2021 tech rewind: The best tech moments of 2021

It’s hard to admit, but here we go: 2021 has been challenging, but it also opened so many new doors for us, especially in the tech industry. Chip shortages were everywhere, making it hard to even get a new Play Station 5. Apple – for the first time ever – admitted that they were wrong. And Facebook, with so much pressure going on, changed its name to Meta. Here are the best 5 tech moments in 2021 for you to look back on!

1. Apple fixed their MacBooks:

Apple, in 2021, did a very brave and un-Apple thing: admitted that they screwed up. They brought back the Magsafe charging, HDMI port and three Thunderbolt 4 ports as well as a headphone jack and an SD card spot. They also put the strongest, most powerful processing chips with the longest battery life in the new MacBook model. No wonder why the 2021 version of MacBook has become a global trend. 

2. Dogecoin became a real currency:

When my boyfriend first told me about Dogecoin, we both thought it was a joke. Somehow, with Elon Musk tweets and the hype within Reddit users, the joke became a real currency. Dogecoin was worth only $0.0047 at the beginning of 2021, and since then, has skyrocketed more than 3200%. Its sibling, Shiba Inu coin, also climbed up more than 44 millions percent. Imagine putting 1 dollar into Shiba Inu in 2020, now you can happily retire with $44 millions in your bank account.

3. The wave of workers in the Silicon valley who quit their jobs to chase their NFT dreams:

With NFT becoming a trend, lots of high-skilled workers in the Silicon valley chose to quit their jobs to follow the hype. Many FOMO (fear of missing out) into NFT and left their jobs at big tech companies like Apple and Microsoft to chase an opportunity that they think is golden. According to data from PitchBook, which tracks private investment, investors this year alone invested more than 28 billion USD in global cryptocurrency and blockchain startups, which is four times the total investment in 2020. The hype got to everyone, including CEO and CFO of unicorns and Big 4. Just a few weeks ago, Lyft’s CFO, Brian Roberts, also left the company and joined the crypto startup OpenSea. At Google, the concerns about preventing employees from leaving for crypto companies have become so urgent that it’s the priority part of the agenda that the CEO addresses every Monday meeting. 

4. Cellular carriers brought 5G to life:

We’ve been expecting 5G for years, and here it is. Many cities have been selected to take advantage of 5G, and cellular carriers reported a drastically increase in the number of 5G smartphones used. In fact, Verizon even reported that it exceeded its target for 2021, despite the ongoing challenges with the pandemic. 

5. Facebook changed its name: 

In October, Facebook has officially announced that they will change the name to Meta. The name reflects the company’s ambition to grow beyond social media, and to describe the vision to work in a virtual world.

“Our hope is that within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers” – Zuckerberg said in a letter sent out to the public.

Fingers crossed to see what Meta will achieve in the next years.