What brought on these reflections was a “Greatest 100 PC Innovations of All Time” article in Maximum PC magazine (unavailable online). I immediately thought of the spreadsheet, specifically Lotus 1-2-3, which has been acclaimed as the PC’s first “killer app.”

Maximum PC pegs Lotus 1-2-3 at No. 67, a placing I find as wrong. Spreadsheets were the first “killer app,” but that’s not what the masses were craving.

Looking through the list, it was surprising how many of the great innovations were created by Intel, which could rightfully be given the title of PC technology’s first “killer company.”

Which breakthroughs was Intel responsible for? How about the first practical processors, like the 4004, the 8080, and the 8088? And, later, what about the Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium M and the latest, best-in-class Core Duo?

There’s more: the PCI slot, which gave us 32-bit bus width and ushered in Pentium-class video, and, later, the AGP slot, which gave us the graphics acceleration we needed for true 3D rendering. Without wanting to get too arcane, Intel was also behind the first standardization of motherboard chipsets, like the Triton, as well as the famous Socket 7, which allowed microchips from Intel, AMD, Cyrix and others to be used interchangeably on a host of motherboards.

Apple enthusiasts find a bunch of rightfully celebrated items peppering the top 100, including the original Powerbook 100, which sold the world on the idea that computing could be portable, and the Macintosh, released in 1984, which introduced the graphic user interface we know and love today. Oh, and with it came the ubiquitous mouse.

Speaking of ubiquitous, Microsoft and its Windows operating system is well represented, with a slew of breakthroughs, from the 32-bit multitasking of Windows 95 to the introduction of USB in Windows 98 Second Edition to the Windows XP.

Microsoft didn’t stop there. Its Natural Keyboard, Flight Simulator, and even its Solitaire introduced back in 1992 with Windows 3.0 were certainly breakthroughs of import, and that’s not even bringing up Microsoft Word, which came along and beat the socks off of WordPerfect at a time when WordPerfect could have ruled forever.

Boy, I really enjoyed trotting down memory lane, and I’m willing to accept its top-spot nod to universal serial bus, or USB.

It’s true that no connector has proved more useful and reliable than USB, and its main gift — true on-the-fly plug-and-play—has made it one of the best improvements. We’ll not likely see a new connection technology for some time to come. Oh, and kudos to the engineer who moved USB from the back to the front of the computer. Very smart.