Bob Cringely's Predictions For 2005 440
An anonymous reader writes "Bob Cringley publishes his predictions for developments in the world of IT every year. His latest column contains his predictions for 2005 and a brief look back at his predictions for 2004."
Perfect for Idea Futures Exchange (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft Antispyware prediction is off the mark (Score:3, Interesting)
Affiliate programs (Score:5, Interesting)
4) The Recording Industries Association of America will continue to sue customers while their business slowly dissolves. The big threat here isn't file swapping, but affiliate programs like Apple's iTunes Affiliate Program that I am sure will be shortly copied by all the online music stores. These affiliate programs turn bloggers into shills and blogs into record stores, with the result that record company's last source of power -- marketing clout -- is taken away. This will take time, but it is the beginning of the end for old-style record companies.
I didn't realize iTunes had an affiliate program, but it seems like a logical step. Amazon's been doing this for a long time with music CDs, of course, as have other vendors. While viral marketing is definitely a good way to promote things, I don't see it reducing the record companies' marketing clout. I've posted before about how they used viral marketing to promote Christina Aguilera [bebeyond.com] when she was new. This is just another marketing avenue for them. But really, you still need to reach people who don't read blogs. People still watch TV. Still listen to the radio. Still read magazines and newspapers.
EricWhy is William Shatner's face on my All-Bran? [ericgiguere.com]
Re:Well that was a waste of time (Score:3, Interesting)
I myself just decided to really give Skype a second look - and things are really looking up as far as PC/real phone combos go.
VOIP: (Score:5, Interesting)
Expect some big hobbling of VOIP, at least for John. Q. Public.
Re:Microsoft Antispyware prediction is off the mar (Score:5, Interesting)
Giant Antispyware (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1743742,00.as p [eweek.com]
making predictions is hard... (Score:3, Interesting)
Worthless punting by Cringely - obvious predictions about obvious things, useless predictions about useless things. Just like a "Best of year X", everybody needs to do a "Predictions for year X+1" - and Cringely's predictions are as good as anyone else's (i.e. worthless).
Re:Perfect for Idea Futures Exchange (Score:2, Interesting)
Or maybe because there's no kind of real incentive to? If all he wanted was masturbatory 'propz' from a 'community' of strangers he will never meet, he'd open up a slashdot account and spell microsoft 'micro$oft'.
Cringley doesn't waste time on ideasphere not because he has nothing to say, but rather because he's an accomplished professional who is highly regarded in his field.
Re:Microsoft Antispyware prediction is off the mar (Score:5, Interesting)
This is where the majority of the "Wow, I found spyware!" factor comes from.
It also makes a bigger deal out of wiping files after the spyware has been nuked. AdAware and SpyBot leave the odd DLL, the odd this, the odd that lying about from time to time. The spyware is gone (It neither runs nor is capable of running) but Giant will claim this as an infection and bitch at the user that they have SPYWARE, when in fact they have an unusable dll stub in their windows directory.
This one too: (Score:5, Interesting)
Been predicted over and over again, but "major inroads"? Linux will grow gradually, but I can't see how he missed a glaring hole: Linux wireless support. My prediction for 2005 would have been wireless drivers for Linux that work just as easily as the built in networking drivers we have now. THEN you can start talking about major inroads, especially on laptops (which I think Linux is more suitable for than the Desktop).
Just my 2 cents.
Re:Microsoft Antispyware prediction is off the mar (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing that makes me sad is that I kind of like finding spyware on my system, just to make me feel like I'm a kind of savvy Internet user who does what she can to protect her computer, and the much-vaunted Microsoft adware utility didn't give me any satisfaction at all.
What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait a second, just hold everything... Microsoft release buggy, flawed software in a hurry to get the first to market advantage, and then the unscrupulous use those flaws to hijack the computers of hundreds of thousands world wide... then Microsoft PURCHASES THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE to apply band aids to their seeping wounds?
Maybe I'm going mad here, but since they wrote the damned OS in the first place, wouldn't they know best where to apply system patches etc., and wouldn't it be better and faster to get the people that originally developed the OS to fix it up?
But why would they when they can actually charge people for their patches now? Sure its free for now, but not for long, as the EULA states. Not to mention their OS authentication services (which you can turn off, if you buy that line), which their patches ostensibly never mentioned.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I know when someone is trying to pass off horse manure as honey...
What MS apps? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've really got to give Michael Roberts a lot of credit for his attempt to get the average user away from the grips of Microsoft, spam, viruses and malware. When my son's P4 HP Pavilion ground to a halt with malware, I loaned him an old PII-266 running Linspire 4.5 while I roto-rootered his Windows machine. He and his wife were able to start using it for surfing and e-mail with about 2 minutes training. It worked just fine with winmodem for dialup access, too. Now I'm having trouble getting it back from him.
I'm currently running SuSE 9.2 myself and have experience with RedHat, Fedora, Mandrake, Knoppix and Xandros as well as Linspire. No Linspire doesn't have as much geek appeal, but it's a reasonably good product IMHO. Oh, and no, I have no affiliation with Linspire [linspire.com] in any way other than as someone who's tried it.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Re:This one too: (Score:4, Interesting)
This has always been a chicken and egg situation with hardware support for Linux. Anything that is "fringe" appears to be poorly supported - the fringe is constantly moving though. I remember a time when you had to check a little carefully when buying network cards as Linux support on some chipsets was dodgy at best. The last network card I bought came complete with a Penguin logo on the box, right next to the Windows and Mac logos (and they kindly included OpenOffice.org and Gimp on the drivers CD). Video cards and sound cards also used to be the stuff of nightmares if you had anything that wasn't quite normal. These days they all just work with most modern distros.
So yes, for now wireless support is a little lacking, but as more people use Linux, and hence more people are interested in wireless support for Linux you'll see more kernel hackers writing drivers and more support from wireless manufacturers resulting in pretty broad, reliable wireless support on Linux.
Linux inroads to the desktop do have to come first though. Without desktop Linux making greater inroads there simply won't be enough demand for Linux wireless support to ensure it gets the kind of attention it needs. The desktop is coming, slowly, and I think Cringely is right, this year will see significant inroads - not a revolution, not even much of a dent in total marketshare, mostly just a change in perception of Linux into something that is viable on average desktops.
Have patience. While progress has been a little slow at times, the one thing is has been is steady. Sit back and look at Desktop Linux from 5 or 6 years ago. Try loading up a system with Redhat 6 (or even worse Redhat 5 or older). Things have actually come a remarkably long way in a relatively short time.
Jedidiah.
Re:This one too: (Score:2, Interesting)
to my surprise it ran perfect without a hitch. I have a Dell Latitude C400 with a Orinoco 80211.b mini-PCI card, I was able to connect to my WAP on the first try (no odd configuration), put my computer to sleep (closing the lid or pressing the button) as well as any other feature I had available in windows... I'd have to say it was the best thing I'd done to this laptop, the only problem was I couldn't get my browser working properly with Flash(I have no idea what the problem was, but it was probably simple and my fault) and since I need to at least view flash for my job I had to install windows, if I ever get another laptop I'll surely put FreeBSD on this again and use it as my personal system
Re:Microsoft Antispyware prediction is off the mar (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, I'll never use Spybot S&D's immunization feature, because that's spyware too.
Their software has lots of false positives, and their counter is very "bogus" in the way it counts, to make it seem like it finds more. Microsoft have barely touched it, so I can only attribute this to how bad Giant's anti-spyware is.
Did anyone notice the date on the article? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re: A $249 Mac? (Score:4, Interesting)
We might see that as early as next week with the rumored introduction of an el-cheapo Mac without a display. The price for that box is supposed to be $499, which would give customers a box with processor, disk, memory, and OS into which you plug your current display, keyboard, and mouse. Given that this sounds a lot like AMD's new Personal Internet Communicator, which will sell for $185, there is probably plenty of profit left for Apple in a $499 price. But what if they priced it at $399 or even $349? Now make it $249, where I calculate they'd be losing $100 per unit. At $100 per unit, how many little Macs could they sell if Jobs is willing to spend $1 billion? TEN MILLION and Apple suddenly becomes the world's number one PC company. Think of it as a non-mobile iPod with computing capability. Think of the music sales it could spawn. Think of the iPod sales it would hurt (zero, because of the lack of mobility). Think of the more expensive Mac sales it would hurt (zero, because a Mac loyalist would only be interested in using this box as an EXTRA computer they would otherwise not have bought). Think of the extra application sales it would generate and especially the OS upgrade sales, which alone could pay back that $100. Think of the impact it would have on Windows sales (minus 10 million units). And if it doesn't work, Steve will still have $5 billion in cash with no measurable negative impact on the company. I think he'll do it.
I found this prediction to be the most interesting, and maybe the closest to going out on a limb that Cringely gets. It also sounds like wishful thinking, like Cringely is trying to talk Jobs into it by convincing him this would be a smart move.
I can't see that Jobs would be willing to lose money on this venture, even if it is a smart move. It's more likely that maybe it would start out at $499 and then slowly drop in price over time.
Re:This one too: (Score:4, Interesting)
I was cleaning my room earlier this month and stumbled upon a pack of 5.25" floppies with data that goes back a WAY. Naturally, I wanted to see what was on the disks (and back them up on an almost as-ancient DDS device or CDRW). To my amazement, Windows XP refused to recognise the 5.25" half-height floppy OR the full-height 360K floppy. No such problems with Linux. Got an IBM PS/2 built around MCA bus and a SCSI or ESDI disk? Good luck with anything out of Redmond newer than WFW 3.11. And yet no problems with Linux - which has support for Microchannel, ESDI AND the quirky ESDI behavior found on my now-gone m55. I suppose I won't have to mention an old MFM drive OR non-IDE non-SCSI CD-ROM (yes, I needed a CDROM in a machine and this is all I had, rofl) - Linux 1, Windows 0. You don't even need to deal with obsolete or odd equipment to see that Linux kicks Windows where it hurts when it comes to hardware support. I have a PCI Adaptec UltraWide differential SCSI adapter that has NEVER worked under Windows XP. Never. Well, let me restate that. Windows refused to recognise the device most of the time. When it DID recognise it, it displayed the little exclamation sign next to the device name MOST of the time... and when it didn't, I received bluescreen STOP errors after light usage. NEVER had that problem with Linux. In fact, when I updated my PowerMac clone, I moved the adapter AND the 20Gb disk out of my Athlon machine, and it has no problems working with Linux
Re:Different issue (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a lot easier ways of doing this than hacking WiFi cards, such as buying $20 worth of parts from Radio Shack.
Transmitting on a certain frequency isn't as easy as sending a command to the hardware "transmit these bits on frequency X". The hardware only has a limited range of frequencies it can transmit on, and the antenna has to be matched to the frequency as well. Police, fire, etc use VHF (150MHz-ish), UHF (400MHz-ish), and 800MHz bands. Getting a 2.4GHz radio down to those frequencies may be possible but it would be a whole lot more work than building a radio from scratch. And at 200mW of transmit power, you're going to cause interference for what, a whole block and a half? I think not.
The reason hardware vendors don't want to release the source code is they (rightly or wrongly) think that with the source code, their chip can be reverse engineered and some fly-by-night company is going to copycat their product and cause them to lose sales. Same reason Nvidia and ATI only release binary drivers for their video cards.
Re:Microsoft Antispyware prediction is off the mar (Score:4, Interesting)
My predictions from last year (Score:3, Interesting)
# ipod and mini ipod will be hit by a wave of cheap replacements that both allow you to store/play music AND video. These will integrate with mobile phones (2G).
Well, there were loads of attempts to replace the ipod, and many had colour screens and video. However the integration with the mobile phone was only half hearted and virtually all failed to beat Apple on the sexiness front. Its strange really, the ipod ISN'T that great to use, but it has an x factor where the others don't. And others development methodologies seem to be unable to work in the right way to replicate what should be easy.
# Multi processor machines will begin to take off in the business environment. Single user, multi machine setups will smooth the rollout of Linux/OpenOffice and make people more productive.
Maybe not 2004, but the rise of the dual core and virtualisation as the way forward during this year has laid the groundwork. So in one sense it was a win since the future IS away from the single core. Nobody was there to do the obvious; place a dual processor box on the desktop for those that wanted to be ahead of the game.
# Appliances that take advantage of home broadband links and WiFi will take off.
Surprisingly little has come out in this domain, certainly in the mainstream. Market penetration is there, but not the new devices.
# Microsoft will get scared, and will run towards early launch of XBox 2 as a home machine. Failure will spell the fall of Microsoft.
I think microsoft ARE scared, and they will be launching the XBox2 earlier than the PS3, but they are still too slow to catch the wave. Given the horribly late delivery of Longhorn, with much less in the way of capability than promised - I do think we have seen the beginning of the fall of the house of Microsoft.
# The Apple House will be unveiled
Nope, Apple still think they are a computer company, rather than a consumer electronics company. The door which was open to them is slowly closing. Once someone works out how to replicate their design wins, they are toast. Very poor strategy choices from Jobs here.
What are the lessons? Well, its obvious that the industry has significantly slowed down. People aren't moving far or fast to develop new markets. The bean counters and marketing geeks are looking backward at what was, not at what could be. Ordinarily this would be a time of great opportunity, a time when those with a vision could create new startups and have the time to build big enough businesses. However with the extent and misuse of patents, large companies can sit on such innovation to the detriment of the market as a whole. That creates a degree of pent up tension in the market that has to resolve eventually. Will we see it in 2005? Probably not, but the offensive use of patents, coupled with lazy bean counting approaches to commerce will become a festering issue.
What will we see then?
The open source community will start to switch from reproduction of existing elements, to creation of new solutions, possibly involving hardware. The time is right for those with vision to tie up with those with skills to create new markets - it just needs an instigator.
Outsourcing is winning many new business friends, but as is usual with these director types, the distance and lack of control threatens their position ("what value are you really adding"). Therefore expect the multinationals to attempt to create greater levers of control into the outsourced functions - which will go down like a lead balloon with China.
China will come out with a DRM free, cheap, HDTV compatible replacement for BluRay and HD DVD. It will be a low cost addon to existing cheap DVD players. Movie companies will hate it, but the world isn't as it once was. Coupled with cracking of the protection around the new forma
Just because you want it to happen... (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because you want it to happen doesn't mean it's going to happen. Bob Cringely seems to quite often second guess major industry players and try to predict what they're going to do, but let me just ask you this one question:
Has Apple ever sold a computer and taken a loss on it?
Also, if Apple were to sell 10 million of these things, that's a $1 billion loss, but what if people love the cheap price and they "accidentally" sell 50 million of them? That's a $5 billion loss and now he's almost bankrupted the company. Of course, they could make it up on iPod sales, but they can't run the company on only iPod sales profits.
Good article, BTW.
Re:Different issue (Score:1, Interesting)
in order to be licensed FCC requires that hardware not to be easily modified to violate laws by a unlicensed end-user.
to get around this they put protection into the hardware's firmware. Cheaper manufacturers don't like to include a programmable flash module on the actual hardware in order to house the firmware, therefore you have to load it with the drivers.
Since this is special purpose for specific chipsets only there is no issue with GPL (morally) as long as the firmware themselves are distributed under a permissive redistribute license.
A example of a Wifi card that has EXCELENT GPL'd driver support is the cards supported by the Prism54.org drivers. They have seperate firmware that is loaded. but it still works great.
I just had a great idea (Score:3, Interesting)
VOIP unlimited calling plan: $19.99/mo
2-phone cell plan with unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes: $49.99/mo
Connect one cell to your computer and leave it at home; take the other with you. Use PBX software to rig up a bridge between your VOIP and the home cell. Use the home cell as a gateway between your roaming cell and the VOIP number, abusing the free mobile-to-mobile minutes.
Poof! Unlimited cellular anytime minutes to/from anywhere in the US, and low VOIP rates on all your international calls, for $69.98 per month. If you're a heavy user of anytime minutes or international calls, the savings could add up very fast. At least until the phone company figures out what you are doing...
Re: A $249 Mac? (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember hearing during the boom days that Apple was looking for someone to acquire or merge with but there wasn't any companies interested in any meaningful way, which isn't too surprising considering what a niche market Apple is in, the trick is that niche happens be a fairly well paying one. Apple gets to sell hardware at comfortable profit margins which they have repeatedly in the past said that they see no problem in doing and have no desire competing in the bargain segment of the market.
Cringley here seems to be arguing in market share for market share's sake, even though it would be a large market share in an area that Apple has never had any desire to woo. He also seems to have a couple gaps in their logic. The iTunes Music Store operates on relatively little profit margin, especially compared to other Apple Products, and is largely used to encourage sales on the much higher margin iPod, and the market the lower-priced Macs are being looked at are people that already own an iPod and probably are already purchasing songs on iTunes. Why take a loss on a product in hopes that they'll spend more money that they're already spending on iTunes anyways?
The lower priced mac is supposedly already going to come with a full suite of applications. Your usual iPhoto, iMovie, etc. and AppleWorks. Odds are they won't be buying many more applications from Apple to run on that mac, at which point you're hoping they'll spend the $120 a year on a OS Upgrade when they wouldn't even buy a Mac at a higher price in the first place.
But of course the better point is there's already people that can't wait to buy the new "headless" iMacs at $500. I would be surprised if they had problems selling all they could make at that price point. Going lower though would have a negative impact, it would set a lower profit margin that Apple would be expected to live up to in the future. It will hurt the sales of their current "low-end" products, namely the eMac, especially when they're selling a version sans-monitor that otherwise has the same hardware. If that's the case why go lower?
I suspect another reason (Score:1, Interesting)
ATI don't do it because
a) They are crap at drivers
b) They don't want the TV circuits to bypass macrovision
Neither of them want to OS driver info because we could then tell where their cheating optimisations are brought in.
Re:Who's Bob Cringely anyway? (Score:2, Interesting)
WiFi phones and hotspots (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmmm, Bob clearly doesn't remember the dismal failure of Rabbit in the UK (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2175804.st
Sorry Bob, you've got that one wrong...
Apple's market share (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd personally like to see this happen. I was at the local Apple store this weekend looking at Power Macs. I thought overnight about making a purchase (one just doesn't make impulse buys at $3000), and ultimately decided against buying one.
My reasons pretty much came down to: I didn't think it was a good value. I mean, I've paid less for a car!
I'm still interested in buying one, but maybe I'll look on eBay or buy one of their refurb models. I like the idea of a *nix system that has a GUI that actually works (sorry X.11, but I've never liked you).
Chip H.
Re: A $249 Mac? (Score:3, Interesting)
With an elegant plastic and brushed aluminum case, a simple GUI that Apple's known for, and a bright glowing Macintosh logo (how Chic!) a computer that controls your entire entertainment platform (Video/Audio/Web) and that sells in the $300-$500 range would be the biggest thing Apple could ever do.
They could even license the software out to other players in the home entertainment field. Imagine the kinds of touches Sony could put on it!