All your example are in the Apple ecosystem. Depending on where the author is from, it may not be that surprising that they wouldn't know about them. In my corner of the wolrd, Apple was basically non-existent until the iPod and iPhone.

In most corners of the world, actually. Apple was reasonably popular in the US, the UK and a few developed countries (think marketshare of 5% in 1999) and basically non existant everywhere else.