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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.'"
Will Vista be the Zune of operating systems?
...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.)
In Italy this is already happening, with the main ISP (Telecom Italia) faking DNS problems to cover up the fact that they just can't deliver all the ADSL they sold. Despite the fact that they shape Bittorrent (and other P2P) traffic...
No DRM emerges as a winner? of course not, nobody wins with DRM, not even the record companies or the artists, as consumers hate it and it drives sales away...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
2007 prediction - "Still, no Internet-only song wins a Grammy or is even recognized as existing."
This already happened in the UK in 2006. Crazy by Gnarls Barkely went to number 1 on the charts without having a single physical copy on sale. It is one of the best songs of 2006. It stayed at nubmer one for nine weeks.
From the article:
That is my worst performance EVER. I got nine of 15 predictions correct for a 60 percent average. In my defense I'll point out that just because I am wrong now doesn't mean I'll still be wrong in another week. Three years ago I predicted Intel would support AMD's 64-bit instruction extensions, but they took 53 weeks to do so, making me off by seven days. I think that by the end of February, 2-3 of these predictions could still swing the other direction.
Editors: Please RTFA? Thanks.
"Microsoft is discussing internally how to help Sony from going under, since that would create a raft of antitrust problems for Redmond. I am not making this up."
Microsoft supporting another company (Apple)? What an unexpected event.
Really, if this is a prediction, fire Nostradomus.
Why don't they (the RIAA) just lossy-encode and decode all songs before releasing them on CD?
Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just use a tin can on a string for a microphone?
KFG
They did rebrand.
... New Logo.
Old Logo and now
Did someone actually care? nope.
Just read here:
p rediction_bob_20060104_000992.html
0 60518_000897.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/predictions/bob/2006/
However, Cringley goes into more overall depth in a previous article.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20
MANY IBM employees DO feel this way, btw. IBM appears to be spending little in the way of future product development (including feature enhancements to current products), other than just outright buying companies and incorporating their products. Stock performance has been mediocre for years.
Sooner or later, that kind of internal attitude starts showing up to your customers.
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... ;)
Because recompressed files are perfectly acceptable to most people, who wouldn't even notice the difference. Only a miniscule number of people would find it "unacceptable." And most of them probably couldn't hear the difference anyway - it's all ego like those "Monster Cables" and other shit that appeals to "audiophiles."
... and then they built the supercollider.
I sure do... I found it on youtube and it is quite good.
We were supposed to have FTTH (fiber to the home) 20 years ago.
We've been paying surcharges to get FTTH for 20 years.
To date the Telcos and cablecos have delivered 0 inches of FTTH. Not an inch of fiber has been laid.
And now America is quantitatively and qualitatively behind, in an area where we were the leaders, only to get surpassed by anybody who's actually laid in some FTTH.
The difference of having bandwidth as opposed to starving for it is, well just imagine yourself back before the internet. Imagine yourself having to use carbon paper. Life was a lot slower then.
Now with uTube and MoviesOnDemand, VideosOnDemand and the thirst for all kinds of streaming media, the demand for band is going to collapse the copper infrastructure. It wont melt the wire down as much as it will vaporize it in a coronal flare.
If you work in management for a telco or a cableco, look for Federal indictments to come to your office before the decade is out.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
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
The fact that there are quite a few posts saying Cringely got that one wrong makes it look like he was in fact right. They dropped the Pentium brand name as their primary line, a name that they had been using for ~13 years. How many times have you looked at a software box and seen "Pentium Required/Recommended" over those last 13 years? The reason no one noticed is because it isn't as big a deal. Yes the Core 1/2 chips offer better power, performance and aren't as hot, but the average computer buyer doesn't look at hardware like that. They look at what software will work on it, Windows? Check. Office? Check. An Intel or AMD sticker only matters to zealots anymore.
No sig for you!!
You just proved his point about no one noticing. They don't use the "Pentium" brand anymore. The latest generation desktop processors are referred to as "The Intel® Core(TM) processor family".
See?
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