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Cringely's 2006 Results, 2007 Predictions
Underpants writes "Bob Cringely posts the results of his 2006 predictions (only 69% successful, so Bob is sad). He also lists his calls for 2007; none are particularly shocking, but some are at least interesting. 2007 predictions from the article: '4) No one DRM technology emerges as the winner and the RIAA begins to back off as it loses a few legal cases. Still, no Internet-only song wins a Grammy or is even recognized as existing. 9) Zune 2.0 appears, isn't brown, but still nobody buys it. 10) The year the net crashed (in the USA). Video overwhelms the net and we all learn that the broadband ISPs have been selling us something they can't really deliver.'"
...going through their predictions list for once. Also, he played the umpire quite well - that's some pretty harsh judgements. (Wrong on iPhone/iTV - heh.)
Number 2 seems like he got it right but is saying it's wrong for some reason, I don't quite get #5 at all - haven't read anything to this effect but I'm probably wrong.
4) No one DRM technology emerges as the winner and the RIAA begins to back off as it loses a few legal cases. Still, no Internet-only song wins a Grammy or is even recognized as existing.
Why don't they (the RIAA) just lossy-encode and decode all songs before releasing them on CD? For example, wav to mp3 and then mp3 back to wav, pressing the resulting wav on the retail audio-CD. Nobody would be able to encode the original CDs to lossy formats and get acceptable results anymore.
I'm the submitter, and that figure was my typo: if you look down towards your fingers, you'll see that the '9' is right next to the '0'. I mean look down onto the keyboard... ;)
Curious!
I'm on Rogers HighSpeed in Canada, and lately they've been shaping BT traffic, and the past few months having intermittent connectivity issues -- just a couple or few days ago the service wasn't working, but the lights on the modem all appeared fine... Needless to say, I didn't want to call customer support to be on hold for an hour or more and finally be told that they were working on the problem and to try it again the next day (useless!) so after a few hours and several resets of the modem I decided to try a ping from my router and lo and behold, it worked...
I punched in the IP for a DNS server that I knew of, and used that to get the numbers for OpenDNS and now have my router issuing those with DHCP requests instead of the Rogers DNS servers. Funny -- everything has been working just fine since I made that change.
Is Telecom Itialia also owned by Ted Turner?!? At any rate, it seems they went to the same "We've Oversubscribed, What Can We Do Now?" convention as each other.... Bastards!
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss
The bare bones Xbox360 costs just as much as the OS for Ultimate Vista. You can do more with $400 on an Xbox than a media with a paid-for key with Vista.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
1) I predicted that Apple would announce iPhone and iTV products as well as content deals. The content deals happened and some of the iTV technology was demonstrated, but I think we'll have to wait another week or so for the rest, so I guess I was wrong.
Yeah, wrong. Not to mention that I wrote something about Apple moving in this direction a year and a half ago. This is no "prediction" its writing on the wall.
2) I said OS X would run on generic Intel hardware, though Apple wouldn't support it. This is true in the sense that people have made OS X run on generic Intel hardware, but APPLE hasn't, so the item is wrong.
There are a number of technical reasons that this will likely not happen. Yes, wrong.
3) More products, services, and a stock split for Google. I was right about the first bits but that's like predicting sunset will come. The split didn't happen because I never realized how much cash Google was going to generate -- far more than they can even spend. So the item is wrong.
Yeah, wrong
4) More bad news for Sun. That's true.
I might say that sun really has remained the same. If you use stock price as an indicator of "bad" then they are neither good nor bad. I might disagree with this assesment. Wrong.
5) IBM customers revolt. It is happening slower than makes sense, but yes, they are revolting. True.
Ok, whatever.
6) More Vista delay. I'm going to claim this one because the Vista that's just appearing was delayed twice in 2006 alone and is a shadow of what it was intended to be. True.
Yeah, no. You were wrong. Vista shipped in 06, I've seen the cd's myself.
7) PS3 is in trouble as is Howard Stringer. This is all true. The PS3 was late to market, the blue laser diode shortage has hurt the company, developers aren't amused, and the word inside Sony is that Sir Howard is toast. True.
Right.
8) WiMax will suffer under Sprint Nextel. My feeling here was that merging the two cell companies would be too distracting for them to do very much with their top asset (in my view) -- all those WiMax licenses. Since they didn't roll out much of anything in 2006, I'd say this one is true.
Not sprints fault. The standard hasn't really been ratified. There are only a few makers of the silicon necessary to drive the antennas. This has nothing to do with sprint and everything to do with the hardware. I'd say this is wrong.
9) Media Center PCs still won't take off as they try to compete with cheaper embedded devices. True.
Yeah, about right.
10) TiVo will be bought. Obviously wrong, though I still don't see the company surviving as an independent. Wrong.
No purchase, wrong.
11) Intel will rebrand itself and nobody will notice. Intel did, we didn't -- true.
Intel did not rebrand. They launched two new TV ads a few product logos - but they have the same "feel" of the last 15 years of advertising. I wouldn't really call that a "rebranding" effort. So, wrong.
12) No desktop OS or PC from Google. People (not me) were absolutely convinced this time last year that Google was going head-to- head against Windows. Nope. It didn't happen, and won't. I was correct.
Ok, right.
13) Skype won't make much, if any, money for eBay in 2006 (or 2007). Skype got a lot of press and moved a long way toward building a better service that makes more business sense, but the company is still at least a year away from making money. True.
Ok. Right
14) Yahoo will surprise us. Wrong. Yahoo is in a crisis from which the company may not recover with current management. Sigh.
Ok. Right.
15) Apple will license technology from Burst. They should have by now but the companies are still fighting in court. For those following the fight, a hearing on February 8th will lead to a decision less than a month later that will tightly define this patent battle in a way that will make one
Flawed alternative problem in case 2:
No technological solution exists for a social problem.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Microsoft's DRM scheme for the original XBOX worked pretty well. Sure, there were mod chips, but most people didn't have the time and energy to use them.
Not only their logo, but they ditched Pentium for the Core in January.
Okay, some people are making fun of Cringely's predictions.
Fine, but they should put their money where their mouth is: let's see their alternative predictions and let Slashdot revisit the issue next year.
Maybe there are better players out there, there is no reason for them to hide.
We could even have a Slashdot prediction, maybe based on votes from Slashdot users.
There are so many possibilities - to put your money where your mouth is.