iPhone: A-
By measure of size of the market, it could be considered that the iPhone is Apple's most important product launch since the Mac. Within six months of launching, the iPhone came and overtook Windows Mobile in US marketshare. The UI turned out brilliant, and the keyboard and lack of 3G turned out to be pretty minor problems. (Important and fresh as it is, missing features and the initial $599 price caused us to recommend people wait to buy it.)

There were some problems outside the product, though. The price drop from $599 to $399 had early adopters very unhappy, and Jobs' peace offering of a $100 dollar rebate earned criticism too. (Even from Woz) iPhone hackers met resistance as Apple's firmwares setup obstacles to installing apps. And I still have a bricked iPhone here that ate it after firmware 1.1.1 killed iPhones unlocked using the iPhone Dev Team's AnySIM program. Apple's official fix, "Buy a new one", didn't sit well with anyone, but it's clear they weren't going to go out of their way to work with hacks. Especially those that threatened their revenue sharing agreement they set up with AT&T. We kicked and screamed for 3rd party programs; Jobs eventually wrote another letter revealing that the iPhone would get a public SDK, with security safeguards, come February. Even before then, unofficial app developers have patched so many of the phone's shortcomings, such as MMS, location awareness on the maps and custom ringtones. For the record, and against my cautious "wait to buy" verdict, I've been using the iPhone on and off since launch and loving it in spite of its flaws. 31% of Giz readers are doing the same, according to a recent poll.

Leopard OS: A
Leopard finally shipped into our desktops and hearts. After two Worldwide Developer Conferences and several months of iPhone-induced delays, Leopard launched. It was an understated occasion in the best possible way for Apple. Bugs were squashed with a patch issued about two weeks later, and although there are some quirky new features, Leopard's best trait is an overall streamlining of daily use: quickly turning emails into to-do or calendar items with a few clicks; Quick Look's ability to scan large amounts of media quickly; etc. Compare that to Vista, which PC World just dubbed the biggest disappointment of the year, while Dell reissued XP sales. A quiet launch is a good launch, although Apple did report 2 million in sales in the first weekend. (Relatively speaking, Leopard had a better adoption rate than Vista, but by absolutes, the much bigger Windows user base ended up snatching 20 million copies of Vista in the first month.) If you actually think Vista is better, more power to you: OS X's Boot Camp was upgraded this year to support Vista in case you forgot. Game over, man, game over.

iPods: A-
For a while, almost every major competitor (Creative, SanDisk, Zune) has had a product ladder that trumped the Apple model they targeted with features, like stronger format support, built-in FM tuners, video playback or price. This year Apple fought back with the iPod touch's UI and superior screen-to-surface-area ratio borrowed from the iPhone. It also introduced the video-capable nano, one we initially called "fat" but later recognized as having the same fine lines as any Italian automobile: Contoured and sharp at the same time, ultimately the nicest feeling in one's tight jeans. The classic is there to satiate those who prefer to carry their entire music collection at once, but I resent its title given that it does not come in white. The shuffle was designed for gyms, junior family members and Xmas stockings, and only Apple could spin the lack of an LCD—something quickly becoming standard in the premium-cheapo MP3 players arena—as an asset and namesake.

As its been, the iPod continues to be the focal point of Apple's mainstream power, with plenty of Windows-indoctrinated iPod owners dipping their toes into the Mac water and finding out they appreciate iPod-like computers and cellphones. Lack of advanced codec support for DivX and the like continues to be an ignorant stance on how users are finding content these days. (This would not be as much as of issue if the video store was more fully stocked, hint hint.)

Computers: A
The Mac product line has been updating much quicker than in the PowerPC days, with updates coming weeks behind Windows machine counterparts. The 15-inch MacBook Pro got a noteworthy midyear update to LED backlighting and Santa Rosa chips, and the iMac got a new glass face and a beautiful aluminum case stamped from a single piece of metal. Both are outstanding models and values, with the MacBook Pro earning PC World's title of fastest Vista notebook ever, and consumer reports rating them higher than all other notebooks.

The Mac mini and the MacBook standard got some minor speed bumps, but no breathtaking updates. The powerful Mac Pro desktops seem to be destined for workplace use, as the mainstream's love for all-in-ones and notebooks grows quarter after quarter. (In Q3, notebook sales were up 34% from 2006; a full 62% of sales were notebooks.) There is a place in my heart for a 12-inch notebook to replace the G4-powered PowerBook, but this could be rectified by the announcement of the long rumored ultralight MacBook in Macworld '08. Crossing my fingers. Also, to be fair, these notebooks need to all start packing LED backlighting, flash SSD drives and 3G connections to stay competitive in 2008. Card readers wouldn't hurt either.

TV, Hollywood and Music Industry Cooperation: D
Jobs wrote that open letter to the music industry asking for a stop to DRM. EMI and Jobs broke the news that they'd be doing DRM-free music on iTunes initially but competitors like Amazon caught up while iTunes started to stall. The movie list on iTunes continues to be not so great, even if it did just pick up Trading Places (Mortimer!). I'm not sure this problem is Apple's fault. The powers that be in old guard media just don't want all that power of distribution to aggregate in iTunes. ITunes is my favorite program for media loading to a portable, but Matt Buchanan, Giz writer, explains it best here:

When you open up the iTunes store, "shaky" is probably not the first word that springs to mind as a description for its relationship with content providers. But anyone searching for their favorite video content is going to find some holes. The NBC flameout was just the loudest rumble, causing iTunes to lose a lot of its most popular TV content while NBC pushed this video Netflix and Amazon and some other sites, while co-founding its own free video service, Hulu, with Fox . Don't forget Universal Music gave iTunes the finger as well on a long-term contract, and now supplies non-DRM music to iTunes competitors Wal-Mart and Amazon. It may even go on its own there too. This is a problem when you're talking about a provider responsible for 40 percent of iTunes' video downloads and the largest catalog of music on the planet. The iTunes/iPod monopoly fear is also why movie prices might shoot up and long-rumored rentals are total vapor. Something's gotta give, and so far no one's blinking.

Apple TV: C
Apple didn't try very hard here. The execution is solid, but underwhelming. Its foot is in the living-room door, but as Jobs described Apple TV at All Things D, it's a hobby for the company clearly focused on its computers and its portable phone and music players. The YouTube addition announced at All Things D as an honor to Mossberg's event was nice. How about we go to a full-on Mac mini DVR hybrid and get an OS X machine with an extended Front Row menu capability for couch surfing.

Rumor Control: C
The new game: When Apple C&D's a publication, you can call it proof that the photo belongs to them, and that the device is at least a prototype, like in the case of the leaked iPod nano shots. At least Apple must be satisfied that Think Secret is dead (RIP), but its not like they were responsible for the major body of Apple leaks and rumors in 2007. (See Media Control section below.) This year, Apple brought many rumors to life; in 2008, we have rumors of ultralight laptops and multitouch Macs, and the second coming of the iPhone. What I want in 2008 is a left-field product no one has even thought of before, announced at a keynote, previously unleaked. Boom.

Keynote Reality Distortion Field: B The January Macworld iPhone announcements were epic. The fact that the phone remained unleaked alone was a miracle. Even the malfunctions were decent: Jobs used a frozen slide as an opportunity to tell some stories about pranks that he and Woz pulled off in their younger years, making the event more personal. At the end, Steve thanked families of Apple for understanding late nights at work without knowing what was being built. After it was done, there were no demos of iPhones, just a prototype taunting us in 360 degrees as it rotated in its glass case. At WWDC, iMac and iPod launches later in the year, forementioned product leaks and reinterative presentations on Leopard took the steam out of most events. Steve's boom count was lower than at previous events, too, and stock prices dropped (a bit) afterwards as Wall Street was left without much significant new product to get excited about.

Media Control: N/A
Some think that Apple coverage in the papers and blogs seem blown out of proportion to other tech coverage. It has even been suggested by the occasional chemically unbalanced Zune fan that I give Steve Jobs blowjobs. All that venom, found in the comments of this site and in emails, have made me a little afraid to express my appreciation for the work the Cupertino kids do. If anything, we expect a lot more from them, and are unforgiving when they fuck up. (Again, I bring up our iPhone recommendation.) So I find that integrity for a gadget journo in 2007 meant delivering honest Apple verdicts at the risk of appearing a shill. (There is nothing more frightening for a tech hardware journalist than this.) But at least we were not alone. The mainstream big hitters like Pogue and Mossy have always loved Apple's work. But this year, PC Magazine's crusty John Dvorak proved that even the toughest critics have warmed this year. I recall that Consumer Reports ranked the 15 and 17-MacBook Pros best in class in a recent buyer's guide (although not the standard MacBooks) and PC World's tested a MacBook Pro to be the fastest machine running Vista at the time they went to press. Time's iPhone "Gadget of the Year" magazine cover made me want to freaking barf, but its not untrue. Apple has had the best year in recent history and I hope they meet the high expectations we've formed for them in 2008. Regarding the Think Secret settlement announced this week, if they start offering buckets of cash to this publication to stop rumor mongering, it isn't going to get them very far.

Final Grade: A

[Gizmodo's Year-End Report Cards 2008]

Xbox 360: A-
Microsoft, you have to be happy as hell that you pushed Xbox 360 out of the gate a year before the PS3 and the Wii. Console sales have been great, staying ahead of Sony and only recently challenged by Nintendo. This is fueled by two factors: a better selection of hot games like Halo 3 and BioShock and the only real implementation of live online gaming in the console world. The Xbox Live community has even allowed you to pilot programs for HD video downloading and all sorts of other media treats that make Sony (and Apple) nervous. Sadly for HD DVD buffs, compatibility with that format is not one of the selling points, or you would have included it in your recently revamped HDMI-equipped 1080p Xbox 360 Elite.

Performance aside, I would say that the only mark against you on this front is the hardware itself. I personally would like some kind of Xbox 360 Ultimate with integrated with HD DVD, but even if that doesn't happen, it's still pretty noisy, and the Red Rings of Death are getting to be more than just a clever punchline.

Zune 2: B+
The Zune is one of those products that gets shat on just for being what it is, but the first one really was a weak contender. Why start with an HDD player when, in 2006, flash-memory giant SanDisk shook Apple to the core with an affordable low-frills nano challenger? Apple owned the higher-end hard-drive based media-player market, but could be challenged more easily in flash memory. Still, I'll admit that as of June, the Zune share was something around a respectable 11%.

Fast forward to October, and you get it much closer to the bull's-eye, with a flash player in four non-brown colors, plus wireless syncing and a slightly more lenient over-the-air sharing policy. Missing were two key customer demands: the ability to purchase songs over Wi-Fi, and the availability of movies and TV shows in the online Zune Marketplace.

The absence of those features wouldn't have been such a trauma if it weren't for the fact that Apple's iPod touch, which lets users buy songs over the air, had just arrived in stores, while the iPhone got an upgrade to do the same. Ironically, sales of your thin new 80GB player may be boosted by some frustrations with the iPod classic, which was introduced at the same time.

We're still a long way from seeing many Zunes in subways, and even longer off from that great social day when strangers are sharing Zune tracks on those same subways. My own personal opinion is "yawn" but I'm not going to begrudge you your successful attempt to jump well into the middle of the non-iPod pack.

Windows Home Server: A-
When I first peeped the WHS this past summer, I was impressed by the wealth of features it presented, such as smooth network file sharing, centralized daily backups and web-based remote access. The "media furnace" concept has always appealed to me, and it was nice to see Microsoft's server division creating a home product that didn't seem to have all of the emotional and technical baggage of the Windows franchise. Beta response was overwhelmingly positive, and it appeared a slam dunk was in order. Though I had my minor troubles in testing it, the platform itself is getting rave reviews. Lately, I've heard talk from both inside Microsoft and just outside of it that the next WHS might even offer full support to Macs as well, just thing thing for hybrid homes like mine.

Windows Vista: D
Let's cut the blather about new functionality and early-adoption growing pains and all that: New operating systems are supposed to run smoother than older ones. In my own life, three Vista machines proved unable to meet the mobile rigors of blogging in the field. I had used both Macs and PCs for years, but my primary devices had been PCs. Unable to find a Windows laptop that could hold up, I turned to a certain machine with the initials MBP, and can report zero regrets to date, even with the impulsive day-of update to Leopard.

Let me repeat that, so any people who accuse me of fanboyism can wrap their heads around it: I was trying hard to find a Windows machine that I could work on. I tested a handful of them, all without satisfactory results. Then, and only then, did I switch to a Mac for full-time use. Incidentally, my dad switched, too, and is enjoying his new iMac.

You can blame the OEMs for the troubles, but they blame you: In recent my conversations with execs from big PC makers, one said that the good news about Apple gaining market share is that maybe, just maybe, Microsoft would "get the picture" and work harder to build a better product. Just yesterday, another exec told me that customers were "crying like schoolgirls" to get XP put back onto shipped Vista machines.

Windows Mobile: D
My feelings about Windows Mobile were best expressed in a sentence from my hastily written Motorola Q9m mini-review: "Seriously, if you buy this phone, you are dumb." Frustrated as I've become with the platform, I turned to the coolest head I know—Jason Chen—for a reality check, but his thorough, non-biased evaluation of Windows Mobile proved almost all of my gut instincts correct. WM6 is not the improvement that was needed to fix what's broken, and it doesn't look like that will come now until at least WM8. Thanks for the heads-up, Microsoft, but telling us to wait that long for something that has the features commonly found in Treos, BlackBerrys and yes, iPhones, is not very alluring.

Like I said, this has not been the easiest year for you, but then again, out of some unexpected places came some against-all-odds victories, and you should be proud. Just please, for the love of all things holy, get crackin' on an OS that might convince the switchers that you haven't just given up. By the by, I'm really looking forward to the new Office... for Mac.

Final Grade: B-

The PlayStation 3 kicked off a surprisingly strong year with the introduction of folding@home, an app intended to distract people from the thin library of games. If you can't play Final Fantasy, the least you could do is help cure Parkinsons. Then there's the upcoming Second Life-esque Home, along with web browsing and installing Linux—activities which occupy the time that you could be spent gaming.

Good news continued as Sony's XBR5 and XBR4 series of LCD TVs rolled out to critical acclaim. Even the killing off of its rear-projection TVs represented a forward-looking move, and another example of Sony owning up to its problems. We'll miss the 70-inch 70XBR5 for a little while, but by this time next year we'll probably be dazzled by some other sweet set. If Sony still knows how to do one thing, it's manufacture quality hardware.

...But if Sony knows how to do two things, it's make proprietary formats that nobody likes, as evidenced by their killing off the ATRAC format. We're glad to see it go, but many consumers are still peeved at having it forced down their meat hole all these years.

Things were looking good on the home front as the slimmed-down second edition of the PSP sold 1 million in only two months. I even pondered aloud that the PSP might even be able to catch up to the DS someday, although that was somewhat of a fantasy situation.

Sony did manage to beat the Nintendo Wii in sales for four straight weeks, something nobody thought could be done without some sort of Metal Gear Solid or Final Fantasy injection. Are the hardcore gamers in Japan finally warming up to the PS3 because of its media functionality, or are they snapping it up because of the recent influx of decent games? Probably both.

Despite all the improvements the PS3 has had this year, Sony still managed to slap consumers with one hand while taking money from them with the other. Of course, we're talking about the gradual elimination of backward compatibility. It was first reduced to software-only emulation on the 80GB system, and then eliminated entirely on the 40GB version. If you can't play PS2 games, you're gonna have to buy our PS3 games! Right?

Sony's Blu-ray format pulled out a sizeable lead in 2007 over the rival HD DVD, even though Sony's own CEO Howard Stringer says that the fight isn't that important and the two sides are in a stalemate. Nevertheless, the fact that Blu-ray is kicking butts in terms of players in homes (thanks to the PS3) and titles sold bodes well for the format.

Don't think Sony could pull out an untarnished victory, as Blu-ray wasn't without its gaffes for the year. Not only were there compatibility problems between different Blu-ray players when playing back discs, it happened multiple times. Then there's that whole BD Profile 1.1 mess: bottom line, Sony's standalone players don't support the latest interactive discs, even ones being released by Sony's own home video division. People have to buy a Panasonic (or update the firmware on their PS3) for compatibility.

Overall, they've had a good year. We've seen good product releases from all over the consumer electronics spectrum with no crazy rootkit scandal to speak of. The PlayStation 3 and PSP are finally gaining steam, and the Blu-ray format seems to be doing well for itself. If it weren't for the missteps, Sony would have received an A—but a B+ is nothing to be ashamed of.

Final Grade: B+

Mobile Phones & Devices: A+
This year, Samsung socked it to Moto and took second place behind the Big N in worldwide phone marketshare. The BlackJack II smartphone met with sound critical acceptance in a tricky field, handsets such as the Armani phone gave Samsung some needed style cred, and mobile boundaries were stretched (as well they should) with devices like the Q1 Ultra. There were some beefs, like the fact that the original BlackJack hasn't yet seen an official Windows Mobile 6 update, and let-downs, like the 5-megapixel G800 "photographer's choice," but overall, Samsung is winning the device game.What impresses us most though is Samsung's aggressive pursuit of openness and network agnosticism. It's a founding member of Google's Open Handset Alliance, and has been the first company to openly promote "femtocell" devices to enhance cellular reception in your own home via a network-connected cellular access point. In Korea, Samsung is showing off its second-generation of WiMax phones, which will someday run on Sprint's Xohm network. Meanwhile, it just joined Nokia's 3GPP group to roll out the LTE protocol for super crazy fast wireless from a GSM-based network, one that both Verizon and AT&T plan to adopt.

Cameras and Camcorders: C
Samsung has been left totally in the dust in the camera business, and it's mainly because the camera division operates independently from both the mobile and consumer electronics businesses. I've played around with a few, but I have no interest because the traditional camera makers Nikon and Canon, along with the photo-savvier CE companies Sony and Panasonic, keep me plenty busy with the highest-quality shooters.

Camcorders are a different thing, because they are part of Samsung Electronics. The trouble is, while Samsung is doing a decent job of developing cool-looking lower-priced cameras that use flash memory and get clips online in a hurry, the real video business has vanished into point-and-shoot cameras, which will all soon be HD capable. Samsung's real mistake is in not reorganizing its camera division closer to its other electronics.

Storage of All Shapes and Sizes: A+
There's no way to make this business sexier than Samsung has this year, with the introduction of 2.5" 64GB flash SSDs to take your laptop to lightspeed, as well as super-small 1.3" HDDs that are on the horizon which may answer my personal yearning for an iPod touch with decent capacity.

In addition to flash and HDDs, Samsung introduced a long overdue innovation in optical disc technology this year, a slot-loading drive that handles both full-size and 8cm discs. This is most helpful for people who use those little DVD camcorders, but with HD DVD and Blu-ray still on the rise, there's no telling how popular 8cm discs will be in the future, so it's wise of Sammy to plan ahead.

MP3 Players: B
Samsung is in the media player business mostly because it can be. As the supplier of a vast quantity of the world's flash memory, it can get the chips presumably at cost, while easily integrating developments for its booming cellphone business (OLEDs; touchscreens; Bluetooth chips) as well. The thing is, it feels like Samsung isn't aggressive in this business, because it makes money whether it sells a YP player or Apple sells an iPod. Samsung competitor SanDisk has been far more aggressive, forging partnerships with Real and Yahoo, and spinning its successful music-player business into an increasingly diverse portfolio of media players with content deals to back them up. Samsung's latest product, the P2 touchscreen music and video player was a good example of the deflated enthusiasm. One key selling point was that it had Bluetooth, so you could use it as a music-playing speakerphone for your cellphone. But when it launched, the software wasn't ready. In other words, reviewers couldn't test the single most unique attribute, so it fell back into a crowd of non-nanos.

Blu-ray and HD DVD: B+
Promised software updates seemed to be a trend this year for Samsung. On one hand, this promotes the future-looking technology on hand, gadgets that can be upgraded after purchase. But it also allows Samsung to be slow with certain things.

The P2's delayed Bluetooth update is not nearly as significant as the hotly anticipated and positively reviewed BD-UP5000 combo Blu-ray and HD DVD player. We've been stoked since the early buzz, but there's this nagging sensation that it's too good to be true. After all, its promised December arrival has been postponed to January, and even then, it will require an online update to be ready to play the "final standard" or "profile 1.1" Blu-ray discs slated to arrive starting in early 2008. That said, when the update does come, the BD-UP5000 will be one of only four players on the market to be able to read these discs. Sony's PlayStation 3 will probably get an update in the next few days, but neither Sony's electronics division and Blu-ray champion Pioneer will have such a compatible player.It's funny that Samsung is both exploring the world outside of Blu-ray while being a stalwart supporter of that format as well, with not only one of the first 1.1 players, but also in easing its BD-P1400 down in price to where a confused consumer base might actually buy a free-standing Blu-ray player, that is, down to the $299 level.

[I just want to say that this letter grade, for the Blu-ray and HD DVD section, was written in pencil: as soon as the BD-UP5000 ships and gets updated to full Blu-ray 1.1 capability, I will happily change this to an A. Ditto if the BD-P1400 starts selling openly for under $200!]

TVs: A-
This year, Samsung saw its market share slip a little in the LCD business, as Sony took back some ground and smaller Chinese brands such as Vizio moved cheap product up into pole position. But what it lost in quantity, it's made up for in quality. Samsung LCDs are consistently the best-reviewed products around, especially the 81 series characterized by LED backlighting and 120Hz motion-blur reduction. In its first technical review, HDGuru Gary Merson said it had very high motion resolution, better than most 120Hz LCDs and even some plasmas.Samsung is pushing hard in all areas of TV technology. Its experiments in high-def wireless video streaming have led me to believe that we might actually take the concept of wireless TV seriously next year.

It's also doing its best to play in the OLED sandbox: word on the street is that come CES, Samsung will show off a 40-inch OLED TV. It's a crazy technical feat, and one that other electronics makers seem to think is impossible. In a little over two weeks, we'll know for sure.

Extra Credit: Keeping It Green
Samsung deserves bonus points this year for coming out on top of Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics, neck and neck with Sony Ericsson. That's not to say it's Kermit-green, by hippy standards, but it is to say that, among the titans, it is the most granola.

Overall Grade: A