Tag Archives: prediction

commentary, update

prediction look back

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Time to look back at last year’s tech predictions. I did this at the half-way point, so let’s see what has changed since then.

  • AIX is still kickin’
  • HPUX hasn’t died yet 🙁
  • Solaris is still being clung-to by Oracle
  • HP split in half – count this a win
  • IBM has dropped from 162 to 138 per share – count this a win
  • IBM still doesn’t realize POWER is having death-throes, but it’s also not dead yet … so this was wrong
  • Z/OS has continued, though not growing as much as I hoped
  • cloud is less of a “thing” and more of a “thing” at the same time … this is a wash
  • cloud hosting providers are competing more on price .. but not as much as I’d expected
  • more “new” (ie less than 15 years old) tech and tools are making their ways into stodgy businesses and government agencies, but it’s painfully slow to watch
  • everyone is trying to be buzzword-compliant – this is a definite win
  • “real” 3D hasn’t arrived on cell phones (though the extra touch sensitivity of the new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus is cool
  • still counting the iPad Pro as a correct on my “MacBook Flex” prediction
  • no fat binary option with the latest OS X to support iOS and x86 hardware
  • no non-x86 Macs .. but the iPad Pro is close
  • Apple may or may not be working on developing a car … this is not true yet, but I think it will be “soon”
  • Tesla has added models, but nothing in the “everyday” category yet
  • SpaceX hasn’t sent anything to Venus or Mars, but they’ve done a bunch of other cool stuff
  • Square doesn’t have a bank option
  • no local competition against Uber and Lyft .. but they’re growing like crazy
  • more cities and regions are fast moving towards being “gigacities” .. not as many as I’d hoped, but it’s happening

In a week or two I’ll put out my predictions for 2016. But first, what are yours?

commentary, update

half year update: how are my predictions so far?

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Back in Feb, I published a list of tech-related predictions for 2015.

How’m I doing?

Let’s see ones that have happened (or are very close to have happened):

  • Itanium OEL’d
  • HP spinning-off business units – sorta, they’re splitting in half
  • IBM is losing value … but not as much as I predicted (yet)
  • cloud is still “a thing” – but it’s gradually becoming less of “a thing”
  • cloud hosting providers are in a price war – so I’ll count this as “kinda”
  • iPad 5 – it’s the iPad Pro, but has the expected resolution (5.6 megapixels)
  • I’m counting the iPad Pro, in conjunction with the keyboard accessory, the MacBook Flex – it’s not x86 (ARM A9X) .. but still iOS, not OS X – so I’m half right
  • Tesla has the Model S in a non-millionaire price point ($57k at the bottom end) .. but it’s not down to the Chevy Volt or Nissan Leaf yet :: then again, the Tesla gets substantially further on its charge than does the Volt or Leaf
  • more cities are entering the “gigacity” club – Salisbury NC just opened the 10-gigabit club
commentary

seems i’m not the only one who thinks apple could make cars

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Dallas News ran a story recently on Apple being positioned to be a car maker.

Their reasoning:

  1. Cash (~$180B)
  2. It’s “ultimately” mobile
  3. They have “car guys” already
  4. Strong retail network
  5. They’re already global

I think it more likely they’d buy an existing manufacturer, and then Apple-ify them – but the arguments are strong that an Apple Car will be here sooner rather than later.

commentary

my tech predictions for 2015

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I put these up as a comment on Cringely.com – but they deserve sharing here, too.

In no particular order:
– AIX EoL’d
– HP-UX retired
– Itanium EoL’d (perhaps on an accelerated schedule)
– Solaris truly open-sourced / abandoned by Oracle in favor of OEL
– HP spins-off more business units
– IBM loses 25-35% of its value – and spins-off / sells more business units to make Wall Street happy
– POWER continues to slow; IBM doesn’t understand it needs to stop putting so much money into it until all the engineers have been fired
– Z/OS systems grow dramatically – the only place IBM makes *more* money
– people finally realize “cloud” isn’t a “thing” – it’s just renting crap when you need it (perhaps from yourself (private cloud)) and giving it back when you don’t
– cloud hosting providers cut prices so things like AWS instances are no longer more expensive than dedicated hardware (see eg http://benmilleare.com/how-shaving-0-001s-from-a-function-saved-us-400-dollars)
– enough of the Old Guard hits retirement age that New School tech can finally make big inroads into stodgy businesses and government (automation, cloud, *aaS, etc)
– buzzword-compliance becomes necessary even for mom-and-pop shops who don’t have computers
– Android 6 brings native, “real” 3D to cell phones
– … and iOS 9 makes it look “good”
– there’s a new MacBook Flex that offers touchscreen, a fold-flat-reverse form factor, and 12 hours of battery life; the iPad 5 is the first 5K resolution tablet, with a full day of battery life
– Max OS 10.11, aka Denali, allows users to run iOS apps via a “fat binary” model (harking back to the shift to PowerPC from 68k and then again x86 from PowerPC)
– Apple announces the first non-x86 Macs (starting with the Flex)
– Apple buys a car company in cash – Porsche or Hyundai (Hyundai would be the smart move – get more electronics manufacturing capability in-house; spin-off heavy industry wing)
– Tesla introduces a model that non-millionaires can afford – bringing snazzy competition to the Volt price point
– SpaceX sends a mission to Venus, and another to Mars
– Square opens an online bank
– Uber and Lyft grow, win cases against taxi companies – and local competition pops-up all over the country
– several major metro areas across the US all enter the “gigacity” club
– … but it’s led with smaller metro areas (like Chattanooga has already done)

books, cool, insights, review

bursts by albert-lĂĄszlĂł barabĂĄsi

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Albert-LĂĄszlĂł BarabĂĄsi’s book “Bursts: The Hidden Patterns Behind Everything We Do, from Your E-mail to Bloody Crusades” is fascinating. In the same overall genre as Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers (review) – pop psychology and pop science – Bursts is a great read: bringing highly technical and dense topics to the masses in a manner that [apparently] doesn’t dumb it down, and never condescends to the reader.

The author is a professional researcher with deep experience in the fields he writes about – a huge plus. If you can wade through all the Hungarian names in a couple of the stories (it’s not that hard), you’ll find this a fantastic, enlightening read.

Reading this makes me want to go buy his other book, Linked.