radioshackadJust to show how far we’ve come in the last twenty-three years, a blogger recently came across a full-page Radio Shack newspaper ad from 1991, and noticed that all except two items on the ad have now been superseded by his iPhone.

While a few of his comparisons are a little iffy (for example, the iPhone could be said to replace a CB radio inasmuch as you can chat with people on the go, but it doesn’t let you chat on CB radio on the go; and not everyone uses their phone as their full-time computer) most of them are spot on. Camcorders, clock radios, weather radios, calculators, CD players, dictation recorders…now all on the phone in your pocket. For extra credit, three more such devices not even mentioned in that ad include a still photo camera, GPS receiver (which admittedly didn’t exist at the time of the ad) or road map, and, of course, a bookshelf. The only things on the page not included in the phone were a radar detector and full-sized 3-way speaker set.

How the times have changed, eh?

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