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Robert X. Cringely Weighs in on 2006
Simon80 writes "With the beginning of a new year coming another set of 15 predictions from Robert X. Cringely as to how the tech world will shape up in 2006, preceded by a review of how his 2005 predictions turned out. Most of this year's predictions cover well known tech companies, with a few that are about specific technologies like WiMax, media center PCs, and VOIP."
So that we can ignore them?
/. can we get a Cringely ignoring ability?
I and others have railed on about how self promoting and wrong he is over and over and over, please Powers that Rule
About the only thing worth doing under 'Doze anymore is running certain peripherals, like the printer and scanner, that are fairly low-usage, with crappy FOSS driver support.
More intriguing, though, is exposing more people to the FOSS tradition of helping people without picking their pockets.
Not everyone is going to get all excited: plenty of users prefer the automatic-transmission feel of these commercial GUI offerings, but some will be seduced by the manual transmission sexiness of an operating system that doesn't leave the user stupider at logout than at login.
And, for the truly blessed, there is emacs...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Sounds like he expects '06 to see properietary gain on OSS. Thats a prediction that I both think is false, but also, for the sake of the computing world as a whole, hope proves false. 2006 (imho) actually does have the potential to be a great year for the linux desktop, assuming that a big hardware company (Dell, HP, anyone) gives it a chance (a novice-oriented linux desktop like Linspire has the potential to get users aquainted w/ OSS and GNU/Linux, and allows them to easily move on up to more advanced distros). Lets hope '06 doesn't live up to Cringely's expectations.
Well, not quite two weeks into the year and he's got one wrong already.
KFG
Palmisano has been slashing costs for more than a year ... and not for the customer-facing and service areas, only the admin and other 'infrastructure' areas.
I like most of this guy's article, but some of the things he says are too vague, and anyone with common sense would say the same things. For example:
I was right when I said AMD would give Intel further fits.
Two huge companies in dead competition would give each other fits? Obviously that is bound to happen on some degree over the course of the year. Also, he never really defined "fits", just some kind of conflict that is bound to happen when two major corporations are competing in the same market.
I predicted the RIAA would continue to sue music lovers and they have, despite the fact that it doesn't help anyone and actually hurts everyone to do so.
What would the RIAA do, stop suing? I don't know of any other way to prosecute violators of copyright law besides offing them like the mafia. Again vague and full of common sense.
Cringely (the author) did make some great predictions that came true this year (e.g. PS3, VoIP, TV networks embracing video downloads). I think I might have read his article last year and enjoyed it also. Personally, I would like to see a lower accuracy rate and less vague predictions. However, most people will be fooled like customers to a palm reader
The voice of the next generation. "In this tower, in my mind..." Babble - Tower
"The next big consumer market will be a network computing appliance."
This one has been predicted for a long time. If it hasn't happened yet, what makes Bob think it's going to happen now? I'll stake my personal reputation (note that I'm posting as AC) that he's wrong.
Did you hear about the clairvoyant's convention?
It was cancelled due to unforseen circumstances.
Okay, I'm done reading TFA. The only thing I see to comment on is the Google will NOT introduce a Google PC prediction. That's a no-brainer, because 1) Google has said they won't do that, 2) Google says that it won't be evil, and 3) lying is evil, thus everything Google says is true. Of course, when they *don't* comment, you can't tell, because silence is golden.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
.. weighed in and subsequently went on a diet.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Now, my patent for this idea hasn't gone through yet, but my attorney says it's just a matter of time, so you can use this for free, for now...
DON'T OPEN STORIES THAT START WITH THE NAMES OF SOMEONE YOU HATE. I know this is an extremely effective and innovative method of ignore, so you can feel free to thank me for this post.
We can only hope.
Google will continue to roll out new products and services as it builds out its infrastructure for a huge push in 2007. They'll need money, of course, so I predict a supplemental stock offering timed with a 20-to-1 stock split.
I already know this one is wrong. Page believes in keeping the stock priced out of the range of the average investor as a way of preventing the company from becoming too focused on the individual quarterly returns. They're not splitting, plain and simple.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Forget the predictions -- I'm just surprised he spelled RADAR with all-caps.
Bob's Prediction Average Was Down for 2005, but 2006 Is Looking Better Thanks to Apple and Burst
How do we know his predictions are looking better, when they are based on what hasn't yet happened... He could come out even worse this year.
"Women are just like ninjas; They lie even when it is more convenient to tell the truth." ~ Unknown
Holy balls, that's interesting speculation.
It's also in my opinion the single most wrong speculation in the entire list. Apple has already demonstrated that they want to keep the system on Apple-only hardware. That's part of the reason for getting TPM chips in the hardware. Ultimately, they'll get hacked, but they'll go after it hard. No matter how much we all say we'd love it if they weren't, Apple is and will always be a hardware company and a company fiercely protective of their intellectual property.
Just look at how they treat rumors sites.
I think he's mostly right, though I can't comment on the financial rumors about TiVO & Google. However, betting on plasma TV Macs, pirated beige box Macs, or the "never gonna happen" pipe dreams of the dot-com era -- streaming video and network appliances -- is just a losing proposition. Until network technology improves significantly, streaming video portables are doomed (especially portables with only 802.11b access), and network appliances will never take off when cell phones, laptops, and desktops can do everything they do better.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Between 5 and 15 Million units of the One Laptop per child is supposed to ship in 2006 getting ready for 100-150Mu in 2007. I think he should have mentioned the expected succes or failure of this program. If successful it will make Linux the #1 client OS, surpassing Windows and totally change the tech dynamics in 2/3 of the world. FYI 2005 shipments of Laptops was 42MU.
Help fight continental drift.
My final score was 10 correct and five incorrect, for a dismal 66 percent -- my worst showing EVER. Could my job be in danger?
I dunno Robert, with the hit rate you normally have on predictions, I don't think this is a prediction you want in your 2006 list!
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Ubuntu
4) Enough about Apple. Google will continue to roll out new products and services as it builds out its infrastructure for a huge push in 2007. They'll need money, of course, so I predict a supplemental stock offering timed with a 20-to-1 stock split. 2006 is a building year for Google.
I don't know on this one. By coincidence I was recently coddling, Yesh my preciousisess, my worn copy of Security Analysis: Principles and Technique by Benjamin Graham, David L. Dodd, Sidney Cottle, Charles Tatham. This is the goto book on investment fundamentals, that guy Warrant Buffy, or something like that, you know the guy who owns the Hathaway shirt company, learned the basics of investment from this book. IMHO there is no way to go about investing without first coming to terms with the knowledge contained in 'Security Analysis: Principles and Technique'. But I'm unsure as to how B. Graham would have parsed Google stocks. In 60's parlance Google would be a go-go stock and might have been shunned by Graham. Also I'm unsure as to Buffet's take on Google. Does the Berkshire Hathaway fund hole any Google stock? Maybe Google will split when the Berkshire Hathaway fund splits. :)
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
all information that has been on the rumor sites for months.
2) The reason Apple changed its MacWorld announcements at the last minute was because the company sued little Burst.com a few days before, trying to invalidate the Burst patents. But since Apple sued Burst, Burst shares have gone UP by 30 percent. The market is rarely wrong. Suing Burst was an enormous mistake for Apple, casting a pall on their video strategy and potentially costing the company strategic alliances with networks and movie studios. Apple realizes this now and is struggling internally to find a way to change course and put a positive spin on the course correction. Apple will lose and Burst will win, and Apple won't be able to afford to wait for the courts to decide anything, since time is critical in staking out Internet video turf. I predict that Apple will eventually take a license from Burst, that is UNLESS SOME OTHER COMPANY (Google? Real? Yahoo?) doesn't snatch up Burst first.
mmmmaybe. but would apple jeapordise their macworld address in this timeline? do the head and the tail not talk anymore? doubtful..
3) But Apple WILL make some inroads against Microsoft. The new Intel Macs will run Windows XP unofficially, and Apple Support acknowledges that they are only days from running XP officially, too. So Apple finally has a solid argument why Windows-centric companies and homes should consider trying a Mac. The best case, though, says that Apple sells an additional million units, which aren't enough for Steve Jobs, so I see him going into a kind of stealth competition with Microsoft.
old news. been beaten here and on other websites to death.
4) Enough about Apple. Google will continue to roll out new products and services as it builds out its infrastructure for a huge push in 2007. They'll need money, of course, so I predict a supplemental stock offering timed with a 20-to-1 stock split. 2006 is a building year for Google.
bzzt! i doubt the google split will happen. they have lost traction on a few efforts last year, and are supposedly growing. diversity growth != profit ergo != rising stock prices.
5) Still no good news for Sun. Those Galaxy servers are very nice, but they aren't enough to support the company and Eric Schmidt is too smart (I hope) to bail out his old firm.
man. i hear a lot of fish in that barrel. sun has been on the hardware ropes for what, 3 years now?
6) IBM will get in trouble with its customers as it becomes clear that Sam Palmisano didn't learn much, if anything, from Lou Gerstner. Gerstner's fat-cutting is long forgotten, so all IBM knows how to cut these days is customer service.
*shrug* IBM is cost competitive in the low end.. they seem to be making money and are still on the short list of "laptops that just work"
7) Microsoft still sucks at security and users suffer for it. My best guess is they are planning on putting all this new technology in the "next" operating system, which seems to be yet another year behind schedule. The important question the world will soon be asking -- "Do we need another Windows operating system?" In 2006, Windows XP gets another service pack and/or facelift. Nothing more.
ZzZZzzzZZ... oh sorry you were saying something?
8) Sony's PS3 hits the market with a dearth of games. Howard Stringer loses his job, not because of the game problems but because he's undermined by the Japanese parts of his company. But there is good news for Sony, too. Interne
... Robert X. Cringely Weighs in AT 2006?! Sure, we all break our resolutions sometime in January, but for Pete's sake, we're not even halfway through the month!
Robert X. Cringely (Mark Stephens) is a complete and utter fraud .
Why his every bowel movement makes the front page is anyone's guess.
there's more than one way to do me.
I predict that his web page will be really awful looking, with weird lime green colors and that the text will be shifted too far over to the left, so that black line slices right through the first letter of each paragraph. And BOOOM, just like that, I'm one for one (100%) for 2006.
Get off it Cringely. Even your supposed "hit rate" is greatly distorted. Up to 80%? Bullshit. You've never been 80% correct about anything. You just count vague predictions or false matches as proof of your prediction. Pretty easy when you leave your predictions quite open to interpretation.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Yeah. Apple plasma TVs. That's plasma, people. With Apple, with a Mac mini in a huge display.
When does the iPod nano with integrated, non-detachable domicile come out?
... and then they built the supercollider.
How about making INTERESTING predictions. Who really cares that Sun is dieing and will continue, along with AOL, Intel, and eventually Apple and MS? This is all common law to anyone who has any FOSS experience. Tell us something we actually care about. Like more details on why wimax is still 12 months out. What the killer app for wimax is anyway, and who's going to release a truly encrypted system to handle p2p, which WILL happen eventually, and really show all this RIAA stuff for exactly what it is: Ridiculous, backwards thinking nonsense by people who still haven't caught up with the realities of living in the modern age.
Here's my predictions:
Somebody (Dell, HP, A new firm that will kick their ass) releases Ubuntu prebundled on super cheap laptops, with all the applications that people need pre installed. This company makes huge strides in the market as WINE improves and even San Andreas starts running on a cheap plentiful laptop that makes Ubuntu upiquitous.
Paul continues to throw chairs, Steve continues to make money by selling old ideas with about 10% more quality control than the competition, and Bill continues to look philanthropical, even though he's clearly the landlord baron of our times.
Slashdot improves it's editing.
Wikipedia invalidates pretty much every other encyclopedia, if they haven't already.
Jesus comes back and smacks GWB in the face with a libel lawsuit.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
It becomes even more ironic when you think that we're really talking about a *publishing* business, and their BIGGEST concern is to prevent "publication" of their work.
It's all about trying to slam the lid on Eric Raymond's Magic Cauldron.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
My prediction of three things we'll see before "network computing" being the next big consumer computer market:
- Practical Cold Fusion on your desktop.
- Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore co-hosting a telethon for gay dyslexic evengelical gun-owning welfare cheats.
- Monkeys flying out of Robert X. Cringley's butt.
Crow T. TrollbotAgree but this doesn't really count. There has been so much talk of this on the rumor sites that it is just a "gimme."
2) The reason Apple changed its MacWorld announcements at the last minute was because the company sued little Burst.com a few days before, trying to invalidate the Burst patents. But since Apple sued Burst, Burst shares have gone UP by 30 percent. The market is rarely wrong. Suing Burst was an enormous mistake for Apple, casting a pall on their video strategy and potentially costing the company strategic alliances with networks and movie studios. Apple realizes this now and is struggling internally to find a way to change course and put a positive spin on the course correction. Apple will lose and Burst will win, and Apple won't be able to afford to wait for the courts to decide anything, since time is critical in staking out Internet video turf. I predict that Apple will eventually take a license from Burst, that is UNLESS SOME OTHER COMPANY (Google? Real? Yahoo?) doesn't snatch up Burst first. Here's something I've noticed lately: Big companies believe in patents as long as they are talking about THEIR patents. Because Burst is three guys in an office in Santa Rosa, companies like Microsoft and Apple tend not to take them seriously. They forget that Burst spent 21 years and $66 million developing that IP, and the company has code that is still better than anything else on the market -- code not even Microsoft has seen. Unless someone buys the company first, Burst is going to win this and eventually license the world. They are in the right, for one thing, and in practical terms they now have as much money for legal bills as any of their opponents. Apple can't win this one.
Agree. Courts seem to be understanding that more money for more lawyers does not make a large company more right than the little guy. Patent defense by little guys will become a growth industry.
3) But Apple WILL make some inroads against Microsoft. The new Intel Macs will run Windows XP unofficially, and Apple Support acknowledges that they are only days from running XP officially, too. So Apple finally has a solid argument why Windows-centric companies and homes should consider trying a Mac. The best case, though, says that Apple sells an additional million units, which aren't enough for Steve Jobs, so I see him going into a kind of stealth competition with Microsoft. Here's how I believe it will work. Apple won't offer versions of OS X for generic Intel hardware because the drivers and the support obligation would be too huge. But just as you can buy a shrink-wrapped copy of 10.4 for your iMac, they'll gladly sell you a shrink-wrapped Intel version intended for an Intel Mac, but of course YOU CAN PUT IT ON ANY MACHINE YOU LIKE. The key here is to offer no guarantees and only limited support, patterned on the kind you get for most Open Source packages -- a web site, forums, download section. and a wiki. Apple will help users help themselves. With two to three engineers and some outreach to hackers and hardware makers, Apple could put together an unofficial program that could easily attract two to three million Windows users per year to migrate their old machines to the new OS. Imagine the profit margins of three engineers effectively generating $300-plus million per year in sales.
This is a creative idea, but does not smell like a typical Apple/Jobs move. I'll disagree.
4) Enough about Apple. Google will continue to roll out new products and service
Don't read any of these posts and don't make any comments. The Slashdot moderators will notice that these topics are non-starters and they won't accept them. He will fade from Slashdot.
I think that all the Cringely bashers ENJOY ragging on Cringely, so they actually want these posts so they have an excuse to whine. This is very typical Slashdot behavior: it's more about heat than light.
you can flame me if you wish but remember that i told you ahead of time. they are harsh predictions but due to certain sources and readings these are my personal conclusions.. #1. Playstation 3 will not be released in 2006...thats right will NOT.
#2. Bluetooth technology will suffer from new viruses..major viruses..nothing like the paris hilton fiasco. This will lead way to a technology that will make bluetooth obsolete. watch and see.
#3. SGI will file for bankruptcy. Mark It.
Yes these are harsh predictions and i cant say that i will get them all right but i am confident that i will get at least one of these right. i would love to hear your comments..and no flames.. serious discussion.
Guys like *Beatles Beatles and Roland Piquepaille have infsted ./ with their particular brand of suckiness, yet we have to endure them; not to mention "Editors", the likes of Michael Sims and Timothy.
Either clean-up Slashdot completely or go someplace else where there are no cash-hungry, self-aggrandizing publicity hounds. Oh right, they're everywhere. Tough luck.
No, it could go the other way - current Mac users won't use anything else and Apple will make a mint from people who want a real OS. Huge numbers of people will try it out because friends recommended it and they can still keep XP just in case something goes wrong. They'll fall in love but will be frustrated by their old hardware and will make a real Mac their next computer purchase. Something similar happened with the iPod and its quality outshines the competition far less than OSX does XP.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
That way you can ignore Cringely, Dvorak, and any other self proclaimed profit of the coming times...
You're probably 19-years-old so most likely didn't, but that program was by far the best historical overview of the computer industry to date. Even though it finishes up around the time Win95 was being launched it isn't all that dated, since it's, you know, a historical overview. Cringely/Stevens did a great job with that, and deserved some acclaim.
Is he still relevent? I don't know. But I can't see any Slashdot editors or spammers^^^contributors such as Roland or *Beatleswhatever ever earning any respect for anything they ever do. Cringely may be a blowhard, but at least he once contributed something positive.
Corrected by inlining a constant: 2006 does have the potential to be a great year for the linux desktop, assuming FALSE.
Corrected even further by logical equivalence: 2006 does not have the potential to be a great year for the linux desktop.
I love Linux, but it's not going on to anyone's desktop any time soon. There are many reasons (No one profits from putting it on the computers sold at computer companies, it's still not ready for a lot of the hardware that's out there, it doesn't always "Just work"). Eventually, it will get to the point where unfortunate things happen rarely, but I am a power user and I still sometimes have to wrestle with it, so I would be reluctant to think of what others might do if they were like my parents.
AFAIK Buffet moved out of the stock market altogether a few years ago. He moved into commodites and also became very involved in global silver trade. He wouldn't invest in something he doesn't understand, and for him that means the tech market. He basically has little to no faith in the US stock market....
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Yeah, but misspelling "ejaculation" and using medieval kike measurements such as "a quart" was a letdown.
GNAA must be SI-conformant and interact with the whole world, no-one outside the USA knows what the fuck "a quart" is: Use litres instead.
My prediction is still that these predictions won't matter, because the US economy/dollar is in serious troubble and the price of precious metals is going to completely explode. The foundation of these predictions is very simple:
a) the US economy has way too much debt
b) there is no way they can pay it off without printing up tons of money
c) the US economy is extremely efficient which means the adjustment will almost certainly
be harsh and brutal
Some other notes:
1) the dollar survived the 1920's because currency was still backed by precious metals
2) the dollar survived the inflation of the 80's becuase there wasn't a lot of debt
3) neither 1 nor 2 apply today, so hold on for the ride of your life when it hits
15 predictions after just 13 days?
Damn, the man is on a roll. Hey, lets make him President.
To the fucktard that submitted this story, get back on your meds and stop sending up stupid shit.
...why are every linux distros forums chock full of people who can't get their hardware to work, including HP printers? I'm sitting on one right now that is supposed to work with linux, but it doesn't. I've had others that weren't supposed to work, but did. So far "not work" is winning handily though with various add on gadgets. It's still a hardware CRAPSHOOT.
Let's amend this a little. It is 2006, SOME printers and other peripherals from SOME companies may or may not work easily on linux distro x,y or z, depending on OS version number, kernel, packager, model number of hardware, phase of moon, calendar date, shoe size and other arcane reasons. SOME hardware companies make a very very very VERY low keyed effort to provide linux "support" and that is considered the GOOD companies. It goes rapidly downhill from there.
Witness this: When you go to any computer store, LOOK AT THE SHELVES, 99% of all the hardware on the shelf says XP READY and there's *no* mention of linux anywhere on the box, and that's for a pretty obvious reason.
There's one off slashdot geek enthusiast anecdotals (WELL IT WORKS FOR ME SO IT MUST WORK FOR EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE), then "the real world" when it comes to hardware. We are still far far away from plug it in and it just works when it comes to add on hardware under linux. It is better than one year or two years ago, but in the meantime hardware manufacturers have released a thousand more models, with only a tiny fraction of them even having binary support, let alone FOSS support, or even providing tech specs. Are you seeing the problem yet? Is it the same sort problems we've been having like..forever?
No answer necessary, we all know what realities are.
Just because some goofball company has a web page with some ancient closed off code that has "linux" slapped on it doesn't mean it's any good or is a universal "fix" for installation and functionality. I'll believe them when I see the open code on the install disk, until then, nope, hardware is for Microsoft OS, anything else, you still have to gamble, sacrafice chickens and compile your way into near functionality or just plain give up. Stuff that "just works" is still the exception, not the rule.
Congratulations! Looks like you qualify for GNAA membership now.
Actually, he failed to make membership due to a technicality.
Something about a Post Anonymously checkbox...
walmart DOT COM online store has offered a limited linux selection with always a way too low amount of RAM (a single stick of 128? huh?) on the boxes they offered. See the distinction? I have yet to see ANY linux anything in a brick and mortar Walmart. It might exist but darn if I have ever seen it or even heard about it. The "masses" dude has never even seen linux offered for sale, they don't even know it exists for the most part, they BARELY understand that Apple OSX is some sort of expensive computer thingee, thinking it still runs "Windows". No lie, I have heard that more often than not. People have no idea what the difference between a browser and an operating system is for the most part. Windows is a computer a computer means windows is still the operating norm in the US and isn't going to be changing anytime soon. When the DOJ failed to really breakup the entrenched MS monopoly and daisy chained kissy fest with the hardware vendors it was easy to see that the "windows" status quo would continue, and it has. it will most likely change more rapidly overseas,partly from actual political reasons (anti US anything = "good") but inside the US it will *not* change any time soon. All the big box vendors and hardware vendors might as well be actual divisions of MS inc. IBM is the only one that could be different, but they simply don't care about the low end home market or even the SOHO market. that leaves them out and they can't handle low priced anything and never could. So, who is going to offer any sort of Linux pre installed to the home user? Dell, HP, Gateway?
*snicker*
Just not happening. Until one or all of those guys do it, "linux on the desktop" just is_not_ happening in the US.
I wrote that Apple would spend some of its cash horde on a major play for market share.
That must be quite a sight; an army of Washington singles and Grant fifties raising dust and making a thunderous clamor as they ride bareback straight at you.
- The RIAA will continue to exist and be a pain in the neck.
- Microsoft will release another operating system.
- Linus Torvalds will continue to be writing for the Linux kernel.
- MacIntosh will sell computers with a nice GUI.
- In the next week, you will talk to someone named Bob, Joe, Jane, Jack, Chris, Sam, or some name beginning with a 'J' or a female who's name ends in a pronounced vowel.
- IT proffesionals will continued to be ignored and low quality products will flourish in the market.
What do you think, guys?I'd be interested to hear from /.ers just what everyone thinks would actually amount to a "great year" for Linux on the desktop.
I'm a bit of a Mac fanboy, but from my perspective, Linux had a pretty damn fine year in 2005. Ubuntu is a story all by itself, and there are plenty of other distros that had a good ride last year (Mandrake and Mepis come immediately to mind). KDE got visionary and Gnome got even leaner. SUSE opened up.
There were some big deployments, and it's now obvious that developing nations love Linux for its affordability and independence from big American corporations.
Any other criteria?This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
I simply would not buy Google shares right now. Why? Stock prices are based on expectation, and the expectations made of Google right now are ridiculously high. Yes, it is possible for Google to perform better than expected, but there is much more room for the company to do worse and for the stock to take a hit. I would not buy Google until they make their first mistake and analysts stop expecting perfection of them. Note - I am not saying that GOOG is a bad stock, but all I'm saying is that they're downside is bigger than their upside right now.
i read " weighs" and then a little further 2006 :(
:)
how disappointed i was it wasn't an article about the world's heaviest man
ah well, better luck next time
4. They'll need money, of course, so I predict a supplemental stock offering timed with a 20-to-1 stock split. 2006 is a building year for Google.
./ers doubt this. Make no doubt about it, TiVo is worth buying for the brand name alone.
The operative phrase is "They'll need money", since shares of Google have never been within the reach of the average investor splitting the stock will create a short term boost. As a result they'd split then make an offering in a week or so, enough time to let people buy the price up but before the major investment firms start taking profits. The interesting thing about this prediction is that Google just offered up 4 billion in shares. Thus to say they'll need money is to say they'll try something big (like his gCube idea). It's a pretty bold prediction and I doubt it will come true.
11TiVo will be bought by another company
When I first read that I thought "That's about as bold as saying Microsoft will still suck at security". Then I saw how many
15.Whatever we expect from Google might just as easily appear from Yahoo, too. With so much attention on Google, Yahoo is operating under the RADAR and will have several surprises for the market while AOL continues to shrink.
This would have been good if he hadn't said "Whatever we expect from Google might just as easily appear from Yahoo, too." Whatever we expect from Google probably won't come out of Google because we have such high expectations. Still Yahoo has been flying under the radar, I expect them to use that to their advantage and introduce some interesting new services. The fact that he talks about Yahoo and AOL in the same sentence is very interesting. It leads me to beleive that he thinks Yahoo will start encrouching on AOL's turf.
The only way I see them doing that is if they release a browsing environment comparable to AOL and MSN to push their advertising further. Considering they don't have a dialup infrastructure to deal with they might be able to price it competitively.
... claiming some stuff to be your way when it is FAR from that is not nice :(
Also most of the things that he guessed were "captain obvious" grade ...
It is also pathetic how he is making his predictions almost in february ... a little more and he could be 100% true with the advantage of hindsight :)
From the new predictions the WiMax one is probably off again (but it is worded in such a way that he will be able to claim it nonetheless) and the ONLY one worth mentioning is the very last one!!!
A run-from-cd (or run-from-dvd, more likely) version of MacOS has to be technically possible. How long before someone hacks one up and it starts to get noticed around the 'net? What will Apple's response be? Of course their official response will be 'stomp on it hard', but what will their real response be?
A disk which you could shove into a vanilla PC which gave users a flavour of MacOS but which for some reason couldn't be fully installed onto the PC and so always ran at 'run-from-cd' speed would actually be a great marketing ploy.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
1998 was going to be the year of Linux on the desktop,
1999 was going to be the year of Linux on the desktop,
2000 was going to be the year of Linux on the desktop,
2001 was going to be the year of Linux on the desktop,
2002 was going to be the year of Linux on the desktop,
2003 was going to be the year of Linux on the desktop,
2004 was going to be the year of Linux on the desktop,
2005 was going to be the year of Linux on the desktop,
2006 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop?
We old-timers have been watching this prediction from Linux advocates/zealots/media every year since the hype started and it has never come close to happening.
If free-software is going to arrive on the desktop, it isn't going to happen with Linux, this much should be clear by now. A new system without Linux's pitfalls will have a better chance.
"because the US economy/dollar is in serious troubble and the price of precious metals is going to completely explode"
I'll make two comments on this, since this is in the realm of predictions:
1) You've made several predictions in one sentence, and once doesn't follow from the other. The U.S. economy may be in trouble. But that doesn't mean the dollar will change significantly. However, even if the U.S. economy does poorly, and the dollar tanks, that may not have significant impact on gold/silver/platinum prices.
2) People have been making this prediction about precious metals pretty much forever (and usually they're precious metal speculators). Or as long as there has been an "economy". It hasn't happened yet. In fact, I can't think of a time in the last 200 years when this kind of prediction has been true on any kind of widespread basis. During Reagan's first term, this same predicion was widespread because Reagan used massive deficit, government spending as a way to stimulate the economy. Nixon and Johnson used inflation as a way of paying for the Vietname war. In neither case did gold rise significantly in price adjusted via the dollar.
Now, you may be right, but what you're really predicting is that the economy falls apart, businesses will all fail, and there won't be any way to purchase goods and services because those businesses will have all failed. If that's the case, don't buy precious metals, but goods and store them. Do you think people who lived in New Orleans during the flood would rather have 2 pounds of gold or a decent generator and a couple hundred gallons of gas? How about a few hundred pounds of rice?
Or, if you're worried about massive inflation, get a mortgage on a house. If inflation runs wild, you'll pay for your house inflated dollars, and you'll essentially get your house for free. Of course, see my previous advice. I'd buy a gun as well, because looters will probably be stealing and burning everything in sight.
P.S. your mention of factor #2 "the dollar survived the inflation of the 80's becuase there wasn't a lot of debt" is utter nonsense. Reagan ran up the deficit and federal debt massively to attempt to jump start the economy. That's because the interest rates in the late 70's reached 16% as the fed tried to use high interest as a way of reigning in inflation. We had inflation because Nixon in the late 60's and early 70's printed a lot of money to pay for the Vietnam war. So I'd say we've been through pretty tough times in the late 70's and early 80's and gold never really took off.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Cringely seems in a defensive mood, with rather a dull set of ideas. Predictions are meant to be fun. I don't think it matters whether they are precisely correct. Often, the writer gets the details wrong but the general thrust is entirely accurate. Maybe Cringely should have taken a tip from the ancient Persians and written the piece while blind drunk then rewritten it when sober. Maybe he did, and it's taken until mid-January to get over a monster hang-over.
The general approach seems to be that 2006 will be Apple's year, and maybe Sony's if there is a sudden spurt of interest in the cell processor. Everyone else will bide their time (Google), tread water (Microsoft) or go backwards (IBM and the rest of the world, apparently). Boring. And while everyone seems to be talking about the fabled media center, no one seems to have had a good enough sighting yet to provide a coherent description of what it will be like.
I'd love to have heard Cringely expound a little more on Google's shipping-container data centers he is so fond of mentioning, if they exist. And I guess he could have taken a few bets for us aficionados of the 33-1 outsider, like Sun and Novell both face investor-led crises and end up on Wall Street's M&A slab, and someone makes a grab for ATI.
And, on a small note, imho in 2006 Ubuntu have a great opportunity to consolidate their performance and establish themselves as the desktop of choice for Linux people, behind Red Hat and Novell (or what becomes of it) slugging it out in the corporate arena. Or perhaps that should read Red Hat consolidating it's near-monopoly in the corporate arena. Anyone up for a punt on Megacorp Inc. taking a swing at acquiring them?
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I think Cringley might be right on some and wrong on others. He obviously has some very good connections, since he sniffed out that Apple was starting to work on wireless video streaming over a year ago and he might very well be right about Apple killing half the Macworld show due to legal problems with Burst, and I think he's right that Apple will lose. It was probably a mix of Burst's greed for big licensing money and Job's stinginess that broke the discussions about licensing down. But although Jobs can fuck up mightily from time to time, he's pretty good at salvaging something from the ruins (the Mac Cube was a disaster, the Mac mini a huge hit) so I think there will be something along the lines of a Mac TV out this year. In the end, Apple themselves might just buy Burst (and not Google as Cringely said) if it's important enough to them.
I'm pretty sure he's dead wrong about Apple selling boxes of OSX that can install on any PC, and in fact I'm dead sure of this because (read this, Cringely, you dumbass) OSX needs Intel's new boot firmware, EFI, to boot. It doesn't install or boot on BIOS machines. It only worked on the developer Intel macs. Of course it can be hacked, but that won't work for your average PC user.
About Google I think he's simply wrong because Google is pretty good about surprising investors, but who knows.
About the PS3 I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure that Soney will work very hard to make sure some games will be there at launch. Sony's English CEO getting axed will not be as dependent on the PS3 as it will on Sony's general fortunes. I doubt he knew much about the Sony DRM fiasco, but he definitely knows about its consequential lawsuit. My guess is he would get axed because of that.
Cringely doesn't even mention Windows Vista and claims it will not come out this year. Is he fucking daft? If Microsoft doesn't release Vista, they will lose even more ground to OSX and cheap Macs. Vista is Microsoft's big chance of winning over customers from deserting the platform for Macs. Microsoft has so much riding on Vista's back, in tools and products that they can't afford not to release it this year.
What would be really amazing would be if Microsoft were to launch its own hardware platform, on a PPC basis (not the XBox, a general computer). That would be a supreme irony, except that it will never happen.
Another piece of wiffle-waffle from Mr. Ph.D himself. My kids produce stuff with greater substance on a daily basis!