The kitchen: true home of multitasking gadgets Apple may get all the attention, but where has technology really made the most difference in the last 40 years? The living room, where black and white TV screens are now more colourful and interactive - or is it the kitchen where previously absent dishwashers, wine coolers, washing machines and ice-cream makers are now abundant? Mobile phone manufacturers reckon on their handsets lasting about three years; Magimix is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a new food processor that has a 20-year guarantee on its motor. Headlines are rightly dominated by huge corporations such as Apple and Samsung, but it's well worth remembering that apparently mundane kitchen technology has liberated at least a generation from tedious tasks. There's been major progress in those 40 years since Magimix was started in Burgundy to serve the needs of professional chefs. Geeks now extol the virtues of multitasking in a computer's operating system: busy cooks with families have long known exactly why multitasking is so beneficial as they prepare a stew for the freezer and consequently spend more time with their families. Indeed, at this year's IFA technology fair in Berlin, alongside the latest televisions and tablets, Jamie Oliver launched Philips" new HomeCooker - it stirs and can also chop ingredients, so the risotto's quicker to make and need never stick to the pan again. At £250, it's a gadget that Oliver claims is "like an extra pair of hands" that liberates parents from the kitchen on a busy weekend evening. On one technology website, it was the top story all day, beating news about laptops and phones and demonstrating, as the site's editor put it, that kitchenware can be sexy without Nigella Lawson. Magimix's UK managing director Neal Jones argues that companies such as his "can't exist in isolation from the technology elsewhere in the home." Indeed, some rivals now make coffee machines which identify a user's individual preferences based on their fingerprint. "Fingerprint recognition makes sense for coffee," says Jones, "and I'd point to products such as the Vision toaster, which for the first time use new materials that mean you can see how well your bread is done as it's toasting." Jones argues that more so than a phone or a TV, kitchen gadgets "are an investment that will stand the test of time; we still have spares available for the very first machines that are 40 years old." Magimix is by no means alone in expecting its customers to demand such longevity. Nonetheless, Jones argues that all kitchen manufacturers have had to learn from a certain iPod maker. What I admire in Apple is not just the principles; it's the technology that works in the background that you can't see; we use technology but we will only use it where it makes sense. Consumers in the kitchen are much more demanding than those in the living room. It only takes one meal ruined because something failed for people to think again about a whole brand. As in mobile phones, too, Magimix faces rivals such as KitchenAid attempting to appeal to similar consumers who seek equally long-lasting products, and less obviously technological manufacturers such as Le Creuset have in fact invested significant sums in improving their non-stick pans in the past two years alone. The marketing speak for the new food processor, the 5200XL, claims eight major functions and a host of additional ones - that doesn't sound too different from a mobile phone. But it seems unlikely that Samsung will be producing spares for its flagship S3 in 2052.