Top 10 best and worst anniversary list: Apple, Microsoft and tyranny

A couple of years ago my boss suggested we look at ideas for a Top 10 list. I'd just endured a rewatch of Jurassic Park, Shaun was in a sarky mood and so a tradition was born.

In the past two years we've spent our Friday afternoons hunched over a hot keyboard arguing over some of the technology industry's greatest conundrums.

The previous day we are even more cutting in person, hammering out the list content over beers and burgers at our favourite San Francisco hangout. As a result we've garnered praise, abuse and some very popular lists.

The first rule of journalism, as I was taught it, is to be as objective with the facts as you can be. No writing is objective, but when it comes to reporting you have to let the reader decide. The Top 10 lists, however, allow us to blow off some steam.

For the record here are the most popular Top 10 lists by readership:

1. Top 10 worst Microsoft products of all time

2. Top 10 reasons for and against the iPhone 4

3. Top 10 best releases from Microsoft

4. Top 10 computer games of all time

5. Top 10 worst Apple products of all time

6. Top 10 technology mistakes

7. Top 10 alternatives to Apple's iPhone

8. Top 10 technology also-rans

9. Top 10 best Apple products of all time

10. Top 10 most anticipated smartphones

What follows is our personal view as to what makes the best and worst lists. Polite comments, as ever, are most welcome.

BEST

Honourable Mention: Top 10 disappointing technologies
Shaun Nichols: The mark of a really great list for me is when the long-tie readers and casual visitors to the site leave their input.

I got a first-hand view of this with our list of the 10 most disappointing technologies. The list covered everything from desktop Linux to virtual reality and FireWire.

Also on the list was voice recognition technology, an entry that seemed to strike a chord with a certain group. My aunt, who works as a court reporter, stumbled upon the article in an industry email list. It seems that, when your job involves transcribing everything said in a trial, voice recognition technology is a hot topic.

You can imagine my surprise when a few months later on a visit she tells me how much she and her colleagues enjoyed reading the article.

Iain Thomson: Fair play to Shaun - once he'd told me that we had to include this. However, the list had a serious point that is too often missed.

Computing technology is so arcane at its basic level that marketing has taken over. Marketing departments have a tendency to overstate things (I'm being polite here) and this means people are going to be disappointed.

If you actually sit down and think about the level of engineering that goes into the standard PC you'd need a serious drink or three.

Millions of transistors, working at a microscopic level of engineering, with a steady power supply and additional control units that are the technological marvels of our day, all so you can watch cat videos on YouTube.

You can stick the pyramids; a processor engineering design schematic is for me the epitome of high culture. That the end result is disappointing is a pain, to be sure. But consider what we'd be without it all.

5. Top 10 movie flaws in films
Shaun Nichols: The list that started it all. When Iain suggested we do a top 10, we had no idea that it would become a regular feature, let alone one that would carry on for two years.

Originally, the idea was a fun way to break out of the end-of-the-week doldrums. Few companies want to release any big product news on Fridays, so for us journos it is a particularly slow time of the week.

To help break out of the rut, Iain thought we should try something new, a feature idea of some sort. As I was in the midst of a string of bad robot movies on my Netflix queue, the subject of crazy technology portrayals came up and eventually we decided to list our favourite bad tech flicks.

It also gave me the chance to introduce Iain to one of the finest pieces of robot-themed action movies of all time: Cherry 2000.

Iain Thomson: Let's just say it stole around an hour and a half of my life. Seriously Shaun, it's a really bad film.

This was the list that started it all and I'm still very fond of it. When you look at it now the lists have come a long way.

It still makes a valid point too. Absolute scientific veracity in a film would be the death knell of exciting cinema. Even though you know that sound doesn't carry in space it would be a special kind of pedant who didn't thrill to hearing the Death Star explode.