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Websites, products, technology, people, media, games, memes, slang and timeline events, all with sources.
A 9.7-inch tablet nobody knew they needed
Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad on 27 January 2010 and it went on sale in the US on 3 April, selling 300,000 on the first day and a million within a month. It ran iPhone apps and its own tablet apps,...
The iPad, the iPhone 4, and the war on Flash
Steve Jobs had his last great year of product launches in 2010: the iPad in January, the "Thoughts on Flash" letter in April, the iPhone 4 in June, the Antennagate press conference in July, and the...
The plugin that ran YouTube, FarmVille and every banner ad
Flash Player 10.1, released in June 2010, ran the YouTube player, Hulu, Pandora, FarmVille, every browser game and most animated adverts; Adobe said it was installed on about 99 percent of...
Tiny, cheap Atom laptops at their peak, then killed by the iPad
Netbooks, the 10-inch, $300 laptops with Intel Atom chips that had exploded in 2008 and 2009, peaked in 2010. They ran Windows 7 Starter or XP slowly, had cramped keyboards and 1024-by-600 screens,...
3G Wi-Fi in your pocket, with a 5 GB cap
The Novatel MiFi and its rivals turned a 3G connection into a small Wi-Fi network for a laptop and an iPad, typically for $60 a month with a 5 GB cap. In 2010 they were how travelling professionals...
Tower defence with peashooters, on every platform in 2010
PopCap's Plants vs. Zombies, released for PC in 2009, arrived on the iPhone in February 2010 (selling 300,000 copies in nine days), then the iPad, Xbox 360 and DS. Its lawn, its zombies and its...
Multitasking, folders, and a new name
Apple renamed iPhone OS to iOS with version 4, released on 21 June 2010. It added multitasking (in a limited form), home-screen folders, wallpapers, a unified inbox, FaceTime on the iPhone 4, and...
The 99-cent game that defined the smartphone era
Released for iPhone in December 2009, Angry Birds became the best-selling paid app of 2010, arrived free on Android in October, and passed 50 million downloads across platforms by December. Its...
m.facebook.com, WAP pages, and a web that did not fit
In 2010 the mobile web meant separate m.sites with stripped-down layouts (m.facebook.com, m.youtube.com), WAP pages on feature phones, and pinch-zooming full desktop pages on an iPhone. Responsive...
Feed Om Nom: a million sales in ten days
ZeptoLab's Cut the Rope launched in October 2010 and sold a million copies in ten days, one of the fastest-selling iPhone games to that point. Its physics puzzles and green monster Om Nom were, with...
Free TV on the web, with ads, US only
Hulu streamed current episodes of network TV shows for free with commercials, a revelation in 2010 when most television was still cable or DVD. Hulu Plus, a $9.99-a-month subscription with more...
The first serious Android tablet
The 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab, released in November 2010, was the first major Android answer to the iPad. It ran the phone version of Android (2.2 Froyo) stretched to a larger screen, could make...
A $99 black puck for renting shows and streaming Netflix
The second-generation Apple TV, announced on 1 September 2010, shrank to a tiny black box with no storage, rented TV episodes for 99 cents and films from $3.99, streamed Netflix, and previewed...
Swipe to slice, avoid the bombs
Halfbrick's Fruit Ninja, released in April 2010, made the touchscreen itself the game: swipe to slice flying fruit, avoid bombs. It was one of the top-selling iPhone apps of the year and later a...
Scrabble by push notification
Words with Friends, from Newtoy, turned Scrabble into a slow, asynchronous game between phones, with dozens of matches running at once. It was huge on the iPhone in 2010, arrived on Android in 2011,...
Reader mode and extensions, in brushed aluminium
Safari 5, released on 7 June 2010 for Mac and Windows, added Reader (a clean article view), extensions, Bing as a search option and a faster Nitro JavaScript engine. On the Mac it was the default, on...
The Wi-Fi iPad reached US stores on 3 April and sold more than 300,000 units on its first day; the 3G model followed at the end of the month and international sales in May.
At a San Francisco event, Apple introduced a 9.7-inch tablet starting at $499, mocked for its name and praised for its screen. It went on sale in April and sold almost 15 million...
Verified Supported Editorial Labels show how well each record is documented; open any result for its sources.
In an open letter Jobs explained why the iPhone and iPad would never run Adobe Flash, citing reliability, battery life and touch, and declared HTML5 the future of the mobile web.
Hulu introduced a $9.99 subscription with full seasons and apps for the iPhone and iPad, its first step from free ad-supported TV toward paid streaming.
