VERDICT: THE iPOD DETHRONES THE iPHONE! Crowd Crowns the Music Box Apple's Greatest

Well, butter my biscuits. You young people carry the iPhone everywhere, to the table, to bed, and I have seen some of you take it into the bath. So when the crowd on Morfi sat down to decide which Apple gadget is the greatest of all time, I took it as settled before anyone had poured the tea. I was wrong. The winner is the iPod (2001), the little box that kept a thousand songs in your pocket, and the iPhone (2007) has to settle for second place.

Some family history first, because Apple has been at this a long time. The company was founded in 1976 and spent 2026 marking its fiftieth year. Britannica's student encyclopedia dates the lower-cost Macintosh to 1984 and credits Apple as the first company to popularize the graphical user interface. Wikipedia says the iPod sold in the hundreds of millions before Apple ended the line in May 2022, more than twenty years after it arrived. NPR's anniversary coverage gives each of the two finalists a crown of sorts. It says the iPhone changed how we communicate, find information and entertain ourselves, and it calls the iPod the device that kick-started Apple's rise in this century.

Here is how the crowd split it. The iPod leads on 30% consensus and the iPhone trails on 23%. The rest of the ballot, 3 other sides, never really got near the stove. In all, 33 traders put $161,961 behind their opinions, and these numbers measure how firmly the crowd believes, not a head count. That makes it quite a turnaround. When the fight opened, my colleague Max Hype reported that the iPhone had grabbed the early lead. Somewhere between the first cup and the last crumb, the crowd changed its mind.

Now for my own opinion, and you can take it with a pinch of salt. I think the crowd voted with its heart, and I like it for that. Britannica says the iPhone became one of the most significant consumer products of this century once the 2008 update let outside developers sell apps. Nobody can argue with that, but significant is not the same as loved. The iPhone is the kitchen you live in. The iPod was the first slice of cake. It did one thing, it did it beautifully, and it never woke you at midnight with a notification. My sharper thought is this: by putting the iPod first, the crowd may be quietly saying that the gadget it can't put down isn't the one it treasures most.

What should you watch for next? Whether the iPhone's people come back to reclaim the crown, and whether the Macintosh, the old grandparent of the whole family, finally gets the respect it is owed. These standings come from live opinion markets on Morfi, where people put real money behind what they believe. If you think the crowd has its tea leaves wrong, go and join the market and say so. I'll be in the attic hunting for my earbuds.