To say 2021 was an eventful year would, as was the case last year, be an understatement. The continued COVID-19 pandemic, the sluggish economy it has created and how we've all responded to it have made this year's news cycle fast, brutal and short.
As is the case when a lot is happening, not all of it is bad. The eight news items covered in this best tech of 2021 list include gadgets and goings-on that were exciting in a good way, so no — there won't be any mention of the chip shortage after this sentence.
The Apple M1 has a banner year
Apple started selling M1 computers in late 2020, but 2021 was the year the M1, and its successor the M1X, captured headlines and wowed users.
Apple's in-house M1 chips were huge performance boosters for its machines, and as of late 2021 can be found in its desktops, laptops and even the iPad Pro, bringing desktop-level performance to Apple's top-end tablet. The latest M1 chips, the M1X, is reportedly twice as fast at GPU tasks and three times faster performing machine learning operations than its predecessor. There's still several years between now and when Apple finally phases out its use of Intel processors, but the stellar performance of its initial silicon offerings indicate nothing but good things in store.
Google announces its own silicon, too
Not to be outdone, Google recently announced the Pixel 6 series, which will come with the company's first in-house SoC, the Google Tensor chip.
Unlike the M1 series, Google designed the Tensor chip, named for its TensorFlow ML platform, from the ground up for its Pixel series smartphones. In particular, Google's aim with the Tensor chip was to bring its next-level machine learning capabilities to its mobile devices without needing to send data off to the cloud for processing.
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Like the latest version of the iPhone, which brought speech recognition to the on-device chip, the Tensor chip boosts performance by eliminating the need to transmit data. Along with on-device speech recognition, the Tensor chip is able to perform AI photo touch-ups and corrections just like those Google is able to do on a full-scale TensorFlow setups.
Basically, if you've been impressed by what Apple has done with its own in-house silicon, but aren't an Apple user, this is the chip to be excited about.
Commercial space flight becomes a part of life
The early part of 2021 was full of headlines about the billionaire space race that pitted Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos against each other in a bid for who would reach (near to) the stars first. Fast forward several months, and Bezos' Blue Origin is regularly ferrying the wealthy and influential to the edge of space in its reusable rocket.
Commercial space flight news reached its apex when William Shatner, a.k.a. Captain James T. Kirk, reached spacewith Blue Origin on October. At 90, Shatner became the oldest person ever to go to space, but his going does something else entirely for public perception of space travel: It signals that it's here, even if it's still slightly out of reach for most of us.
NFTs demonstrate more blockchain applications
There's a good argument to be made for leaving NFTs off this list: What practical good do incredibly overpriced digital paintings and collectibles, whose ownership rights you're not even technically buying along with the NFT, generate for the world?
Well, the NFTs themselves may not generate any actual value aside from the ludicrous prices they can fetch, but NFTs warrant a mention as one of the best pieces of tech of the year for showing us yet again what blockchains could be used for; in this case, establishing ownership of non-fungible assets.
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