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Harry McCracken Rounds Up the Year In Tech
Velcroman1 writes "Windows got less annoying. Smartphones became smarter. The Internet continued to change entertainment for the better. All in all, it was a good year for technology and the folks who use it. Harry McCracken, the brains behind Technologizer and the former editor-in-chief of PC World, reveals his picks and pans for the most interesting tech stories of the year."
From TFA: "Facebook ... it's the AOL of this era"
The AOL of this era. Uhhh... Ok, I'll get right on that. ME TOO!
ObCaptcha: "Abscess". Dictionary sez: "An abscess (Latin: abscessus) is a collection of pus (dead neutrophils) that has accumulated in a cavity formed by the tissue on the basis of an infectious process". Seems curiously appropriate.
<10-year-old>Snicker</10-year-old>
What surprised me was the Best Newcomer award went to the Palm Pre. If ever there was a doomed to fail product.....
With all the Android buzz, iPhone still ruling the smart phone universe and the Blackberry line still the corporate hero, I don't see where the Pre will fit.
I gave up religion for Lent.
You are thinking of Phil McCracken I believe. Or perhaps Harry Balzac?
Nevermind Phill, I want his other brother Zack McCracken to play the kazoo for us!
I just got the Droid and it's sweet, but WebOS is very nice, and I think if it takes hold, it could gather quite the following itself. They aren't tied to one network so they will soon branch out. I think the form factor is one thing that needs to be thought out more for the Pre though. That tiny keyboard is hard to use for those with big manly fingers :o)
While obviously Snow Leopard and Windows 7 were big deals, there are a lot more game changers and important things out there. The ION platform is a big thing, its already used in a few HTPC setups and I expect it to grow even more in 2010. The cheap full laptops are also going to be big things. Its hard to beat a laptop with a 15 inch screen, a 2.2 ghz CPU and 2 gigs DDR2 and a decent sized HDD for $300 or less. A cheap netbook is good for a geek, kids or the businessman. However, for the elderly, those unemployed and looking for a good laptop, and students, these cheap laptops are going to help change the market.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The thing about Palm is they might not have Apple-like cult status, but there are still a lot of Palm fans out there. Plus, compared to the Centro, and the old Palm OS, Web OS is nice, new and shiny. About the biggest problems with WebOS is, its tied to one carrier that isn't a big one. Sprint, while a large company, is nothing when compared to AT&T and Verizon. When the Pre branches out to all major networks, I can see it being a small success, and really taking Palm further more than any other phone previous to it. Just look at Apple when it switched to OS X, it was a rough transition, but once it got going, it turned into a really nice OS.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Or his brother, Phil McCracken
"Didn't I tell you to call me Ernie, or Big Ern?"
Of these changes, the browser market having real more-than-2-way competition was one I wouldn't have predicted, although admittedly the competition for actual users is still mostly 2-way (Firefox/IE) at the moment. But I'll give that one.
Facebook/Twitter as 2009 stories is basically the same as Facebook/Twitter as 2008 stories, but with more users and more mainstream notice. In fact, these were in various pundits' 2008 lists, weren't they?
The Pre is alright I guess, but not sure whether it really changed the smartphone market.
Some rumored hardware that, in the end, didn't come out, happens basically every year.
Standalone GPS is indeed being displaced by smartphones.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If you want a low quality, detail light overview of the shit you heard the names of most on teh teevee, read TFA. Or you could masturbate for yourself. fapfapfapfapfapfap
AT&T Wireless seems to be a company intent on hari-kari. It has sold its customers the wildly popular iPhone, and now blames its customer base for using the device:
AT&T made more threatening remarks aimed at iPhone users ("Wireless data hogs") who use too much "audio and video streaming" today. AT&T Wireless CEO Ralph de la Vega told attendees at a UBS conference in New York...
Wireless data hogs who jam the airwaves by watching video on their iPhones will be put on tighter leashes, ...[AT&T] will also give high-bandwidth users incentives to "reduce or modify their usage."
Just 3 percent of "smart" phone users are consuming 40 percent of the network capacity, de la Vega said, adding that the most high-bandwidth activity is video and audio streaming. Several applications on the iPhone provide nonstop Internet radio.
De la Vega also defended the network's performance, saying testing showed that AT&T's third-generation, or 3G, network was faster than that of competitors, and that major problems are concentrated in New York and San Francisco, which are packed with smart phone users.
AT&T has already pushed iPhone Tethering back into 2010 with no hard date in sight.
Obviously, these threats by De la Vega are not going well with its customer base, one who has grown increasingly surly. While the first of Dan Lyons' "Operation Chokehold" customer protests may have been unsuccessful, it would be easy to see how iPhone/AT&T customers could find other ways to show their dissatisfaction. And surely, all of this has been noted and noted well in Cupertino at Apple HQ. The last thing it wants in the face of increased competition for smartphone sales is a customer revolt towards an antagonistic company. That in and of itself would suggest that Apple must surely be planning to not renew its exclusivity contract with AT&T, not without some contractually specified infrastructure improvements at the very least.
While other smartphone brand owners and carriers may smugly note that they do not have these problems, they would be wise to note this emerging issue. As Droid and other smartphones become more widely accepted and used on other carrier networks, it is seemingly inevitable that they too will join the ranks of the disconnected unless they happen to be nearby a traditional wireless router that they can connect their pocket device to.
The bottom line is that adoption may well bring about data caps with high charges for heavy users, simply because there are not that many providers and should they note that one sees a revenue increase by raising its rates, they can easily follow suit. This in turn will slow the adoption of broadband migration to smartphone devices at least until compression and connection technologies catch up and surpass this problem.
It's only been out since October 22nd, 2009. It seems a bit early to say that it "is far more likely than Vista to run decently on the computer you already own."
We'll find out, because I believe that upgrades to Windows 7 are far more likely to be attempted than Windows upgrades usually are. Because of Vista's problems, because of concern that Vista will almost be an orphaned product--not by Microsoft but by all the vendors developing for Windows, and because the listed system requirements for Windows 7 are the same as for Vista, a lot of organizations are going to want to move swiftly to put Vista behind them. Corporations will want to standardize. The safest choice is to throw out the computers with Vista installed and buy new ones with Windows 7 preinstalled, but the Vista computers are a little too new for that. The remaining choices are to drag feet on moving to Windows 7 or to upgrade, and this time I think many will opt to upgrade.
So, we will see.
I hope it will turn out that upgrading to Vista is smooth. Microsoft has shown that it can do it: the transition from MS-DOS 3.3 to MS-DOS 5.0 was a model of what an OS upgrade should be.
But it is early for McCracken to be celebrating it as an established fact, rather than a reasonable expectation based on listed system requirements and Windows 7's reputation as being not much more than a service pack.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
For $40+/mo I expect a lot of leeway in my data plan usage. Perhaps they could offer me a rebate for using less? It'll seem a lot less nickel-and-dimey than the alternatives.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
There was relly nothing wrong with Vista itself, it was just a poor launch. The Vista Capable debacle as well as hardware manufacturers taking shortcuts caused it to get a bad rap. Releasing a memory hog OS at a time when ram was rediculously expensive probably didn't help either, since many Windows users use $400 PCs. People got the preconceived notion that it was bad, and therefore they acted in a way that made it bad to them (self-fullfilling prophecy, the loser's fallacy, etc). I'm not saying Vista was great, but just not nearly as bad as the press made it out to be. Its the same psychological effect Apple used with its "just works" campaign, just in reverse.
In summary, you're right that Win 7 is basically just a Vista rebrand, but it doesn't mean that a Vista hater will hate Win 7. Only a Vista hater for legitimate reasons will (minority), a market sheep will not (majority).
Posting anon because I modded you down.
The reason why is because Rob Malda's dick is in my ass. Oh yes Roberto. Give it to me papi. Ejaculate in my ass! OOOOhhhh, you came!
Android is over a year old. WebOS was launched this year. Think about it. "Best newcomer of the year".
Phil McCracken is truly a pain in the a$$. ;)
They have hardened fans in the smartphone development industry. A whole lot of the most experienced smartphone developers cut our teeth by developing on PalmOS, and they've been waiting for this platform's release for so long that these C coders taught themselves javascript and css and became web devs just to build apps for the platform. In part, a lot of us built close development relationships with Palm as their support and engineers were extremely cool and supportive back in the day, and a lot of us haven't forgotten that.
Ewwww. That link goes to Clusterfox Noise. I feel like I need a shower now.
..., but there are still a lot of Palm fans out there.
Well, I was once one of them. Palm made crappy hardware, like screens that were scratched beyond use in just three weeks by normal use, but PalmOS was way better than WinCE. Then they made the most stupid move ever: to combine the most crappy OS (Windows Mobile) with their own most crappy hardware. They may have learned from their mistake, but I did too.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
MS Windows 7 is not less annoying. It has some initial improvements over Vista- but nothing changes the underlying issues that made Vista suck so much. DRM, crummy UI, ribbons, and other new bloat without any clear benefits. MS needs to take XP and FIX it. Then maybe Microsoft would have a half-decent OS instead of adding bloat without benefit followed by removing undesirable features to reduce some of the bloat later on.
a good year as well....
That is of course the whole point of my posting - which was for some reason modded down as offtopic even though TFA hails Windows 7 as 'the comeback kid' for Microsoft. The whole 'Windows Vista Bad, Windows 7 Good' media brouhaha seems to be nothing more than a regurgitation of some marketing mantra. The question I posed in my original posting was why so many people actually fell for this, instead of judging both versions on their merits. Windows 7 is not much different from Windows Vista so the media stance is incongruous and does not speak well for their reliability. Either they lied when they called Vista a dead duck or they lie when they call Windows 7 a fresh breath of air...
--frank[at]unternet.org
"Consumers appear to like the cheap little laptops known as netbooks -- during a disappointing year for PC sales, they were the only type of netbook that saw an increase in sales rather than a decline."
Well, umm, yeah, I'd expect netbooks to be the only type of netbook that saw increase in sales, duh ;-)
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Hits
Microsoft Windows 7 doesn't suck. It is a good update to XP and runs well on most PC that chocked on Vista. Vista took all the heat for missing drivers and such so Vista didn't have too.
Android looks like ti will be the Windows of smartphones. It is everywhere and soon will be available on on carriers.
Twitter has become the darling of the year. Now if they just figure out how to make money with it.
Google Chrome. It is fast and it works well. Yet another browser steps up and shows that choice is good.
Motorola is back. Motorola when from hero to zero and now back to hero thanks to the Droid. Keep pushing big M we need you
EBook readers. This is the dawning of the year of the EBook or not but they are everywhere.
The ZuneHD. Wow it is pretty and has a nice interface. It is a great media player and ZunePass makes it so tempting.
NetFlix streaming. It is on the XBox, Roku, PS3, and now showing up on BluRay players. Just too cool and too handy.
3D movies. I think they are here to stay
The Kodak Zi8. It is a better HD camcorder than the Flip and at under $200 is a bargain. Now anybody can shoot HD at 1080p. And you thought slid shows where bad! I will not get into the terror of amature HD pron that I suspect will soon be flooding the Internet. Still a win but one that should scare us all.
Misses
MindowsMobile. It has no mind share and looks like it will be the dull also ran of the smartphone world. Unless Microsoft does something mind blowing soon it should just walk away.
Nokia what are you doing? No really what are you doing? We have no idea and wonder if you do. Is the future S60 or Linux for you? Wait you came out with a netbook... Running WINDOWS?.
PSP Go or as many people call it PSP Go Away... Really it is more expensive than the PSP, you have no way to play your UMD games on it and games are showing first in UMD form and only latter
in the online store! Sony are you nuts?
The ZuneHD, wait that was a hit? Yes it was from a tech and design standpoint the problem is that nobody cares. It lacks an open app store like the iPod Touch does and frankly nobody really cares about it. The ZuneHD is a miss because it is just invisible. Microsoft if you had made it a phone with an open app store you would have knocked it out of the ball park.
Linux. I love Linux but it is still not doing it on the Desktop. Linux could have made huge inroads because Vista sucked and wouldn't run on netbooks. The first netbooks ran Linux but they sucked. They had a strange flavor of Linux. Had the Linux community gotten it's act together it could have really made headway. The number one problem is that it is hard to sell software for Linux. I still have hope. Folks this is what we need. A pretty and fast version of Linux. Might I suggest that it use QT embedded and ditch X or run X on top of QT embedded for programs that must use X. Next get an app store so people can buy and sell apps. Next It has to support Flash. Finally make a Smartbook that will run for hours on a battery charge supports HD video in hardware, looks good, and is under $350. It also must have an HDMI and and a ir port for a remote. Now make a deal with NetFlix, Blockbluster, and Amazon to sell download and streaming media on it. Yes I love Linux.
AT&T your ads suck. No really that you can surf the web while talking on your cell phone just isn't that big of a deal to most people. To the none techies they are going why would you ever do that? The techies all know it only works on your small 3G network and will not work on the much bigger edge network. It is a sad reply to the Verizon ads.
Comcast and AT&T. We are paying you to access the internet! WE THE CUSTOMERS THAT ARE PAYING WILL DECIDED WHAT SITES WE WANT TO GO TO! WE DO NOT WANT YOU SELL BETTER ACCESS TO ONE SITE BECAUSE WE ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS AND WE WANT EVERY SITE WE USE AND EVERY SERVICE WE USE TO BE AS FAST AS POSSIBLE!!!! WE AS A NATION HAVE GIVEN YOU BILLIONS OF DOLLARS FOR BROADBAND AND WE HAVE
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Try this tech yardstick. Tell us how sales were at PC Mag this year! If the industry makes no money development will suffer big time.
Just 3 percent of "smart" phone users are consuming 40 percent of the network capacity, de la Vega said, adding that the most high-bandwidth activity is video and audio streaming. Several applications on the iPhone provide nonstop Internet radio. I am shocked and surprised -- only 3% of iPhone owners use them for pr0n and constantly streaming music? If you're not gonna do that, what's the point of owning an iPhone? If you just wanted to, ya know, talk to people, than any old phone would do.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
(no surname necessary) With Steve around, thre is no need to worry about technological creativity.
Drivers. An operating system which doesn't operate on the system is somewhat useless. The slow file copy problem, not being able to work on older Microsoft based networks, the high memory usage and low memory ceiling all added up to 32 bit Vista being a terrible waste of money on release and in many cases a drastic step backwards from XP.
Win 7 apparently has solved many of those problems and has more of a tried and tested GUI adapted from OS X on the front.
That's what I want to know.
He obviously doesn't do tech support.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Thanks to sites such as Hulu, software like Boxee, and gadgets such as the Roku player, it's now possible to do a high percentage of your TV watching at your convenience on the Internet
It is strange that the author did not mention Youtube, where I watch a lot more of my favorite shows (albeit not current, but I don't care) than anywhere else, probably by an order of magnitude. Chunking into 10-minute pieces doesn't bother me, particularly when playlists are available. You can also see a lot of foreign shows that neither Hulu nor Netflix have. And why isn't Netflix streaming mentioned?
So much for the notion that the cloud is always a more reliable repository for our stuff than an old-fashioned PC
Don't you just love it when authors argue seemingly with themselves? I have not heard anyone make the above assertion.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
How does one get a "Redundant" rating when one is the 4th poster of the topic, and the third poster that didn't just post to be first?
Odd.
I gave up religion for Lent.
I'm using RockOn and last.fm. You also might want to check out this article on spotify.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
>AT&T Wireless seems to be a company intent on hari-kari.
Okay, folks, if you're going to use a foreign phrase, please get it right.
"Hari Kari" translates (badly) to "Needle Goose". The words you're looking for are
"Hara" (stomach or belly) and "Kiri" (cut). "Seppuku" and "Jisatsu" are also acceptable.
{sigh} Baka Gaijin...
No I think the rep was deserved. I had the misfortune of being handed a Vista laptop when it was fairly newly released and it was slow and buggy. I couldn't shut it down, and there was some weird thing when you deleted files and it would randomly delete the parent folder. It improved with the service packs, and a complete rebuild, but it was never a happy experience. I have now rebuilt the same laptop with 7 and it's better in every conceivable way.
I have, or have had, Palm devices from the original one, then Palm III Colour, Vx, Tungsten, Treo....
None of them got scratched screen.
Call it anecdote, but my sample size is bigger than most.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Mate, the unemployed don't waste money on laptops, unless they had good redundancy packages from their ex employers in the financial industry.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Referring to the unremarkable?
A list of this kind must be predictable by definition, otherwise is of no real use.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So it seems AT&T did a great job in the US contract with Apple, here in the UK we have now 3 carriers selling the iPhone (and you can get unlocked 2nd hand iPhones in reputable stores everywhere).
So the "Wireless data hogs" (so you give consumers a service, with a device that encourages your users to use your service, and when they buy too much of it, you get angry at them. Wow, just wow) will eventually be less of a problem, when good old fashioned competition kicks in.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The point is, it was fixed in later revs of Vista, and the "tried and tested" GUI was tried and tested on Vista.
IMHO, Vista when it came out deserved the panning it got. Vista by the time Win 7 came out was pretty decent, and Win 7 made it decent. Win 7, though, is still lacking sorely as an OS compared to the competition (the competition lacks in several departments too, though).
So far as drivers go, it's all anecdotal. If you have an unsupported bit of hardware, that hardware isn't going to have a Vista/7 driver still. On the other hand, if you have fairly common printers, scanners, etc, the drivers were available from day 1 (not necessarily on the Windows disk, but I can't remember the last time I trusted the Windows disk for a driver for anything; I always go to the manufacturer's web site to download their latest driver versions the moment I've installed Windows.
The author mentioned that Palm's new OS is a huge hit, but why was there no mention of Android in the same paragraph? It has stormed the cell phone market across several carriers and has brought a new "hybrid" model of software that is partially open source to the table. How is this not a bigger deal than Palm's OS? Palm has been making mobile operating systems and placing them on phones for years; this is hardly new.
Phoronix covered that, and I think someone else did too. XBMC has got the Broadcom Crystal HD (I don't remember the exact model number(s), but they're all over eBay and logicsupply has some) working, and their current solution apparently works across linux, OSX, and windows.
Fingers crossed that it doesn't use some kind of horribly strange API. I was hoping it would be VA-API supportive, but it's alright...
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nzg0OQ
This would be marvellous for an HTPC with an Atom. I'm pretty sure the 230/N270 can already play N64 games with Mupen64Plus, 1964, and Project64, at full framerates (but custom textures and such would be another issue) so your gaming is also covered (let's face it, classic nintendo games were win. You might be able to pull off PS2 emulation with a 330 or its sucessor).