TechStuff Predictions for 2013: The Results

the following twelve months. Jonathan despises doing this, and it's not so much that I despise it, it's just that, Uh, I dread it. Um. I love making the predictions. I dread this time of year where we take the predictions we made twelve months ago and then we ourselves harshly. Yeah, we do a report card. If you remember in past episodes, Uh, when it was me and Chris, I would get all check marks and Chris got all x is. But I understand we have a different grading system this time that

involves some form of life. So I guess we'll have to judge how well we do as we go along. We'll work it out as we go. Um. This was actually one of the first episodes that I recorded with Tech Stuff, and listening back to it was pretty embarrassing, And so I want to say thank you to everyone who has continued listening to tech stuff despite the fact that you had to hear my learning curve, considering that you had never podcast before. Really, I don't think it was,

you know, dreadful or anything. So you're being really hard on yourself. I no, no, no, that that's but that's but that's a good indicator for this episode to come. Yes, yes, we are now going to take a look at the predictions we made and say what happened. So now both of us made a bunch of pretty safe predictions, or at least what seemed like safe at the time. Yeah, you know, I think we haven't discussed when we're gonna

do our our predictions for two thousand and fourteen. We are planning on doing that, but I think I might go a little more crazy next time because some of the ones when I went back over and I'm like, well, geez, Jonathan, thanks for predicting that if you go into the water you will get wet. Yeah, your first one is a little bit like that. Yeah, And my first one was

that mobile web browsing would outpace desktop browsing. Now, granted this was one of those things that seemed pretty pretty sure based upon the trend on the edge at the end of but it hadn't actually pushed over, which it really pretty promptly didn't. Yeah, exactly, I didn't take very long.

And the way that there are different ways of measuring this obviously, but calm Score, which is often cited as one of the analysts companies that will look into this sort of stuff, the way they looked at it as they looked at mobile web browsing when it came to online shopping, and they discovered that online shopping through mobile was being done like fifty at the time and that

the other were PCs. So if you look at it just from a shopping standpoint, mobile browsing overtook PCs, and they extrapolate to say that other types of browsing follows suit based upon the the online shopping model. Uh, out of that most of that of that was from smartphones and the other eleven percent of that was from tablets. So even with online shopping, smartphones are still outpacing tablets when it comes to that particular version of mobile web browsing.

So anyway, it appears that this prediction was pretty much true. So gave me so according to our new scoring system, I get two squids and an ink sac. That's pretty good. Als okay, I guess alright, So, Lauren, what was your

first prediction? My first prediction was that laptop sales would make a comeback while desktop sales continued to decline, and that tablets um wouldn't perform as well as as they had been, like, it'll slow down, that it would kind of slow down and even out as people realize that they needed more power and practicality and tablets could really provide UM. And I was pretty wrong. I was not

correct about that. Well. To be fair, there were a lot of factors that went into making this complicated issue, one of which was something that will factor into another prediction, which I would say is Windows eight. Windows eight I think actually discouraged people from getting laptop. Yeah. It did way more poorly than I think anyone expected it. At

the end of to do. Yeah, a lot of companies had declines that continued in both desktop and laptop sales, although one company started to make up some ground and market share. From what I understand, Apple apples have always been trailing behind like Windows based PCs when it comes to market share, particularly in the US, but inten they hit twelve percent of the market share, and some analysts were saying that they have the potential to get up to the market in the near future, which would be

a huge coup for Apple. Yeah. Um was actually the first year since two thousand three that Max sales dropped, but their laptops are outsell in their desktops three to one. Yeah, which not a big surprise because it wasn't until recently that the desktop's got a major update. Yeah. According to MPD, desktop and laptop sales fell by five and two percent respectively during the whole back to school season, as opposed to yeah, um, which is supposedly you know it's it's

usually the biggest time that computer sea sales. Yeah. Back back to school and the holiday shopping season are like the two most important times of the year for most laptop However, those declines were mild compared to the rest of the year. Um uh sales each quarter according to Gardner, we're down about ten percent UM each quarter compared with each quarter last year. But the tablet market is still growing. Um Well, I mean, okay, it is slowing a little bit.

I wasn't completely wrong about it flattening a little. Um, but it's over thirty six percent growth, which is not insignificant. Yeah that's true. Uh, but you know, you also have to look like the tablet market is still smaller than the overall PC market, so when they grow, the percentages are larger. Right Like Like if you if you sell two units and then the next year you sell eight units, that percentage growth is huge. If you're selling two million units and the next year you sell two and fifty

million units, that relative growth is small. So it's tablet market really didn't exist until what was a two thousand nine when the first I pad came out. Yeah, I mean yeah, the the previous tablets had not really had any consumer penetration at all. So uh, yeah, it's but it is. It does look like it's starting to mature, like it's starting to slow down. So I agree that you were right on that one. So, um, I'm gonna give you. I'm giving you a squid and a half,

but you also apparently get a squid squeaky toy. I don't know what that means. That sounds fine, okay, Um, I got My next prediction was enterprises will resist adopting Windows eight another gimme um, because I mean, any time a new operating system comes out, enterprises are going to lag behind consumers, even if the operating system is is

received with great joy and love. Oh absolutely, Because I mean enterprises have companies have a whole systems that are based upon a single operating system and changing them all over is time consuming and there's testing involved, and it's expensive and u scary, so you never know if it's going to work and and then you end up having made an investment and then you eat the expense if

it doesn't work out. So not a big surprise. What was kind of interesting to me was that Windows eight did seem to be a little bit of a of an albatross, Like it didn't get a lot of love for many people. Like a lot of people really didn't like that operating system when it came out. And like I said, it may have even contributed to that two people resisting purchasing a new notebook. So that's not great. But um but but but but good call on that one.

Umdeed do you have do you have a I'm looking I'm consulting my squid uh profile here According to this, I don't get a squid, but I get a squib. So if you shoot me, then I get the little bit of pop noise like in an action movie. So that's something. Did some tentacles come out along with the blood with me? Yes? Excellent. Yes, it's mostly because we're eight lunch. I'm not even going to ask about that.

So my second prediction was that UM touch screens would be integrated into more products, including most laptops and UM and display. Yeah, like things like that, like a secondary display for your computer or even a main display for your computer. That was that was you were you were you were. I think being very optimistic. I was, and I think I think the trend is definitely there. I think it's there and I and it definitely didn't happen this year. I think it's going to happen in the

next like two years. I think I was being way too optimistic. But still the trend is obviously there. I mean, because people have grown to love the whole touch screen experience. It's just a question of does that translate to the laptop and desktop experience and can you create something that's compelling enough to make that a reason for you to have that feature in your in your device. Everyone was hoping that Windows eight was going to be that thing.

It was not. It was not that thing, and the new mac os is kind of also not that thing. That's not something that Apple has moved toward yet, but it's still a possibility to And it's not like it's not like people weren't including them. There were lots of

of models out there that did include them. Yeah. According to MPD, about of all notebooks shipped in had touch screens, which sounds like a relatively small number until you think about the fact that before basically none, ye hardly like some at the very tail end of just leading into c E S and uh yeah, so that's actually quite a large number. I mean, that's a big gamble for a company to do, is to invest in that kind of new technology because that's going to impact everything that

that product encounters from that moment on. Right. So, Um, so eleven percent is actually pretty big, and it all depended upon which company you're talking about. They had different numbers. Yeah, I think Sony had a lot, didn't think Yep, seventeen point six percent of all notebooks they shipped were equipped

with touch screens. However, um, they did not make up a majority of the actual touch screens on the market, whereas Lenovo, Uh, they only had seven point four percent of all of their laptops shipping with touch screens, but they they accounted for fourteen point seven percent of the

touch screen laptop market share. Yeah. So, in other words, Lenovo had if you look at all the stuff they offered, a smaller percentage of it had touch screens, but they made up the majority of the touch screens based upon other companies are buying. Yeah, so that might mean that Lenovo's you know, cheaper. Yeah, they were more attuned to their customers a cheaper Yes, that is usually what that means. Um so, uh so what are what are we What

are we going to give me? According to our squid valuation system, you get a sucker, not tentacle sucker, but like a lollypo, it's squid flavored. Yeah, that's what you get. Moving on, I'm failing to see how that's a positive. No, you know, it all depends on whether or not you like squid. Uh. You know, it's like, you know, Calamari pops.

It's the newest thing. So the next part another gimme, man, I'm gonna have to stick my neck out more next year, I'm reading these and just like, how lamed could I get? I said that the the NFC near field communication would not receive wide adoption in the United States, partly because Apple would not play ball. In other words, Apple was

not going to incorporate NFC and its next iPhone. I'll have more to say about their next iPhone shortly, but I said that NFC just wasn't gonna get any traction in the United States on a meaningful level, and indeed it did not know because again Apple did not include it. And I think that's a huge part of it is that, you know, without without Apple getting on board, there's uh,

you know, that's that's big. That's a that's a sizeable percentage of the smartphone poppy of your smartphone population can't use the technology. Yeah, then you're like, well, why would I invest in this if potential, especially if you've made the determination that perhaps your customers happen to be iPhone customers, They're like, well, I could spend a hundred thousand dollars retrofitting my my my vending so that I can take advantage of this, but if my clientele don't use it,

then that's just a waste of money. So then, uh, yeah, and the reasons, the reasons for this, I mean are are basically what we talked about in that episode. It's it's the cost of implementation, the concern about security, that's a big one, oh sure, the you know, the lack of consumer awareness about it. I mean, if you haven't been to Europe recently here in the US, and you're from the US, then yeah, you don't even know, Like you might not even be aware that this is a possibility.

I mean people who have been using things like I've got a Nexus four phone and that has an n FC chip in it. I've got a Nexus seven tablet and that has an NFC chip in it. I have never used either of those products with the NFC, so but I'm aware of it because I own two of them.

But even I haven't used them. And uh and even vendors not realizing the benefit that they would have of getting that kind of thing out here, right, So, so there are a lot of things that challenges that have to be overcome before we see this become something that actually is is in widespread use in the United States. So that's a gimme. According to this I get h just a beak. I think it's from a squid. I gotta make better predictions. We we we really need to

talk to to this squid referral provider. It's it's stuff to blow your minds. Robert, I don't know what he's been going through. Apparently he got really upset when we suggested that perhaps he was leaving human teeth around the office. Yeah, there was, So this is a tangent, you guys. But but I found like a little plastic baggy of of what appears to be human teeth in one of our conference rooms, just sitting on the on the tray of our white board. Yeah, like just hanging out. I mean

they're they're clean looking. And Robert claims he didn't do it, but he would have been my number one suspect. I personally blame Matt. And that is right here, that is sitting in for us, and he's staring at us with creepy eyes. But technically those were just Matt's eyes. So and he's nodding slowly. All right, Well, anyway, let's get back to another one of your suggests, your suggestions, your predictions. Yes, my next prediction was that the Internet of things would

become more of a thing. Um, with more interconnected systems taking off. Yeah, and commercially speaking, this is this is accurate. We saw it, We saw a few launched. I think I think that you're more willing to give me that one than I am. Um. I mean, I've I've kind of incidentally seen a lot of seen and heard a lot of commercials for this kind of stuff. I haven't been able to find any numbers of the number of adoption yet. Um, but the fact that it's a product

that more people have access to is pretty nifty. Yeah. It used to be that you were only only like bleeding edge adopters who had ridiculous amounts of money and uh, and we're willing to go through a contractor to get home automation. Only they had access to this kind of stuff.

We're just now starting to see it enter into the consumer marketplace where the average person can go into like a hardware store and buy stuff that has Internet of Things capabilities, Like the next Thermostatic came out with a new model this year, and they came out with a new smoke detector this year. So we're seeing it more and more. I personally happen to have Internet Internet connected light bulbs, so I can turn my lights on and off wherever I am. Yeah, so, uh, it's too bad.

I should do the thing they did in the Big Bang theory, where I create a lamp that has one of these bulbs in it and then just give the Internet access to it and they can turn the lamp on and off whenever they want. That sounds like a project of terror to me personally. It could be interesting. I could end up getting Morse code. But I have not done that Internet, so don't expect to find it right now. But you know I do have. I mean,

most know whether or not you're interested. Maybe I'm biased about the Internet of Things because I'm I'm technically an early adopter. Yeah well, I mean, okay, predictions from both Disco and Intelligence estimate that the decade long growth of the technology will will will be ninefold um. And that's that's big um. But you know, I'm still I am still saying that I was a little bit premature on this one. All right, Well, you're you are your own harsh,

harshest critic, right, you get for that six squid. But they all are occupying the exact same space at the exact same time. So it's terror to look at. So don't look at it for too long or you will lose your sanity. I I think that I spent all morning looking at that. Is that a bad thing? I looked right in the trap ray? All right? So um, let's go on to my next one. I said that there will be a new iPhone, but it will be an incriminal improvement and not a huge departure from the

previous generation of iPhones. So the iPhone five I said it wasn't going to be a big change from iPhone five. Depending upon how you look at it, you might agree or disagree with that. I'm willing to give you this one because I think that the I mean, yes, there were some some big bits to the to the five S and the five C more the five S, right Yeah. The five C was more or less the five but in different colors. Right Um? Yeah, casing does not count

as an upgrade. That is exactly the sort of thing that you were talking about in in your and I think that if it had just been the five C released, then you wouldn't find your your win or failed to be Yeah, I wouldn't be Yeah, I wouldn't it be

a debate at all. And to be fair, it's funny because in that episode, if you go back and listen to it, Lauren, you refer to it as it's probably gonna be like an iPhone five S, which is exactly what they called it, and so that also indicates from Apple that it is not a huge jump, because I didn't call it the iPhone six. So I guess you know, that kind of fits in there. Obviously, anyone who's followed

the iPhone news you are all aware of this. So UM, on that one, it looks like I'm getting a Technicolor squid, mostly because of the cases. So that's kind of cute. Lots lots of squids come in technicolor. Actually, yeah, well you know they do. When I'm done with them, that's for sure. Not positive what that means, neither do I.

Let's move on to the next one, okay. Um I predicted that Apple, speaking speaking of Apple, that Apple would hold on to its share of the mobile market and that Android would be in second place, and this was um. Apple was holding forty eight percent of the mobile market share at the time of the podcast. UM. Due to the iPhone five release, it was it was up from about right, and and Google had dropped down to below what Apple had. It was somewhere in the forty range. Yeah, yeah,

and I was so wrong. Um, I was really completely wrong, you guys, because according to com Score, Apple had a forty point six percent of the US market and Google had fifty one and BlackBerry was down to three point eight ouch boy, BlackBerry. But we neither of us made any predictions for BlackBerry this for this past year. But I think it's because you were too depressed. Yeah, I mean, you know, I never owned My wife owned a BlackBerry once,

but I never owned a BlackBerry. But you know, it's one of those companies that I really wanted to see turn it around because obviously more competition benefits everybody ultimately. But yeah, they've just had such a rough time of it. But despite the fact that you know, Apple fell and market share, they still are the dominant hardware because Apple makes its own mobile sets right by far dominant and hardware, So they have forty point six you know, that is

for the operating system. Uh, they also is for the hardware because Apple makes both operating system and the hardware, whereas Google just makes the operating system. And unless you're there. You can to their Motorola Google too, since they acquired it. But but there are dozens upon hundreds of Yeah, there's a new one every every every darn week, he said, self editing. Yeah, there's a new one every darn week.

And and so when you look at the actual hardware, Apple is the dominant player in the mobile market space market market space marketplace. There are words that Jonathan can say. You know what, Jonathan's going to say a lot more words, but Jonathan is going to wait to say those words for the second half of our podcast. And we're gonna take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, we're back, and you know what, We're not done with Apple yet.

So all all the all the people who are on one side of the camp or the other can yell at us. So I welcome that. I welcome the yelling. But they're they're they're a big company we we like,

and they're very influential as it turns out. So my next prediction was that the next versions of iOS and mac os will be similar to one another, but the two would not yet merge into us thele operating system across multiple platforms, because you know, we're seeing this sort of one of my favorite words in the world, convergence between the energy synergy scissor g wait, know that's something else.

So we're seeing, uh, we're not seeing the plants come into alignment, but we are seeing these operating systems get closer and closer to one another, so that you have kind of a smooth transition across multiple platforms, so that if you're using an Apple phone and then you switch over to an Apple laptop or an Apple desktop, that that transition is fairly seamless. It's not to the point where the operating systems are identical. And I said that that was not going to happen this year, and I

was right. But I think I think that you might have overstated how similar at the next Yeah, I don't. I don't think they got as similar as in my mind they were more similar. They were going to be

more similar than they've turned out to be. I think that you were basing this on on the Windows eight model, And I think that part of part of why it didn't happen is that Apple looked at how Windows eight performed and you and I think Apple may have come to a conclusion that it's just two different is two separate sets of things that you need to be able to do with these different types of hardware, and therefore there's no need to make it the same thing, whereas

Microsoft doesn't seem to follow that. Microsoft's like, no, we want the same approach for everything. And you know, it's one of those arguments that keeps getting battered around. It's not saying that one is obviously better than the other. It all depends on the implementation as well. So if you make crappy OS and that's not going to help you, whether whether you make a CRAPOS for your mobile handset

or for the desktop. Sure, something about the OS that we could not have in any way predicted well two things. My favorite is the naming departures. Right that the naming departure was a big one. The latest one is not named after a kittie cat. It is big big cats. I think that most I was really think it's gonna be mac os ten Snuggles. It was just gonna be They're just gonna go with names that would be cute for kittens. I guess Mavericks could be the name of

a cute kitten. I guess, so yeah, mac Os ten Mavericks is the that's the name. And also it was a free upgrade. You didn't have to pay for it. That was that was what really shocked me. I mean, depart despite the the first shock of it not being named after a big cat. So yeah, it was a free upgrade and you could run more and more iOS apps on that operating system. So that's a little bit like what I said, but it's not exactly what I

had envisioned. So yeah, according to this, I get a tiny model of Cathulhu which I can find sitting on my desk. Actually, that's totally true. That's why I've got it. I didn't realize that this list was made by Roberts. So all right, well, I mean that's the squid ish, all right, So let's go back to you. Uh yeah, I predicted that the new consoles would not have impressive sales initially, um, and that the Xbox One would out

sell the past four like like crazy pants party time. Yeah. Well, to be fair, it's still early because we are recording this, by the way, in early December, which that means that the holiday shopping is still in full swing. Um. Okay, you're you're being You're being too kind, because both the PS four and the Xbox one sold a million consoles in twenty four hours. They did it under different conditions though,

which actually doesn't help you. It doesn't help my case, yeah, because the PS four sold a million consoles and was only offered in two countries initially, and Xbox One was offered in thirteen, so it was a different playing field for both of them. Sony has reported selling two point one million of these consoles. Microsoft hasn't said how many

it's sold, just that it's unprecedented. So yeah, well, I'm glad that you sold more Xbox ones than you've ever sold Xbox ones in the past, considering that you just started selling Xbox ones. I think that unprecedented is a terrific corporate speech for for for look to pay no attention to this man behind the curtain. Yeah, but anyway, Yeah, so it does like the sales have gone really well.

And the one thing that someone pointed out I thought this was really interesting, is that you cannot really compare the sales of these this new generation to previous generations, because in previous generations, one of the issues was that the supply was never enough to meet the initial demand.

So you had Sony selling out a p S three and Xbox selling out of Xbox three sixty shortages and stores, and that that kind of colors are perception of how popular these things are because you couldn't get them anywhere. We was the same way. Yeah, yeah, although there's there's

a little bit of that going on now. I checked on on Amazon today and you can currently purchase neither the PS four North the Xbox One just put an order in weight, So yeah, I mean we we are recording this on December five, which is, you know, the week after Thanksgiving, so that might have something to do with it. Probably had a little to do with it. So anyway, they have sold pretty well. We don't know

yet which one is going to win out. It looks like the PS four is doing really really well initially, but personally, for this is just my own personal perspective, neither console right now has a game that I really want to play on it, Like, neither of them have a killer game where I'm like, I have got to get this console so I can play that game. I think that I think the developers are very smartly holding off on on the finalization of games that they know

aren't ready to be finalized yet. And I think that that's just a wonderful, gorgeous thing that we have on this modern um console platforms where where you know it, it's letting game designers actually design the games that they want to and not not pushing something to go out early.

Is we are living in the future, my friend. Any any time, any time you have ever had a an experience of playing a game that obviously had not been finished, it is one of the most frustrating experiences, particularly if you were going into it expecting a great game. So I agree, I think it's a better thing. So uh, I'm personally gonna I have not order it either. Uh disclosure. I expect that I will be buying one of these consoles probably within the next twelve months. And I'm right

now just based on features, not based on games. I am leaning towards the Xbox Yeah. And here here's why. I think the PlayStation is going to have some amazing independent games on it, and I want to be able to play those, and that would be like if you're talking about just games, that lets me lean towards the

PS four. But the Xbox One has some really cool uh voice activation features in it and some Connect features that originally I don't think the Connect was fully ready for prime time when it came out, But them the implementation I'm hearing from the Xbox One sounds much more promising to me. It sounds completely creepy to me, but also very promising. I mean, I mean, I'm blown away by the capacity that they're talking about. A yeah, you

know what, that's enough talking about that. But anyway, according to this, you get a gumball that has melted into the shape of a squid. You get a lot of candy. Lauren, you guess sweet tooth that's um I do, but I that's it's someone trying to poison this podcast with my sugar rash. I have no idea. I mean, it's you know, I I can't make heads or tails out of any of this, mostly because squid don't have tails. I wonder

if this has to do with those teeth. Okay, So my next prediction said that Intel will struggle due to customers moving more towards mobile platforms. This is related to my first prediction. Obviously, UM and Until's certainly had kind of a rough year. They tried a lot of different things. They actually created a web based television platform called on q, but on Que never really took off, an according to c Net, Intel's looking to offload the product now trying

to sell it off yeah. Um. They were also starting to focus more on enterprise customers, meaning other companies, which, you know, similar to what IBM had done in the past, where IBM was like, you know what, maybe we want to get out of the consumer market and just market to other companies as well, because those are the customers that tend to have a stable need for performance PCs.

So even if your consumers get a little flaky in they're like, I think I just want to have something I could play, you know, Candy Crush on that's the game, right, Yeah, I keep getting a request for something called that I haven't played Canny Crush Slaga. I don't know anyway, Um, Holly can talk to us about that. Not necessary for you to have an Intel machine to play that game, apparently, uh no. Um. And And also, like like we said earlier,

you know, PC performances generally dropping. Yeah, so until you know, that's their main market. They they've tried to get into the mobile market, but it hasn't been nearly as successful. Some of their competitors. However, they have started to develop some interesting chips that should work with Internet of things style sensors. So it may be that we see until bounce back in an emerging industry that is still you know,

just picking up speed. M'd be great to see. And yeah, despite all of this, there's relatively even new was on the on the overall, Yeah, until Q three earnings in were pretty much the same as it's Q three earnings in twelve, so it didn't lose ground, but it wasn't gaining ground either. And you know, I don't know if any of you work for big companies, but usually the rule of thumb is that they want growth year over year. It's not just it's not just profit, it's growth, right

because profit is profit is number one. You want, you want to make more money than you spend, but you want to make more and more money. Yes before yeah, the previous year, like, yeah, we made a lot of money. We're gonna have to figure out how we're going to make more than that next year. And you know it's I don't know, I find it exhausting. I'm so glad I'm not one of those executives who has to make those kind of decisions. Yeah, so, so I think I

think that that prediction was pretty accurate. Yeah yeah, according to this, I get an animated gift of a squid juggling. That's pretty cute. Okay, alright, your turn. My next one was going back to Apple. Um I I boldly stated that Apple was going to this would be the year that they would make a TV. This was the Crisp Pallette suggestion. This was the Crisp Palette prediction because Chris.

If you guys are longtime listeners to tech stuff, you probably realize that Chris made this prediction I think in two thousand eleven and two thousand twelves. So Lauren was carrying on the text stuff tradition and rumors, you know, rumors from from mac rumors dot com say that that we could we could totally expect one in yeah, the earliest sixteen. Um So, I think that this rumor tradition continues on. We'll find out if one of us predicts

that will really be the year. Really, my only note for this one is just f That's all I had to say. Get an Apple that's got a little squid in it. I don't want. That's squid can't live in apples. I'm very concernous. It's because your prediction was so awful, Lauren, You've got a dead squid in an apple. Sorry, that's the way it works, all right. So I have an electronic public sing will completely overtake traditional publishing in sales. Uh, Nope. Trends.

Trends at the end of two thousand twelve made it look that way. But again, this is where that deceptive number comes in, right, where you have a relatively small number increasing, that means the percentage of increase is huge. But eventually those numbers get bigger and that percentage starts to shrink because it starts to reflect that you know, maybe in reality, this isn't This isn't growth industry, right. It is similar to tablets. It's they're kind of evening out. Yeah,

we started to see it. I mean, seriously, plateau it started plateau ing big time in twelve, and really plateau in That doesn't mean that there's not a lot of of e publishing going on or electronic books sales. There are, but it is not. It has not overtaken traditional publishing. Um Amazon reports that sales of its e readers have hit record numbers. That's not a big surprise, but traditional books are still sold more than e books in the

grand scheme of things. And according to some reports, a couple of different sectors of publishing of physical books actually went up at a couple of points during the years. Yeah. Yeah, so this one was a total mess on my part. And this one apparently I get a book about squids where every page that had the name words squid on it has been ripped out. There are there's a dedication page and a copyright page left. Okay, all right, Lauren,

your turn. My next prediction was that this would be a record year for people going out and getting their their genes sequenced. Um and that there would also be a big move to digital health records UM and this interesting news on this one. All right, so yeah, this this was so so basically I could not have predicted that here in the US anyway, that the whole Affordable Care Act could could have been as much of a mess as it really was caused, as much of a

mess in the industry. Um. And And again I was being pretty optimistic about stuff. You think that overall, you know, the trends are are looking good for both of those things right, but just this specifics are some rough parts, not the year that they were really implemented to be fair, uh twenty three and me which was a leading company that this genetic sequencing here in the US, had more than four hundred thousand customers, which shows that this was

a record year. That's one of the things you said it was gonna be a record year. That was true, But then the US Food and Drug Administration kind of uh put the brakes. And the thing is that there's a lot of legislature that hasn't really caught up to this technology yet. Because okay, so so the first human gene sequencing UM took like fifteen years and three billion

dollars UM. We're at a point right now where we can do it in a few days for three thousand UM, which is incredible and amazing, and there's a push to

get it even lower and that's wonderful and magical. However, legislature is still going like so, if you're recommending these this genetic sequencing as medical advice, UM, that falls under our purview and we need to regulate that, and that means that every single gene you're testing has to be has to be approved through us, and there's an expensive process for that, which means that it turns any kind

of consumer level genetic sequencing completely impractical. Right. And furthermore, it's like we've talked about in our genetics episodes, genes are tricky things. They do, they do more than one thing at once, and it's really difficult to label one in many cases as being like this gene causes that thing.

And on top of that, the the FDA has a couple of of arguments that I think are pretty valuable, things like, you know, you don't want to give people a message that will end up having the mishandle their medication therefore suffer some sort of toxic effects because they and it may not even be the direct fault of the genetic sequencing company. It may be that the consumer

is misinterpreting the results. The point that the FDA was making is that this is something that that a a medical professional needs to handle and be able to communicate to the person so that they can make use of that information. It's too much information without enough expertise. So but but still was a record year. It was just one of those things where the law began to try and catch up to the technology. So I think he got I think you'd get at least a half point

on that. And what what what does that equal out to in squid? Squid with five tentacles, Yes, squire with five tentacles. We call him Lefty. Yeah, they're all the left tentacle. I don't know how that works personally, I don't get us. I mean whatever, I'm the same. You can name him George. Alright. So my next one was that Zinga, the Zinga Board of directors, would attempt to

purchase the company back and turn it into a private corporation. Now, this was based on some rumors that were circulating at the end of two thousand twelve. Mark Pinkas, who was the former CEO of Zinga, was rumored to be talking

about it. He had hinted at the prospect of getting the board directors to buy up enough shares of Zinga to make it go back into being a private company and said that a lot of the problems of the company were due to shareholder expectations and requirements, and that if it were a private company could operate however it needed to in order to make to to do business.

H Zinga, of course, is the game company that's behind a bunch of those social media games that were really popular on things like Facebook, from things like World Words with Friends to Farmville and all that kind of stuff. So Zinga UM did not try and purchase the the the shares back to become a private company. That did not happen. What did happen was that instead Mark Pinkas essentially fired himself and then hired Don Matric as the

new CEO. If you're not familiar with Matric, he was the former head of Microsoft's Xbox to In fact, news broke today that one of Matrix uh moves in the Xbox division has been undone. He established a an Xbox division in London called Xbox Victoria, and that has just been shut down, so all the all the developers in that particular office are now looking for work. UM and what he did over at Zingo was basically clean house. Yeah, he fired a whole bunch of people, UH and started

to restructure the company. So it's remained publicly traded, but it is a very different organization now. However, because I said that as the Zinga board would attempt to purchase the company back, technically my prediction was wrong, and UH I get an octopus wearing a squid costume. So there's these two extremely fake tentacles hanging down from it. I don't know that sounds I would watch an Internet video about that. An octopus posing as a squid. I bet

there's a whole cartoon series speaking if if not. I want one of you guys more than I can even express. I might. I might really enjoy cephalopods, And I think that someone should make that happen. Um. I think. I think Erin's got a new job to do. Um. We we love you, photoshoppers. My next prediction had to do with the Internet. Uh, it was. It was a non prediction, really, I said that nothing of note would happen with HTML five. Yeah.

HTML five, of course, is supposed to be the big replacement for HTML four, which is what a lot of the webs based on a lot of sites have made the move over to HTML five. But as it turns out, it's had some problems. Like it it just it's not working quite to the level that we were expecting. Like it was supposed to replace a lot of the need for all those plug ins that h t m L

four requires if you want to have a rich web experience. Right, So, like anything like a flash player, you have to have Flash installed for you to be able to watch that. And the idea is that with HTML five all those kind of features would be natively supportive, I think, would be integrated to so you wouldn't have a single app crashing. But as it turns out, just just the whole code is not really coming together. Um. And so you know, similar to what we were talking about with Windows eight.

You know, just people aren't willing to adopt something if they don't know it's going to work. Right. A lot of developers who are making apps do not have not been making apps for HTML five because they just felt that it wasn't doing what they needed it to do, Like the results they were getting were not satisfactory, So they had to go back to developing apps for older legacy style platforms like Flash because if they tried at for HTML five, it just wasn't doing what they needed.

It wasn't a smooth transition. Yeah. So I was on the money for this one. Yeah. So you get a squid smoothie, it's extra smooth. Oh it's not. It's not made of squid. It was made by a squid. Oh yeah, well, that's great on this little uh that's a little card that came with it. I think it's important to support our squid employees. Yes, um, high ten. I guess because they've they've got tent tentacles. I think two of them

are technically arms. Are they have you armed your squid? Okay, I'm moving on before I get shot by a squid. I've got two more. That was the rat last of Lawrence. I think I think this next one, what we should do is just come up with a specific number of predictions will each make and that way it will even

out for next year. Because I've never done that, and you would think that after like five years of predictions, I would have said, hey, let's each make five, and you would think but anyway, And my next one is that manufacturers will attempt to build and market devices specifically to serve as a second screen. I'm right for the

wrong reason I was when I said this. What I was thinking was that a company would make something like a mobile handheld device like a tablet or a smartphone or something along those lines, and specifically say this is so that you can see more information as you watch stuff that's on your TV. So in other words, the second screen part would literally be the second screen, right. That would be the entire purpose empt the device, right.

And as it turns out, there are a lot of second screen devices that have entered the market, things like Google Chrome Cast or the net Gear has the push to TV set, and there are a lot of other ones too. They're designed to stream content from your computer to the television, So you have a second screen in the sense that the TV becomes your second screen, that becomes your display, and then you can use your computer to do whatever else you want to do. But that's

not how I envisioned it. So it's interesting that what I had predicted came to pass, but in a totally different implementation than what I expected. And apparently I get a I get an insight out squid. Oh man, oh that is all over that keyboard. Well, luckily I've already scrolled down to the bottom here. Okay, I said, we'll see the peak and then decline of crowdfunding in two thousand thirteen as people get burned out on it. Um. Here's the thing, guys, Reliable sticks, statistics and funding just

don't exist. I can't find a truly reliable, unbiased source every source I could find was one that was like this brought to you by crowdfunding, Like, wait a minute, you you have a clear conflict of interest in this. However, just based on what I've personally observed, it does not look like this is slowing down at all. No, No,

I think that. You know, of course, there's still some projects that don't get funded, and I think that some people are in fact getting getting burnt out on spending all of the money on every single new project that comes up. But I'd say that, if anything, there are more more awesome projects out there than there were. And yeah, I mean for me, like all the evidence is anecdotal.

But that being said, I have certainly supported more campaigns crowdfunding campaigns this year than I have ever done before. I essentially about about once every couple of months have to tell myself to get off of the internet before I spend all of my money on all my money on kickstarter art. Yeah. So apparently, according to since I got that one totally wrong, I don't get a squid, I get a quid. So I get a squid without the s which is one pound sterling, but I'm taxed

on it. Yeah, alright, Well, I guess I'm not as gross as the inside out thing. No, but I guess I deserve being taxed for such a wrong prediction. Well, there we go. That wraps up our predictions round up and how things turned out. So I guess we're gonna have to somehow carry all these squid back to our desks. Maybe we'll just leave them here for stuff to blow your mind. They'll be coming in here before too long.

Squid party, squid party. Um yeah, I'm gonna take my quid though, I gotta have this English pound, all right. So yeah, that wraps it up. I think it was a kind of fun one. We're gonna try and see what sort of crazy predictions will come up. I think we will try and limit it to maybe five predictions per person, with maybe a couple of extra just in case one of us predicts the same thing as the other one. So that way we've got some wiggle room, but nothing on the lines of what we've done this time.

Because this is just ridiculous, people, I mean, I can only be so wrong for so long. Yeah, and and this is I mean, I mean, no matter what the system is of ranking next year, I clearly have way too many squid at this point, well, I'm sure. I mean, there there's one thing that's consistent with our predictions episode, which is that the scoring is completely inconsistent. So I wouldn't worry too much because by next year I will completely forgotten about the squid thing, so it'll be some

other ridiculous level of of of grading. So anyway, guys, if you have any predictions for two thousand and fourteen, Lauren and I will be making those very soon, so you'll you'll hear that episode before the end of the year probably or if not at the end of the year, at the very beginning of next year. Um, if you have any predictions that you want to make, we can

even have a small section set aside for listener predictions. Alright, listeners, if you have a prediction for two thousand fourteen, something that you believe is going to happen in the year and it's related to tech, let us know. It could be a conservative guest, it can be a wild estimate. Let us know. Send us a message. Our email addresses tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or if you want to let us know on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr, you

can find us there. Our handle is tech Stuff HSW, so put your prognosticator hats on and let us know. And I predict that Lauren and I will talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it have stuff works dot com