It seems Cringely is slipping. Though I would not want to task myself with so hard a task as predicting where this industry is headed.
I read his predictions for this year. Most of it makes sense, but I am still left with a couple of questions.
- This one is easy: Apple will eventually announce all the products they were supposed to have announced at this week’s MacWorld show, but didn’t…
This one makes sense. Jobs already announced the entire product line to transition and PVR style Minis and Plasmas make a lot of sense if Apple does not want to concede the home media market to Windows Media Center.
- The reason Apple changed its MacWorld announcements at the last minute was because the company sued little Burst.com a few days before…
I don’t know much about Burst. Worth investigating?
- But Apple WILL make some inroads against Microsoft.…
Like Cringely I do think that Intel OS X will be made to run on generic x86 boxes but I do not see Apple making any kind of official move to support this movement. It seems very unApple-ish.
- 2006 is a building year for Google.…
Sounds plausible.
- Still no good news for Sun.…
Java is still going unstoppable but yeah Sun is pretty much dead.
- IBM will get in trouble with its customers as it becomes clear that Sam Palmisano didn’t learn much…
Don’t know about this one.
- Microsoft still sucks at security and users suffer for it.…
The only kinds of users suffering are those that are not running on Macs.
His prediction that XP will get another service pack seems off to me. Getting a service pack out of the door taks a lot of effort for Microsoft and they seem so close to finishing Vista now that it would not make much sense diverting their resources.
Another option of course would be that Vista adoption is so slow at first that Microsoft will be forced to make a service pack for their users still on XP. Not dxoing that would alienate a lot of users with potentially high costs.
- Sony’s PS3 hits the market with a dearth of games&hellip
The PSP could be big but it is technologically so closed to be nearly useless for the non-hacker. Getting free (ad-paid) content would help a lot though.
- WiMax is still 12 months away…
Unfortunately he’s probably right here. It still remains to be seen how and when we will get EVDO here in the Netherlands or how long WiFi hotspot access prices will be at their current ludicrous heights (prices for T-mobile and prices for KPN).
- Embedded devices will hurt Media Center PC sales, which will continue to be pitiful.
Agree.
- TiVO will be bought by another company.
Agree. Yahoo?
- Intel is spending $2 billion to re-brand itself as a consumer electronics company…
I don’t really get this one.
- Google WON’T go head-to-head with Microsoft for a desktop operating system or a cheap PC.
No, they won’t have to because they don’t care really about what kind of hardware or OS you run on.
- EBay stumbles with Skype…
Agree. With Asterisk, Gizmo and libjingle out in the open, it is the question how long something like Skype can last.
- Whatever we expect from Google might just as easily appear from Yahoo…
I’m inclined to believe this, but I’m also still waiting for signs of it.
Well, that was it. Next year we’ll see who was right.
