gathered to draw up the names were journalists from the 大象传媒, PC Pro, The Inquirer, and Zdnet among others.

I can't give you the final list yet - as the scores are still being collated - but I can tell you a little bit about the process.

We were given a shortlist of 69 people and we had to score each person from one to 10 across five categories - Innovation, Ground-breaking technology, Industry success, Impact on society and Influence.

The first thing we did was automatically dump a number of short-listed names that we felt had no right to be on the list to begin with - so I'm afraid Richard Branson and Charles Dunstone were quickly excised.

There were also a lot of obvious absentees on the short-list - in part because Intel decided that the list be confined to ICT figures. So there was no Frank Whittle, inventor of the jet engine, for example.

I lobbied for two people I wanted, at the very least, to be up for discussion - Don Estridge, who led development of the IBM PC and Gordon Gould, inventor of the laser.

I'm pleased to say I managed to get both on the list.

The voting was a bit raucous - and we all gave individual scores after much baiting, shouting, laughing and disagreement.

Bill Gates didn't seem to be too popular with a few in the room - one hack, who shall remain nameless, felt Bill Gates' impact on society was negligible. Really?

Hopefully, I'll have the final 45 tomorrow and will post it on the blog for discussion. The journalists' individual scores, I'm told, will not be published...

Rory Cellan-Jones

Apple - it's about iMacs not iPhones

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 23 Jan 08, 08:33 GMT

In London's Apple store on a damp January evening the tills were besieged by customers buying not just iPods but shiny new iMacs. It's what the economics world calls "anecdotal evidence" and should be taken with a pinch of salt - but Apple's latest financial results do show its renewed strength as a computer maker.

Apple logoWall Street marked the shares down sharply - more evidence of the way the mood around technology stocks has darkened - but that was because of Apple's typically cautious guidance on future earnings, not because of a performance in the last quarter which was difficult to fault.

Apple shipped 2.3 million Macs in the last quarter - up 44% on a year ago. This in the year that the company changed its name from Apple Computer to Apple Inc to reinforce the message about its new role as a music, video and telecoms giant. True, iPod sales were up (but only 5% on the year) and it is the aura that the device has created which has helped drive people back to the Mac. Now the trick is to keep them there.

I'm still not convinced that, in business terms, the iPhone is more than a brilliant way of promoting the Apple brand. Sales of 2.3 million in the quarter keep it on track for Steve Jobs' very modest target of 10 million (about 1% of world shipments) by the end of 2008. But sales in Europe (no breakdown last night) appear to be slowing, and the deal to bring the iPhone to China is on hold.

So Apple looks like a niche player in telecoms, is struggling to make a big impact in video and can't really expect to be bigger in music than it already is. So it's back to the Mac - but with millions now apparently ready to pay a premium price for an Apple computer in preference to a Windows machine, that is not a bad place to be.

Now how about a new name. Apple Computers, anyone?

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