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Websites, products, technology, people, media, games, memes, slang and timeline events, all with sources.
Google's unbranded laptop that was only a browser
On 7 December 2010 Google unveiled Chrome OS and shipped the matte-black, logo-free Cr-48 to testers in a pilot programme. The laptop ran nothing but the Chrome browser, booted in seconds, and...
The $29 upgrade with no new features, and the Mac App Store on the way
Snow Leopard, released in August 2009 for $29, was the Mac OS of 2010: brushed-metal was gone, the Dock was a 3D shelf, Exposé and Spaces managed windows, and Safari 5 arrived in June. In October...
Blu-ray, free online play, and the year the Other OS vanished
The PS3 Slim, released in 2009 at $299, was Sony's console through 2010, with a Blu-ray drive, free PlayStation Network play and exclusives like God of War III, Heavy Rain and Gran Turismo 5. In...
The world's most-used smartphone OS, and nobody in Silicon Valley cared
Symbian, the operating system on Nokia's smartphones, still had the largest share of smartphone sales worldwide in 2010, about 37.6 percent according to Gartner, ahead of Android at 22.7 percent. It...
Nine years old and still the most-used OS on Earth
Windows XP, released in 2001, was still the most common desktop operating system in 2010, running about half of the world's desktop web traffic. Its green Start button and rolling-hills wallpaper...
Flash on a phone, tethering, and a huge speed boost
Android 2.2, announced at Google I/O in May 2010, made Android phones two to five times faster with a JIT compiler, added Wi-Fi hotspot tethering, Chrome-to-Phone, apps on the SD card, and,...
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...
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 Windows people actually liked, one year old
Windows 7 shipped in October 2009 and by the end of 2010 ran roughly a quarter of the world's desktop web traffic, while Windows XP still ran about half. Its Aero glass window borders, the new...
Content-Aware Fill, and Flash CS5's blocked iPhone exporter
Adobe CS5, released in April 2010, brought Photoshop's Content-Aware Fill (the demo video went viral), 64-bit Photoshop on the Mac, and Dreamweaver's CSS improvements. Flash CS5 could compile Flash...
The version that lingered for years
Android 2.3 Gingerbread arrived on the Nexus S in December 2010 with a darker, cleaner interface, a better keyboard, NFC support and copy-and-paste improvements. Because so many cheap phones shipped...
The keyboard phone of the business world and the school corridor
The Bold 9700 was the definitive 2010 BlackBerry: a compact QWERTY keyboard, an optical trackpad, the red blinking notification light, and BlackBerry Messenger. Alongside the cheaper Curve 8520, it...
The 2009 iPhone that most iPhone owners still carried
For the first half of 2010 the iPhone 3GS was Apple's flagship, and after June it stayed on sale at $99 as the entry model. Its plastic curved back, 3.5-inch 480-by-320 screen and 3-megapixel camera...
Flash storage only, and an 11-inch model for $999
On 20 October 2010 Apple reintroduced the MacBook Air in 11-inch and 13-inch sizes with flash storage instead of a hard drive, instant wake and no optical drive. At $999 for the 11-inch, it set the...
The social phone that lasted 48 days
Microsoft's Kin One and Kin Two, aimed at teenagers who lived on Facebook and Twitter, went on sale in May 2010 on Verizon and were discontinued on 30 June, after reportedly selling only a few...
The Ribbon everywhere, and Office Web Apps in the browser
Office 2010, released to consumers on 15 June 2010, put the Ribbon interface in every application, added the Backstage file view, and launched free Office Web Apps that ran Word, Excel and PowerPoint...
Linux for people, with a new purple theme
Ubuntu 10.04, released in April 2010, was the Linux distribution most likely to be found on a netbook or a curious student's dual-boot laptop. It introduced a purple-and-orange theme, moved window...
Metro live tiles and a fresh start for Microsoft
Windows Phone 7 replaced the stylus-era Windows Mobile with a flat, typographic interface of live tiles and hubs, launching in October and November 2010. Reviewers admired the design and noted the...
The one everyone skipped
Windows Vista, released to consumers in 2007, was widely disliked for its User Account Control prompts, driver problems and heavy hardware needs. By 2010 it was already being replaced by Windows 7 on...
The tiny BitTorrent client on every second PC
µTorrent was the lightweight BitTorrent client most people used in 2010 to download Linux ISOs, and everything else. Its green-and-white window of progress bars, seeds and peers was as familiar as...
Apple showed iPhone OS 4 (renamed iOS 4 in June) with multitasking, folders and iAd, and changed its developer rules to block apps built with cross-compilers such as Flash CS5's...
Verified Supported Editorial Labels show how well each record is documented; open any result for its sources.
Valve brought its Steam store to Mac OS X, gave away Portal for two weeks to celebrate, and introduced Steam Play so one purchase worked on both platforms.
Apple introduced 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Airs with flash storage from $999, previewed Mac OS X Lion, and announced a Mac App Store that opened in January 2011.
Microsoft's rebuilt mobile OS with its Metro live-tile interface reached Europe and Asia on 21 October and the United States on 8 November.
Google opened an app store for its browser, unveiled Chrome OS, and began shipping the unbranded Cr-48 notebook to testers.
