Apple is crowdsourcing a definitive ranking of its top 50 products from the last five decades by asking users to vote on randomly paired head-to-head matchups.

Key points

• The project uses a modified ELO rating system, originally designed for chess, to calculate product rankings based on community preferences.
• Users participate by selecting their preferred item from two randomly presented Apple products, contributing to a collective data set.
• The algorithm adjusts scores based on the relative strength of each product, rewarding wins against highly ranked items more significantly.
• The initiative aims to simplify the ranking process by breaking down a large list into manageable, bite-sized comparisons for participants.

This crowdsourced approach provides a data-driven perspective on Apple’s historical product impact while engaging the community in a collaborative evaluation of the company's legacy. It demonstrates an efficient method for aggregating subjective consumer preferences into a structured, objective ranking.