Innovations in electronics since 1990

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What do you consider to be the greatest innovations and developments in electronics since 1990 from the perspective of small to medium sized electronic product manufacturers, hobbyists, and educational users? Are there any particular components you feel that we can't live without today that did not exist in 1990? What about developments in design tools and test equipment?

I don't think there have been that many major league break through events in the area of consumer electronics. THere have been improvements, of course, but they are more incremental than revolutionary. The Next Big Thing in computers will be q-bit quantum computers that actually work. Right now they don't exist. There is some primitive q-bit technology but major league breakout are still in the future.

ruveyn

they've got 2 more years to crack flying cars and hoverboards otherwise Robert Zemeckis is going to look a fool.

Why 1990? Did something significant happen back then?

Wifi, Bluetooth, graphics processors were all new and undeveloped back then. Java didn't exist, objective c was still a dream. But it was just a point in a long slippery slide.

It's an arbitrary date although it corresponds to the ending of the Cold War and the world about to enter a new era.

I was thinking of technologies more along the lines of flash memory or those wireless data communication modules rather than consumer devices.

the internet and the mobile phone are obvious ones.

I'm old enough to remember the days people relied totally on letters, landlines and pay phones.

Mobile phones cost about $3000, the size of breeze blocks, only capable of calls and had to be carried around in a briefcase-power unit. A handheld device capable of video conferencing and emails were the stuff of a madman's dream.