2009 Predictions Score Card

see how that prediction did. About a year ago, we were actually uh talking about our predictions for two thousand nine and what we thought was going to happen in technology over the course of a year. That was kind of surprising because you know, that was the end of our first It wasn't even a full year we've been podcasting. Nope, it's been about six months. So who knew that we

would would still be here? Yeah, of I know most of our listeners in Well, yeah, we thought we would look over the list of predictions we made and see how we did. Um, so let's I'm gonna start with one of Chris's predictions. Uh, we actually made up this list and uh we kind of did a cursory glance and gave a yea or nay as to whether or not each one had come true. But I think that some of these are open for debate. So but the first one I don't think is which was that Chris

predicted that Steve Jobs would name a successor at Apple. Uh. He he kind of waffled on whether or not Steve Jobs would actually step down officially from Apple. And because remember this was back when we knew that Jobs was something was going on with his health, he had not quite he had not officially made his um announcement about taking leave. I think at that point, ye, it was a long time. Yeah, it does right, well, I mean because it was we knew something was up. We knew

something was up. There were a lot of there's a lot of conjecture at the time that he was possibly having a remission with his cancer issues that he had had years before. And so Chris predicted that Steve Jobs would, in order to uh to be diligent in his duties as CEO of Apple, name a successor, which has not happened. So that's that's an X in that column. Let me just make a big X, all right, you know, you didn't have to use the red marker for that. I

know I didn't have to. Um, okay, well we'll stick with Apple. And one of Jonathan's the uh he predicted that the Mac desktop computer would go away and it's still there. Yes it is. Yeah, that that one I was. Um, I was not right. There are new Imax out and they are beautiful and uh well, honestly though you had you had reasonable reason to believe that, because I mean netbooks and notebooks and all kinds of mobile computing devices,

is even smartphones. They've been hot, flying off the shelves, and one might think that, you know, Apple, which is known for doing such crazy things as eliminating the floppy disk drive FROMMA, might go so far as to get rid of the desktop machine entirely. And I think, I think, um, I think people have made a good point and that there are a lot of legitimate reasons why you might want a larger desktop unit as opposed to a laptop or other mobile computing device, including things like if you're

doing video editing or or any kind of media work. Um, you probably want a nice large screen to work with, and laptops just don't have that. I mean, once you get to a point where you have a nice large screen with a laptop, it's not no longer a laptop. It's just too big. And while you can use some devices where you can maybe hook up a second screen to a laptop or other mobile computing device, uh that's not ideal really. I mean, you could plug it into a dock and run a nice big monitor off of it.

But the thing is a lot of the uh uh, the processors that you see in desktop computers are just take too much power um to use in a laptop computer when you're not hooked up to a power source. Um. So if you're out on the road. I mean, that's one of the things that people expect is to have a nice long battery life. Well, if you have a super heavy duty processor and it that's the battery life's kind of just you know, it's gonna drop dramatically because

that processor is using so much power. So I think that that niche is still around for a little while longer, although I I you know, I think laptops are out selling you know, both Windows and Mac laptops are out selling the desktops these days. Yeah, so we'll we'll keep an eye on it. I mean, I don't think the desktop form factor is going away quite as quickly as I imagined back a year ago. Uh, let's move to the next one. Um, hey, we gotta we got a

ringer here. So Chris predicted that there would be rumors about the next gadget from Apple sometime in two thousand nine. Now the softball. But but no, not not entirely a softball, because we're not talking about an update to a gadget, right, We're not talking about a new kind of iPhone or whatever. We're talking about a totally new gadget. And you nailed it because the Apple tablet became the rumor of two

thousand nine. Uh, and I mean the non existent Apple tablet, right, it may very well carry over to be the rumor of two thousand ten. The way we're going now, I mean, you keep on hearing things about people saying, oh, the Apple tablet has been delayed. Look, Apple never announced the tablet. At least as as of the recording of this podcast, Apple has not announced any plans for a tablet device. Now, there's a lot of evidence, circumstantial evidence that points to

them developing a tablet. But if you haven't announced it, and you haven't given a release date. You can't say that the project has been delayed from an official standpoint because there was no date to overshoot. So I think, uh, I think we're gonna have to keep our eyes open see if this rumored device shows up. But yep, that's a win in your column. So let me just put a big X mark next to this. Wow, I guess I should have chosen a different shape and color because

this is gonna be really confusing when I'm all done. Alright, Um, so you actually get an X here for no Apple netbook.

There is not an Apple netbook, right, which again not a huge prediction, because Apple executives had gone so far as to specifically say they were not interested in developing a netbook because for them to develop a netbook that would meet the price point of your average netbooks, it would require them to, uh to not live up to their standards that they had established for their products, and so there was no way they could develop a product at that price point that was not a piece of crap.

That's pretty much a direct quote. Alright. Alright, so net we had a web office launches and goes head to head with Google Docs, mm hmmm, which where does that go? Because there is a version of Office for the web, but it's not out. Yeah, it's still in beta. So I would say this is gray. So I'm gonna mark this with a big red X right here and there we go. Three red x is so far. So they they mean different things. But that's okay. I will remember that when we get to the end. A little concerned

about this style. Um, oh, here's here's a win for you. Um, you've got to win. This is a partial win. Well okay, Yeah, Windows seven it's out, and you predicted last year that it was going to have a Microsoft was gonna have a hard time convincing people to adopt it after um the uh success. It hadn't with Windows Vista. It hung

in the initial don't. It's a very very Douglas Adams kind of way of putting it now So so really, what I was saying was that because Windows Vista was considered by many people to be a failure, it's not necessarily even even through the whole I would say, through the whole life cycle of the product, many people, not necessarily Microsoft, but other people would consider the product to be a failure. And um, and I said that that would make people more reluctant to adopt Windows seven because

it's an unknown quantity. Well, the reviews for Windows seven have been very positive. People have rushed out to purchase new Windows seven computers, So in that case, I was not correct. But what I was really thinking, i'd like to think since a year later and I can't really remember, but I was really thinking about things like corporations, you know, big companies, would they would they adopt Windows seven machines or would they wait and stick stick with Windows XP

machines until they absolutely had to upgrade? And that's seems to be the case. It seems like a lot of corporations are have learned a lesson from Windows Vista and have decided that, you know, they've got legacy systems that run on XP that may not run on Windows seven, and they want to They don't want to get burned, so they want to make sure that Windows seven is a stable environment before moving to it, which is why

I consider this a partial win. I think, uh, I think from a consumer standpoint, no, there's been no no perception problem with Windows seven, But from from a uh like a commercial standpoint with businesses, I think there still is. Yeah. Actually, uh, I have worked for a company that was large enough to the point where they were reluctant to install the next version of the operating system until they felt it

was complete. For example, when an XP came out, they decided to upgrade two Windows two thousand from so because they wanted about a mistake. Well to see that's thing they had all finally all the patches in place, did it? But Windows two thousand was awful? Well okay, well you have that. I mean, they were very large companies are

often reluctant to move up as a result. And there's there's another factor that plays into it too, the recession, because people don't want to spend the money to upgrade the software when XP is doing okay, sure them. So that that I mean, there has been. It hasn't been selling as well as Microsoft had hoped, at least after

that first initial rush, although I think it's been somewhat steady. Um. I don't think it's as bad as everybody thought it was gonna be, either a lot of people were saying it was going to be you know anyway, all right, so let's move on. You predicted that the Xbox seven twenty would be announced at E three ha ha, it was not not correct. X Microsoft has not mentioned anything

about the successor to the Xbox three sixty. Uh in fact, project and at all, which is the next really big innovative can troll interface for the Xbox three sixty That was that was being marketed specifically as a three sixty product, which kind of suggests that they have plans for for a few more years of three sixty life before moving on to the next system, although not necessarily could turn out the natal really is the first step to a news system, but we'll have to keep our eyes open.

Next okay, next, um oh here, look another checkbox in the wind column. I'll just put a big check but that one. Yeah, okay. The Google OS is out. Yeah, the web based operating system. I said that there would Google would come out with a web based operating system. And now we have Chromos. Now, granted, Chromos is not available for purchase until next year, so but you know it's it's definitely and there's developer copies. If you're a developer, you can get your hands on one, and you can

you can create applications for the Chromos. But yeah, it's not it's not on any commercial netbooks yet, which that's the main market for that our netbooks. So you said that would be a quiet year for Nintendo. At most you said there'd be a new peripheral announced. I think that's pretty safe to say that it was a pretty quiet year for Nintendo. Another softball except I mean, we even saw that WE sales for the first time lagged behind PS three sales in September. Yeah, so I mean

that's big news for Nintendo. Not good news, but it definitely was a quiet year. I if you talk about peripherals, I would say that maybe the WE Motion Plus it's probably the closest to a new peripheral. Yeah, well, I mean anything big. Of course, they had the the balance board, which was the last one, and that was for the end of last year because and then plus was really

more of an enhancement than an actual new perisher. Alright, moving on, unless you have that you know, new uh golf club thing that you clip on for the tyger Woods game chase after the SUV. Al Right, so let's move on. Um oh, look, another win for Jonathan another big check mark. He predicted that phone sales would take off, well, actually would would push Android up to new heights and hey, look a bunch of Android phones. Yeah. So when Android first came out in the United States, it was only

available on one hand set for the longest time. It's the HTCG one, which I am looking at right now because that happens to be my phone. Well, now there are a whole bunch of them. Yeah, and once it once it moved to Horizon, I was thinking, Okay, now Android really come on, come into its own because Verizon is in the United States the largest cell phone carrier. So yeah, hey, what do you know a prediction that

I got spot on. Now. Granted, the only other option at that point would have been for Android to kind of wither and die, which I guess could have also happened, but fortunately did not. So moving on, let's see here um work on the PS four and the end of PS three. So I guess this is that Sony would announce that the successor to the PS three was in the works and that the they were going to slowly phase out the PS three. No, no, I think you actually pointed out that I was being a little uh uh. Yeah.

To to end, the PSS said that that they they see a ten year lifespan in their consoles, which yeah, which means that we're halfway through. We still have another half to go. Okay, but they did uh end of life the older style PS three in favor of the new slimmer mark. I will, I will put a medium sized X mark. I'm just trying to salvage I'm still wrong and there we go. Okay, so oh well, UM, I don't know. This is sort of a maybe. Yeah, this one I make or break year for Blue ray,

which is what's been for the last several years. What what again? This was gonna be one of those where I thought that two thousand nine would be the year when either Blue ray sales would finally start picking up and really give life to the format, or they would they would just falter so much that people would start to companies would start to abandon the format, like movie studios would just stop producing disks because the profit margin wouldn't be great enough. Um. I'd say that there's been

incremental improvement, especially once the PS three's price dropped. I think that's really helped Blue ray quite a bit. But I don't think it's not the meteoric rise that I was thinking would need to happen in two thousand nine. So I'm gonna say that that's just gonna be a small check mark right here, all right, and let's say, oh, that means I gotta read the next one. So the

Linux community will make a big move in operating system adoption. Well, we saw some pretty high profile Linux distributions come out, and people who are Linux users really like them. I just don't know how many people adopted Linux. Yeah, I still think, Um, you know, honestly, I think a lot of people are confused. People who are who aren't really tech eas are a little bit confused by all the

different distributions. I mean, they don't necessarily understand works. There's usually just one current version of any particular operating system, like if you if you talk about mac os, yes there are multiple versions, but there's only one current version, like one specific one that's that's that's being updated right now. Um. Whereas we talk about Lenox, hundreds of distributions. So and

that's what I meant about how Lenox works. They don't understand necessarily that it's supported by a whole community of people that is not really owned by anybody. Uh you know, it's owned by everybody but you know, I do think it probably gained some ground, and I heard many, many positive things. But yes, I'm afraid, Uh, I don't. I haven't seen anything that suggests that the new versions of Linux released this year have caused a surge in the number of Linux users. Ex. Oh, hey, look at this,

cloud computing becomes a household term. Three checkmarks. Oh yeah, this is a smaller check mark, maybe three small check Well. No, it has become a much more favorite term, whether it's household term. Yeah, I don't think necessarily that Jane, average Jane housewife is talking about cloud computing, um, but she

probably uses it. Yeah, So cloud computing I think, got a lot more uh noticed this past year, both for good and bad reasons, for things like think about like when when Gmail went down and Google Apps went down. That that made the news and people started thinking, oh, can I trust my documents to things like Google Docs because if the server goes down, how do I access my information? Well, that actually brought a lot of attention

to cloud computing. Not positive attention necessarily, but it did raise questions in people's minds about is this the right way to go? Does it make sense? Is my data secure? Is it ivan can Uh is it really better than storing things on a on a local media storage device? Um? So I think uh. I think it's definitely in more minds now than it was this time last year. And here's one that's related to that one of yours that two thousand nine would be the year of the netbook.

And I think that's a that's a big big X right there, meaning that of course that you got that exactly right. So this is a big right red X here, and uh yeah, that's what that one means. So anyway, Yeah, I would say the netbooks definitely are are here to stay. I mean they they're more popular this year than they were last year. I wrote an article recently where I saw that within the second quarter of two thousand and eight,

netbook sales accounted for around I think five percent. I think, if I recall correctly, around five of all mobile computer sales, and that's say quarter in two thousand nine it was closer to that's a pretty big jump. So I think you could say this was the year of the netbook. Now. Whether or not people like netbooks, I think that's still up for debate, because I'm not sure everyone knows what

they're getting into when they buy one. But they definitely were very popular, I think mainly because of their price point and because they're so mobile. Um so Facebook, you predicted that they would put the uh do the fatal move on my Space and they a. My Space is bleeding pretty badly, but they don't seem to be completely dead. My Space is not dead, but I would argue this is still a a moderately sized check mark in my college. No no no, no, yeah, I mean they dealt them some

serious damage this year because my Space is still around. Sure, but I think I think my Space is slowly turning into more of a content site and less of a social networking site, especially now that it looks like my Space is going to adopt Facebook Connect as part of their system, so that you would be able to do things like link to band pages on my Space through your Facebook account, because that's really what my Space has kind of become. It's become like the place for bands

and band pages. That's something that my Space does really well that Facebook does not do really well. Unfortunately for my Space. Facebook does pretty much everything else better than my Space does. Yeah, yeah, I agree, all right, So let's see Twitter may go away. Huh. Let me check my Twitter account and see if Chris got that right. Alright, let's see. Oh I think I'm sorry, this is gonna

be at least seven x is. Well, you know, I have to and in my defense, I have to point out that, you know, Twitter has, as far as I know, still no business model. It's still not making money at least not generating revenue. Yes, but it has many, many people now who have more than a million followers on it. So, um, I still don't know that it's going to survive on its own forever. But I think now I think it's around this stay. Eventually, something is gonna have to happen

for Twitter to be able to stay around. But uh, yeah, in two thousand nine it was there was a one billion dollar valuation on Twitter. Now, whether or not that would ever actually stand up if you did an I P O or anything, I don't I doubt it. But um, it does say that Twitter is extremely valuable and yet makes no money. Uh. We we can keep going, keep going, Come on, we can do this quickly. All right, we'll

do this quickly. Uh. Here's here's an easy one. Venture capital drives up that would have to be a big new right, and I'll just I'll just put a negative big checkmark here. Yuh. Actually, uh, it's it's quite the opposite. I've seen a lot of venture capital, especially in the latter half of the year, probably again sort of recession related, but yeah, people starting to fund companies. It was definitely counterintuitive to me. I didn't think that venture capitalists would

fund more stuff during recession. But it turns out that a lot of people have had really good ideas and venture kevil has just got smarter about spending money. Yeah, it's a different it's a totally different, uh environment than it was in two thousand nine. But people are still investing and people are still making money. Alright, so let's see where it was the next one to see the next big company to breakout will be, Um, well, you know what ACES is doing. Well, I don't think it's

the next big company yet. No, Actually I think HTC. I think you're right, you know, I never even thought about that, but yeah, HTC, that was a company I had never even heard of before the g One hit. I was interested in the g one because of the Android operating system, but I had no clue who HTC was before that, and now you see so many handsets and they're even you know, net netbook computers coming out

with HCC brand on them. Yeah. I think both of them actually had a similar past in that they made stuff for other people and then started branding their own. And uh, HTC is being known for a for their quality and I don't know. Uh, let's see, next one you had was a big jump in green tech. Well, yeah, that was that was a I feel almost horrible about giving myself such a massive check mark for this one because it was a gimme. But yeah, I think that board.

I'm actually uh yeah, I'm gonna you know what, I'm just I'm just gonna put check in a little plus corner, all right. So let's see the HDTVs have hit their price peak and will stagnate and drop not so much. I mean, there's I've seen a drop in prices, but I think there are more I feel, forgive me, cheapy models out there than there used to be. Yeah, it's well, it's it's the it's the continual process we see with

all electronics. As more people adopted, the price drops. But the problem is that uh well not a problem, but the the trend is that as people start to adopt. UH, companies spend more money and innovation, and they start to uh come out with newer models that have newer features, and you get Internet capable computer television's not computers, internet capable televisions, UH, three D TVs, all this kind of stuff that ends up driving the price back up again

for the high models. So you know, I'll give you, um, I'll give you an X for this because I think you thank you pretty much. You know, it's kind of splaining the difference. So all right, and then you said that Yahoo would be bought or would collapse. I mean they were on the ropes for a while. Yeah, but they've recovered quite well. Yeah, because they do have they are known as a content provider of swords, although I don't you know, I don't think people think of them

that way. But and they formed they formed the partnership with Microsoft. So Microsoft will be assuming that this partnership does in fact go through, because it's still one of those things that seems tenuous in place. But Microsoft well

will be providing the search engine power for Yahoo. So Yeahoo did not go away, did not apps, did not get bought out, but it did enter a partnership with Microsoft, which I think saved the company because under this partnership, Yahoo, for the first few years will be collecting the lion's share of the revenue from from search results, so in search advertising, and I had I had predicted that Yeahoo

would stay independent, so we kind of split the difference there. So, UM, tell you what, I'll just I'll put a check in mine and an X in yours and uh and there we go. All right, So, well that happens to be all of of the predictions I made, but Chris made a few more because he was just in a Svengali nude. So we're gonna let's let's we're gonna burrow through the rest of these. So Amazon will release the second kindle. Okay, that's that's right. So let's see X They're best buy

goes into chapter eleven. No, best by still around, not doing the best business ever, but it's still around. So let's just put an expert wrong there. Um, next, we've got, uh what A O L goes away? Well, you know what's interesting is it it did split off talking about selling you know, Time Warner finally getting out of that A O L deal, which is weird. Because A O L is the one that acquired Time Warner. But um but it didn't go away, so I'm sorry that's next.

And then more magazines and newspapers go online. Only we saw a lot of that in two thousand nine. Of course, that was another kind of green tech gimme, so I'm just gonna have to give you an X for that one. Um. Then we got DRM goes away. Boy, we wish, but the kindle too pretty much keeps that around. Let's put an X there. And then we've got trade shows will decline, which you know what, CUS was a little less um

uh crowded than it had been the previous year. I was at E three as well, but unfortunately that was my first E three, so I can't. Actually I think the three was heavier, had heavier attendance, but that was because they went back to the older format. Well. One thing too, is uh that games actually did better than a lot of the other parts of the tet. They didn't,

they weren't completely recession proof. Towards the end of the year they really started the sales started to take a hit it but uh, yeah, they did better than most other technologies. So um yeah, I'm just gonna call that X. So let me let me Tellward here and um, wow, gee, you all those check marks on your side. I know that's well, this is embarrassing. Um, I'm just gonna wait, wait, wait, wait, they mean different, but I don't remember was this positive

or negative? You know what, We're just gonna have to We're just gonna have to go buy x's and checks. And it looks like I'm a winner this time. Guys, I'll get you next year. I'm sure you know. This is one of those things that I thought would be that. You know, I got in a mood where I was making all these predictions. It's really hard. Tech is such a mercurial field. I mean stuff say that. I say that in our next podcast recording Session two thousand predictions.

It is. It is. We were gonna throw some at the end of this, but we're already over time, so we're gonna get this one off. So's it's fun. I mean, you know, obviously Jonathan walked away with it this year, but who knows next year. If it turns out whoever is holding the marker is the winner, then we will know that, Um that my my method works. So yeah, let's we'll make predictions in our next podcast recording session and which may or may not come out before January one.

That's all right, because the beginning of the year, we'll make the predictions before the beginning of the year. Gosh darn it. So okay, all right, someone to look forward to. Well. If any of you guys have any interesting predictions or questions, comments suggestions for podcast topics, write us. Our email address is text us at how stuff works dot com. We have articles on tons of the topics that we covered today at how stuff works dot com. Go to the

website check it out. If you haven't ever visited, you should really check it out because there's a lot of really great information, not just about tech either, all sorts of stuff. And Chris and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. And be sure to check out the new tech stuff block now on the house Stuffworks homepage, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you