Tech, Then Versus Now

One of the most inspiring aspects of watching technology evolve is how quickly later iterations of impactful developments tend to dwarf version 1.0.

Some inventions, like Apple's iPhone, are ground-breaking from the outset, but still tend to get quickly better. Even those technologies that don't garner massive appeal initially also benefit from iterative development.

There is a tendency, especially among younger people who were not around to see some of their favourite tech in its infancy, to take for granted the seamless functionality that comes with today's consumer technologies.

Today, for example, memory and storage is plentiful, the Windows "blue screen of death" is a thing of the past ( mostly - Ed), and phones can be charged from zero to full in under an hour.

TechCentral takes a look at some of the most important consumer technologies and compares these to the debut releases. In some cases, the transformation is astonishing.

The launch of the original iPhone in 2007 was a gamechanger for mobile computing, ushering in the age of smartphones and the app ecosystems that underpin their utility. One the of the key advances made by the original iPhone was its integrated camera, music player and data store in a single product. In the intervening years, advancements in the technology of each component inside the iPhone and the chips powering the devices have taken a sluggish, fairly basic device and turned it into a powerful pocket computer.

The original iPhone had a 3.5-inch LCD screen with a 2-megapixel camera. By contrast, the iPhone 15 Pro Max has a 6.7-inch OLED display with three rear cameras: a 48-megapixel main camera, 12MP wide-angle lens and 12MP telephoto camera. The software controlling the camera has also improved greatly, too.

The 4GB of flash memory in the first iPhone is dwarfed by the 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB storage options available in the latest iPhone Pro models. Similarly, the top download speed of 48kbit/s offered by the original iPhone's 2G connectivity is nothing compared to the latest model's 5G radio, which provides speeds well in excess of 100Mbit/s.

Released in 2010, the first Galaxy S phone was Samsung's third Android-powered device and a huge success with consumers - more than 125 million of the S1 were sold worldwide. The Galaxy S series has grown to define the premium segment of the Android market, while providing stiff competition to Apple for high-end customers.

The original Galaxy S featured a 1GHz ARM Cortex processor, 512MB of RAM and up to 16GB of storage. The phone ran Android 2.1 "Eclair", a very early (and clunky) version of the Google operating system for smartphones.

While advancements in camera, screen and materials technology - as well as the addition of the S Pen - make visual differences between the original Galaxy S and its latest iteration obvious, the most striking difference between the S24 Ultra and all other generations of Galaxy S devices is in the AI-powered software.

By integrating Google's Gemini AI software into its custom One UI, Samsung has added a Circle to Search feature that allows users to search for items visually. Other AI features in the S24 series include transcription of voice recordings and live translation of calls between speakers of differing languages.

The original MacBook, released in 2006, came with Apple's shift to Intel chips and away from Motorola PowerPC processors used in the iBook series. Apple has since said goodbye to Intel, with the latest MacBook Pros housing the third generation of Apple's in-house silicon, the M3 series.

One of the most noticeable differences between the first-generation MacBook and its latest iteration are the number and type of ports. The original MacBook featured a MagSafe power connector next to an Ethernet port, two USB 2 ports and audio in/out ports. On the other side sat a CD/DVD slot (who uses those anymore?). The original MacBook Pro was an inch thick to accommodate these various ports and other internals.

In contrast, the 2023 MacBook Pro is about 40% thinner at 0.66 inches. Many of the ports found on the original MacBook have disappeared, leaving an SDXC card slot, HDMI port, 3.5mm headphone jack, a MagSafe 3 port and three Thunderbolt 4 ports that can be used for charging, display and data transfer.

Released in 2010, the original iPad featured a 1GHz Apple A4 processor with 256MB of RAM and a maximum 64GB of storage. The latest version of Apple's premium tablet, the iPad Pro, features the company's in-house M2 chip with eight-core CPU and 10-core GPU, which renders graphics onto a 12.9-inch Liquid Retina XDR display.

The latest iPad Pro comes