Last January I posted my 2006 predictions. I thought it would be fun to take a peek and see how well I did this last year. Lets see here…
"1 - A new super-virus will be released on the Internet that will wreak havoc on Windows based systems. This virus will be bad enough to bring entire legs of the Internet to a crawl. We’re not talking about your average every-day virus, we’re talking about a massive virus the likes of which we have never seen and will cost corporate America billions."
Nope. Didn’t happen. While there were many viruses released in 2006, nothing along the lines of a Nimda or Code Red came out. There were a couple of scares here and there, but it was a fairly calm year on the sea of the Internet. I would have to say that this prediction was wrong.
"2 - BluRay and HD DVDs will finally hit the market with much fanfare, but at a very steep price. While the early adopters will all grab on to a format, most consumers will ignore this until there is more HD content available."
I think I got this one right. At $500 to $1,500 for a blue laser based HD player, the prices are still too steep for the general consumer and the war is too confusing. It will probably be a while before we see mass adoption of either of these formats.
"3 - Windows Vista will actually be released."
I was right and wrong on this one. Vista has reached RTM and it is possible to get a "final" copy of Vista on MSDN; however, general consumers can’t get their hands on it. Since it’s not actually available to the mass market, I’m going to have to say I was wrong on this one. I really thought that Microsoft was going to get Vista to market in 2006 and they didn’t.
"4 - Apple will release a HDTV living room solution. Maybe based on iTunes, maybe not, this system will allow users to download HDTV shows and movies legally and play them on their Macintosh via their Front Row application. Just plug your Intel based Mac Mini into a HDTV, and download away. While iTunes allows you to download videos today, they are only 320×240, we’re talking 1080i or 720p+ quality here."
I’m not sure what to make of this. Apple did increase the quality of the iTunes Store video downloads to about 480p. This is not HD resolution but it scales very nicely. I can plug a MacMini into an HDTV and download 720p or 1080p content from TE and play it on the screen, but not shows or movies. Apple also announced the codenamed iTV product but has yet to release it. I think the fundemental idea that Apple would enter the living room didn’t happen that much, but they are moving to HDesq video downloads. So while close, I would say I was about a year too early on this one.
"5 - Free WiFi hotspots will start cropping up everywhere as retail owners find this is an easy way to get repeat business."
It happened in Minneapolis and a couple areas in California. I think this is going slowly, but I am starting to see a lot more WiFi hotspots. This item didn’t make the news too much, but I do believe it came true.
"6 - To compete with Windows Mobile 5, Palm will release an all new Treo, above and beyond the Treo 700w, based on a Linux version of the Palm OS. This will be a completely new system that will give Windows Mobile a run for its money; however, the momentum behind Windows Mobile 5 will continue to climb."
HA! Silly me thinking that Access and Palm could get along enough to make this happen. We did see the Treo 680 which is based on an OLDER version of Palm OS with a new home screen, but that’s about it. Yawn. It’s unfortunate that I was wrong on this, it seems to me Palm is slowly loosing it grasp on innovation.
"7 - Intel will produce a 64 bit chip that actually beats the x86 AMD systems in price, performance and power (as in lower power consumption). I know, it’s a long shot, but you never know."
Holy cow I was right! AMD fanboys aside, the Core 2 Duo line kicks butt and isn’t nearly as powr hungry as older Intel products. I would say that not only did this come true, AMD is playing catchup for the first time in years.
"8 - A VoIP war will be raged between Microsoft, eBay/Skype, Google/AOL, and the traditional VoIP providers such as Vonage. We will see a lot of innovative features, the least of which is video. Expect to start getting WebEx type functionality in these applications."
Once again I was a year too early. It’s Apple’s iChat program in 10.5 that will be taking VoIP to the next level. I was banking on SightSpeed or Gizmo Project, but both of these projects let me down in the innovation category. I guess we’ll all just follow Apple’s lead as usual.
"9 - Applications will continue to move to the web, try Writely, Bloglines and Yahoo Mail and they will become more integrated - think OnlineOffice - so that users can access their data from their Handhelds, Tabnotes, and Media Center PC’s: The web will fundamentally disrupt every industry, while we have heard this before, it will truly happen in Web 2.0."
This is happening and ongoing. Google released Google Docs and Spreadsheets and Microsoft started to release their Live platform. I got this one right, but it will be a multi-year process, so it’s not complete yet.
"10 - After Technology Evangelist offers HDTV coverage of CES, the traffic to this site will become so large that we will be forced to upgrade to a new pimped out XServe from Apple. Maybe even two clustered together".
Yes and no. What we really ended up doing is moving first to 1and1.com, but after they had an extended outage recently with no good explanation (or apology) we moved to Media Temple’s Grid network which has been serving us well so far. So yes, we moved to a grid network, no it’s not on an Apple XServe cluster… yet…
How did this year shap up for you? Were your expectations and predictions on mark? What do you expect for 2007?
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