With the iPod - Apple's first successful stab at market dominance - Apple had begun with a high price but quickly dropped it.
How do you show off the most anticipated product in years? That was my dilemma with the iPhone X. Since my unit was one of the first few released into the wild, it naturally drew a lot of curiosity when I pulled it out of my pocket and gave it a dewy-eyed glance to wake it from slumber.
Technology writers are seldom subject to frenzied, Beatlemania-esque paroxysms of public attention. June 29, 2007, was the exception. I was in the wrong place - Apple's Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan - with the right device. The iPhone.
Just as the cable revolution overturned broadcast, the net is destined to become the dominant mode of video, both in terms of transit and programming.
Two thoughts occur to just about any parent whose child is about to enter college. The first is, 'I can't believe how quickly the years have gone by.' The second: 'I can't believe how much it costs.' As one of those parents, I did my best to get past the disturbing first thought and tried to calm my churning stomach while dealing with the second.
The world is poised on the cusp of an economic and cultural shift as dramatic as that of the Industrial Revolution.
Twitter provides a platform that allows anyone on the planet - from a political activist in the Middle East to an intemperate golfer in the White House - to broadcast his or her thoughts.
The myth of the peachfuzz billionaire has emerged. This new Horatio Alger typically launches his first start-up in middle school, and somewhere between the campus computer-science lab and a move to Palo Alto hacks up a Web site where users provide fun or useful content.
Fast, cheap, abundant broadband is a fantastic economic accelerator, enabling breakout businesses and kick-starting new industries.
My favorite thing to do with my iPod was to shuffle my entire music collection and marvel at what songs came next. Sometimes the segues would be so perfect that it seemed a genius deejay was behind the wheel.
I am old enough to have grown up glued to a screen offering only three alternatives, each of which was an all-powerful national network that seemed permanently ensconced in the entertainment stratosphere.
I think that the most beautiful thing lately hasn't been in hardware or software per se but collaboration - the idea behind Napster, which uses the distributed power of the Internet as its engine.
Though the first iPhone was expensive, it was such a refreshing new product that early users flocked to it.
Just as we have what used to be supercomputers in our pockets, our homes now require the telecommunications infrastructure of a small city.
Internet-centric companies have already begun changing the rules with binge-watching, flexible running times, fewer commercials, and crowd-sourced content. The brainpower - and just plain power - of the most valued tech firms will change things even more.
As technology tries to maintain its dizzying ascent, one dead weight has kept its altitude in check: the battery.