Ranking the best Apple products of the past 50 years

For anyone, arranging 50 items can be a long and tedious process. As for society, it is significantly easier. Instead of asking each user to submit a full list, we can break down the rating into bite-sized components, then reassemble them once we have enough votes. Here, we use a modified ELO algorithm to do this.

With ELO, each item has a starting score, which is then adjusted in each paired match. The change in scores depends on the degree of the other element in the pairing; Beating the higher-ranked item will come with a higher reward than beating the lower-ranked item, and the same applies in reverse to the penalties for losing. (ELO was originally developed for chess, which has stronger victory conditions than User Preferences, so we modified the standard version to mitigate the effects of major upsets.)

All of this means that every time you choose between any two of the items on our Apple Top 50 list, you contribute to the overall community rating. Thanks!

Credits

• Design: Christine Radtke
• Engineer: Graham Macari
• Editors: Nilay Patel, David Pearce, Meredith Haggerty
• Concept: Victoria Barrios, Travis Larchuk
• Copy Editing: Kali Blagg