10 Failed Technology Trends of 2005

mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech's Loyd Case muses on ten trends of 2005 that never panned out. He points the finger at analysts like himself for waxing glowy-eyed at technologies like the BTX form factor and the 64-bit version of Windows XP. On DRM and the Sony rootkit fiasco: 'Hint to the music publishers: It's not going to work. There have been easy workarounds to every system that's been tried, and the more stringent the copy protection, the greater the risk of having angry customers who won't buy CDs. I suggest you start investigating new business models, as the old ones ride off into the sunset.'"

Comments

Tuppence, happence, anna farthing's worth

[ackthpt]

I suggest you start investigating new business models, as the old ones ride off into the sunset.

Like that's going to work! People who crank out flawed, bombastic, and ultimately wrong business models are trying to keep a job. If any business sat on its hands and coasted along on a simple and functional business model they'd ultimately be defeated by someone with an angle on wedging new business between them and their traditional customers.

Take iTunes for instance. Wildly successful in the face of its predecessors and competitors. The RIAA doesn't like it because it undercuts their old business model (and these people have worked that one a long time to their great profit) Apple's frisky little model says, "give it to them on a flashy little toy and keep it cheap." CD sales plummet. (RIAA biz model sez: Any flattening of growth or dip in sales is due to piracy!) Reminds me of when Detroit, back in the 70's thought they could continue to do business as usual as those japanese cars started to sell particularly well ("after the price of oil drops again we'll go right back to 454 blown dual carb thingamajigs") Funny they repeated the same erroneous reasoning with 4WD's in the late 90's and into the next century and are now closing plants left and right.

While high-definition video and the PC may be natural bedfellows, the content providers and studios are not exactly making nice with the tech industry. The studios are deathly afraid that high-definition content will become widely pirated, adversely affecting an already creaky business model.
...
The iPod and its camp followers in the digital audio player business seem to be the modern incarnation of the 1960s transistor radio. Way back then, audiophiles complained vociferously about how the transistor radio was creating a generation of consumers who couldn't appreciate quality audio. That lament is echoed by industry pundits (me included) who yearn for even higher-fidelity sound than current CD technology can deliver.

High def video and audio. What's funny is people are fine with the crap we have now. Heck, there's people driving around town with self-installed audio systems in their cars which not only sound awful, but bring Lo-Fi to an all new low -- and they're actually happy with it.

64 bit OS, only when you've got apps or a killer must-have game will 64 bit OS be all the rage, even drivers will follow. Until then, like hi-def video and hi-fi audio, it's only in the realm of those who really must have for practical or fashionable reasons.

Digital home: Right. When I was a kid we had this great intercom system that came with our new house, all rooms connected to one main spot, could pipe radio into any room or page anyone. That lasted about a month. After that it was mom shouting up the stairs that supper was ready, someone at the door, etc. Evolution of technology doesn't guarantee it will be any more necessary, but it looks flash and shiny if you've never seen before and might impress the uninitiated. Up to me, I'd worry more about noisy water pipes and insulation in the walls.

"it even comes with high definition squirrels in the attic!"

Save yourself the trouble...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the list:

•      The BTX Form Factor
•      High-Definition Video on the PC
•      High Fidelity Digital Audio
•      Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
•      High Definition Optical Drives
•      Copy Protection for Music CDs
•      iPod Competitors Emerge
•      The Digital Home
•      Google's Gmail Service
•      Dual Graphics Cards

Re:Save yourself the trouble...

[dotgain]

I think copy protection on music CDs is a _great_ thing.

I used to buy 80% of my CDs, pirate the rest, and fell a little guilty about it. Now there's no _point_ in me buying CDs. They're useless to me. So I pirate every single one now.

Why do I think copy protection is great (for me) ?

Because I don't feel guilty anymore.

Why rag on Gmail?

[thewldisntenuff]

I find it odd that Case complains about Gmail. He goes on about how hard
it is to add attachments - it's really not that hard.

And why does he bitch about it still being in Beta? Hell,
most of the stuff on Google STILL is in Beta. Besides,
invites are like a dime a dozen now (as I type this, I have
100 invites). But GMail being a "failed tech trend?". Hmph.

BTW, the article layout is disgusting - 11 pages!

Re:Why rag on Gmail?

[Hettch]

That may be true, one can't even attach an Access database because of "security reasons," but the article doesn't just focus on that aspect of Gmail. He focuses on Gmail helping free email by offering 2GB of storage. In my opinion, that is the very least that Gmail has done. The interface is simplistic and lovely (IMHO, as opposed to his "sleek outlike like" yahoo mail, which I avoid since Outlook bothers me like no other), the conversation threading has made me not use regular email clients, the search features are fast and effecient (faster than Thunderbird), and the labels and filters are easy to setup. Am i a gmail fanboy? Probably, but to call gmail a failure is ludicrous. I'd guess that he used gmail to send a hello world email, then tried attaching something, and then hasn't signed on since.

Re:Why rag on Gmail?

[John Miles]

Why do you need to send an EXE attachment? Seems like a sane thing to forbid.

Some people actually work with .EXEs for a living. GMail is worthless to those people.

Before Microsoft started allowing email to execute code, email viruses were impossible.

You don't have to prohibit executable attachments to disallow automatically-executing content. Google has thrown out the baby, bathtub, and half of the house's indoor plumbing.

Microsoft's dumbass move was making everything executable. It's easy enough to tell Grandma not to click on .EXE files, but not so easy when the OS vendor chooses to hide the suffix from her, provides easy ways to disguise the suffix, adds support for some arbitrarily-large number of additional executable file types, and ships a macro engine designed to run the content automatically without asking first.

It's not appropriate to fix any of those problems by preventing me from sending my customers a .ZIP file containing an .EXE. This is a case where Microsoft did some stupid things and Google responded with a hearty, "Hey, wait for me, guys!"

Re:Why rag on Gmail?

[ChrisKnight]

> Some people actually work with .EXEs for a living. GMail is worthless to those people.

Here's a nickel kid, go download yourself a copy of WinZip.

-Chris

The list of tech trends that never go out of style

[Anonymous Coward]

One tech trend then will never fail:-

Vaporware

No lossless?

[outZider]

He makes a jab at the iPod by talking about how larger capacity players add video capability, while ignoring fidelity by not offering lossless. While it isn't the longer-running FLAC format, the iPod does support Apple Lossless, which is just an extension of the standard MPEG4 Lossless Audio format. It works great, and my iPod Video certainly doesn't have a problem playing those as well. :P

Re:Multiple Standards for DVD

[georgewilliamherbert]

If you RTFA a bit more carefully you'd notice that they contrast DVD (the ROM format) with the various DVD writeable formats, pointing out that DVD ROMs caught on with now nearly 100% market penetration (prerecorded VHS delinda est), but instead of DVD writeables killing off VHS for recording, Tivo did. And basically because of too many DVD writeable formats.

The original CD (ROM), and original DVD (ROM), were both excellent, universal, and well liked formats.

What happened with the writables in the DVD space is an object lesson. Unfortunately, one now being emulated by the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray folks.

FLAC is useless to almost everyone

[h3llfish]

This guy mentions twice in the article that he's a big fan of losless audio compression. That's all the proof I need that he's a hype-driven goofball who really has no clue.

I've been a musician for over 20 years. I can easily hear the difference between single coil and humbucking pickups, and between a fuzz pedal that uses germanium trasistors and one that uses silicon. Those are subtle differences that the vast majority of people can't hear. What I can't hear is the difference between a properly done 192kbps/44khz mp3 rip and one made with FLAC. Now, I'm not saying that means that no one on earth can. I'm sure there are golden-eared freaks out there. But I would seriously crap out a brick if this dillhole Case could.

And before you let me know what a moron I am, be sure to conduct a blind A/B test yourself. It has to be blind, or it's just not scientific. Have a friend play two different versions for you, one a high quality mp3, and one FLAC, and see if you can tell. Since the odds of guessing correctly are 50/50, you need to repeat the experiment several times to be sure that you weren't just lucky. I'm here to tell you, it's a rare, rare person who can choose correctly ten times in a row.

And yet this guy is surprised that hardware makers haven't put these lossless codecs into their players? Most people are happy with FM audio quality, let alone FLAC. Case is useless, as proven by the fact that he hyped so many technologies that went nowhere. Extremetech, indeed - extremely stupid.