Remember when Bill Gates challenged Slash to Guitar Hero? 13 years of Ars at CES

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  • For reference: here are the Encore and the Wynn, two of the towering hotels in which attendees and exhibitors can stay and hold meetings while they’re in Vegas. (Seen here in 2014.)
    Andrew Cunningham
  • A popular site at CES—since thousands of tech journalists are covering CES, the press room fills up quickly. (Here it is in 2013.)
    Chris Foresman
  • Back when Ars first attended CES in 2006, we showcased *three* Palm devices (one even had video from something called Mobi TV). The Palm Lifedrive had excellent taste in mid-aughts websites, though.
  • For a reminder of phones at the time (in a pre-iPhone world), this is UT Starcom’s newest smartphone, the PPC6700. It was modern. Swear.
    Eric Bangeman
  • Managing Editor of Ars Technica Eric Bangeman once said of this thing, “The Vonage WiFi phone. I’m hoping to review it.”
    Eric Bangeman
  • OK, just one more from 2006—forget the Zune, did anyone have a Zen player?
  • For our first three years at CES, the show keynote belonged to then-Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. These events became opportunities for Gates to announce new Microsoft products (like Windows Home Server in 2007), but he closed out his run in 2008 by challenging Slash to Guitar Hero 3 (srsly).
  • Like he took over Microsoft, Steve Ballmer would also take over the CES keynote slot in 2009. (As Ars’ Jon Stokes captioned this performance, “This picture doesn’t really relate to anything, but I’m dying to see what you guys can do with it in Photoshop..”)
  • Also at CES 2008. then-Ars Gaming Editor Ben Kuchera tried on an actual gaming helmet. The HXT helmet was meant to simulate combat impact. “Someone hits me with a sniper rifle, and I get the sensation of someone whacking me on the head. It doesn’t hurt, but it does let you know in a very real way when you’ve been hit.”
  • Think Drake and Sia showing up at some tech-product announcement is a new trend? Here’s a (blurry, but Ars was front row!) Tom Hanks helping Sony keynote CES in 2009. (DaVinci Code, part II was his project to promote).
  • Actually, in 2012, would will.I.am showing up at Intel’s CES event be as big as Drake cameos today?
    Jon Brodkin
  • Yes, the watermelon-destroying comedian is roaming CES. We asked if he was performing, and he said, “No. I have patents, you know.” Turns out this is not a joke.
    Casey Johnston
  • Sure, CES 2009 had a remote controlled beer koozie and an indoor duck hunting game, but CES 2010 brought us TV Hat: “The hat holds your iPhone or iPod Touch in front of your face, with a lens between your eyes and the screen giving things some magnification. We’re sorry we didn’t grab a few for the plane ride home.”
  • Elvis also hadn’t left the building as of CES 2010.
  • Vinyl was only just starting to make its modern comeback, but who could say no to an Enterprise that doubled as a record player? (CES 2010)
  • Behold, it exists! (Take a visual tour here.)
  • The entry to the CES showroom, circa 2013.
  • In the future, this is what clothes will look like… according to CES 2013. (And you thought 2011/2012 was a tablet frenzy…)
  • At CES 2013, Gaming Editor Kyle Orland gets the hang of a pair of Spinkix remote controlled skates. “It felt surprisingly natural after five minutes or so,” he swore. (Don’t confuse these with SoloWheel or RocketSkates; those are separate dangerous personal transportation options we’ve demoed for you, dear readers.)
  • …don’t confuse those with Inmotion’s personal transportation device, either. The company makes scooters now (of course), but at CES 2015 one of Ars’ staffers didn’t have the, uh, energy to handle the vehicle.
  • Looking back at CES throughout the years, it’s impressive to come across tech that stands the test of time. For instance, this little guy (CES 2013) is one of the five robot designs included with the LEGO Mindstorms EV3. He’ll last at least 30,000+ impressions.
  • With Microsoft ceding the high-profile CES Keynote slot in 2012, 2013 had a bit of a vacuum for marquee names. Among those who stepped in, Internet co-creator Vint Cerf spoke at CES that year.
  • And Ars Senior IT Reporter Jon Brodkin was there at CES 2013, asking Vint Cerf about the need for net neutrality regulation. As much as things change…
    Chris Foresman
  • 2012-2013 was also a notable time period for technology seeping into the firearms space. Defense Distributed was founded in summer 2012, and Ars first saw TrackingPoint, the company behind Linux-powered rifles, at CES 2013. Post-CES, Lee Hutchinson would demo the TrackingPoint rifle by using only its display to aim and shoot while looking away from the targets.
  • Look, we can’t let this gallery go past 2013 without at least mentioning the 2013 Qualcomm CES Keynote, perhaps remembered best as “Born Mobile.” It was the Stefon club of tech keynotes—it had everything: over-enthusiastic millennials, Guillermo del Toro, Maroon 5, NASCAR, surprise Steve Ballmer, and Big Bird in a tie. Watch it sometime.
  • Staring off into a Lawnmower Man future at CES 2014, the year VR (in particular the appearance of Oculus) really took hold.
  • Here’s Toyota’s fuel cell vehicle at CES 2014. Cars increasingly became part of the show (and a fixture on the Ars radar, perhaps partially inspiring the Cars Technica of today.)
  • After Qualcomm’s 2013 keynote insanity, Intel got its turn in the opening-night slot. Perhaps the most memorable portion was Valve’s Gabe Newell revealing his grand plans for Steam Machines (RIP).
  • At CES 2014, this screen made of air could display games and apps (it was displaying Android in the demo). An infrared camera and detectors in the frame could see when a hand interacted with the jets…
  • A case full of head-mounted display prototypes at CES 2014. (Google Glass had skydived into everyone’s hearts about 1.5 years earlier.)
  • If 2014 was VR, 2015 felt like home robotics. Ars Reviews Editor Ron Amadeo meets his robot-self at CES 2015 (surprisingly, Ronbot did *not* run Android; it did rely on a Kinect, like a lot of 2015 tech).
  • CES 2015 had AR/VR, too, however. Here’s Lee Hutchinson in Avegant’s Glyph headset doing his best Geordi La Forge: “I’m doing this. I am in the future now.” Eat your heart out, TV Hat.
  • CES 2015 was also the stage for v2 of the Virtuix VR treadmill. As Lee Hutchinson put it, “WELCOME TO THE FUTURE. MAN, MACHINE, THE FUTURE.”
  • Like with any tradeshow, SWAG is a major part of CES. Blurred for graphic content, here’s a Firefox red fox enjoying a martini. (Peter Bright may have left with 4 or 5 of these in 2015.)
  • CES 2016 was memorable for many reasons: US Marshals showed up for one of those potentially explosive scooters; USB 3.1 arrived the year before, and this year we got an 802.11ad WiGig router. But the Arcimoto SRK that we first drove at CES was Ars’ surprise highlight of the show.
  • Ah, you don’t say, people behind FridgeCam (a standalone option for folks who want Internet-connected fridge benefits without spending a couple grand). CES 2017, definitely the year companies threatened to put cameras and Internet connectivity in everything.
  • CES has been around for 50+ years, Ars has attended for 13, and sometimes it’s just good to know it hasn’t totally lost its sense of weirdness (or unintentional comedy), right? The iShower, at CES 2017
  • Going forward, cars will likely become a bigger and bigger part of the Ars CES experience. We took our first robotaxi ride of 2018 at CES, for instance: Aptiv (previously known as Delphi before spinning off its powertrain division under the old name) partnered with Lyft to offer a real-life Total Recall Johnny Cab service.
  • To close, we’ll share two images that can represent feelings at the end of a long CES. Back in 2014, to demonstrate how dirty your phone is, a screen cleaner company made this person dress up like an iPhone with poop on it.
    Andrew Cunningham
  • We’ve all been there: a lonely news hunter works alone between two garbage cans among pylons on his Microsoft Surface. A fitting end to the first behind the scenes look of Ars at CES.

Ars may be turning 20, but the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) makes us feel downright youth-y. The annual tech gathering has been around quite a while at this point, some 50-plus years. And over that time, the show has hosted countless industry-wide announcements—big (IoT everywhere, the Windows 7 public beta), small (USB C, 802.11ad WiGig routers), and just plain insane in retrospect (has using your eyes as a video game controller caught on yet? What about screens made of air?).

2019 makes it a baker’s dozen for Ars—we’ve covered it on-the-ground annually since 2006. We’ve learned several times over that robots love “Gangnam Style” and that early Chromebooks proved only moderately effective for covering such a news fest. But looking back reveals some admirable prescience from CES. Maybe the TV Hat at CES 2010 genuinely did pave the way for Oculus-fever in 2014 and our present-day “VR is so close to happening, right?” realities. Or perhaps the abundance of personal transportation vehicles—Spinkix remote-controlled skates in 2013 to Inmotion unicycle-y things in 2015 to US Marshals targeting hover boards in 2016—really did set the stage for today’s scooter-laden urban landscapes. CES 2010 stoked the tablet wars between Microsoft and Apple months before the iPad, 2014 pushed curved displays (at least TVs), 2018 highlighted the utility of self-driving cars. Heck, even in 2006 they knew years later we’d all be watching TV on our phones (c’mon, that’s totally what Palm and Mobi TV had in mind).

So with another CES fresh on our minds and nostalgia levels a bit higher than normal given the site’s anniversary, we decided to take a walk down Ars-at-CES memory lane (err, memory midway?) as part of our initial 20th anniversary series. Who knows what kinds of showcased technological movements we’ll look back on as groundbreaking after we complete our 20th January in the desert? But we at least have total confidence that future tech executives will continue the proudest CES tradition—inviting friends from Slash to Tom Hanks onstage for some totally casual conversation about upcoming products.

Listing image by Ars Staff

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1440425