decade

Apple's iTunes Store turns 10 years old this weekend. A lot's happened in that time, including a jump from just music to selling nearly every type of content, short of animated GIFs.

We've rounded down some of the key moments from the past 10 years, along with links to CNET News stories that puts them all in context.

You can also take a look at Apple's own timeline, which the company put out yesterday, and requires Apple's iTunes software on computers or an iOS device.

Did Microsoft lose itself over the past decade? Its CEO obviously doesn't think so.

In a Forbes interview published yesterday, Steve Ballmer was asked about the recent Vanity Fair article that charged poor management and bureaucracy at Microsoft with hurting the company financially and technologically over the past ten years.

Ballmer's response?

"It's not been a lost decade for me! I mean, look, ultimately progress is measured sort of through the eyes of our users," he told Forbes. "More than our investors or our P&L [profit and loss] or anything else, it'… Read more

The 1990s produced so many of our favorite music, movies, toys, and TV shows that we're making this a tribute to the decade. We're talking Supersoakers, TGIF, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Green Day, Smashing Pumpkins, Dumb & Dumber, Seinfeld, Gushers, Street Sharks, Clueless, Nerf Guns, Discmans, Laserdiscs, and more!

As we’re nearing the end of a year and the end of a decade, it’s time to look back and ahead. With at least three formative events in this young 21st century (9/11, the Tsunami, and the Great Recession) providing some sort of apocalyptic arch and instilling a profound sense of anxiety, it is no wonder that former visionaries are gathering at conferences asking “Where did the future go?” But, at the end of the day, the end of all days didn’t occur, and as the New York Magazine points out in its comprehensive review of … Read more

Tom and Rafe review what they feel were the biggest and best tech products and advancements of the decade.

Recently, with the help of some of the editors here at CNET, I put together list of the biggest tech flops of the decade. Since I'm not a negative guy at heart, it was only a matter of time before I came up with a more positive spin on the whole tech-products-of-the-decade concept that's all the rage as we approach the end of '09.

Once again, I've enlisted the help of my fellow editors, so while my name may appear at the top of this list, it's really a collective effort. That said, you can blame … Read more

A couple days ago, NPR's All Songs Considered asked listeners to vote on which year had the best music. (The poll is here--you have to answer it to see overall results.) Unsurprisingly given NPR's demographic, the 1960s scored high, with top year 1969 figuring in 9 percent of all responses. More surprisingly, the 1990s also did quite well, with 1991 (grunge) and 1994 (alternative) both scoring 4 percent. There was also a little uptick in 1977--the year punk broke for the first time scored 4 percent. But the 1980s were a bleak wasteland, however, with all years … Read more