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Tales from... THE FUTURE! (revisited)

Nathan Strum

Entry posted by Nathan Strum

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So, it's January. Funny, it seems like it was January just a few weeks ago.

 

The MacWorld Expo (Apple's big annual show-and-tell) is coming up in a couple of days. They almost always announce some new product at it. The question is - what will they release this year? (That would be 2008, by the way. I don't know about you, but I find that rather hard to believe.)

 

With that, I'll once again display my incredible wealth of ignorance, by making Technology Predictions for 2008. But first, it's time to look back on some of my past predictions, and see how I did.

 

Apple Predictions 2007:

  • Apple will announce a deal bringing the Beatles to their iTunes Store, during last years' SuperBowl. Wrong. Didn't happen. But EMI was the first to release DRM-free music through iTunes, and all of the Beatles' have their solo work now available through iTunes, so this seems inevitable.
  • Apple is going to announce a new, widescreen iPod, with touch-screen interface. Basically, the iPhone, without all of the phone functionality, and with a hard drive. Partially right. Well, I thought it might show up as early as the SuperBowl, but it did show up. It just didn't have the hard drive. (But it should.)
  • Expected OS X 10.5 to ship May or June. Wrong. It shipped in October.
  • Eight-core processor Mac Pros. Right. Not only did this happen, but now that's the standard configuration. I have one in my office at work, and it's extremely fast. At least for multiprocessor-aware applications.
  • Adobe: They'd ship Universal versions of their applications. Right. They did, although they shipped them earlier than I expected them to, since I thought they'd come out when OS X 10.5 did (or rather, Apple shipped 10.5 later than I expected).
  • Adobe's apps would be optimized to use Apple's Core Animation to accelerate everything. Wrong. Didn't happen. Probably next time.
  • Hoped against hope that Illustrator CS3 would include backwards-compatibility with FreeHand files. Right. Unbelievably, this actually happened. You can open FreeHand files in Illustrator, although the results are a little dicey. But it's better than nothing.
  • Apple will release a new version of Final Cut Studio, including major updates to Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, and Motion. These will all take advantage of the core graphics in 10.5, and offer major speed improvements, but generally minor feature bumps otherwise. Partially right. Yawn. The updates were all minor, except for a slew of nice features in Soundtrack Pro, and the addition of 3D effects in Motion. Final Cut added a few updates, but it was far from a major overhaul. DVD Studio Pro has almost nothing new in it, but I suspect it's because they're waiting for the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD dust to settle.
  • iLife '07 and iWorks '07 will ship. These will likewise be accelerated for 10.5, and in fact, will require it. iWorks will finally include some spreadsheet functionality, and hopefully regain some of the basic database tools that AppleWorks used to have. Partially right. They both shipped (but are called '08 instead of '07), but don't require 10.5. There's a spreadsheet program (and a very nice one) but no database.
  • I gave the following percentages for these predictions: Eight-core Mac Pro - 85%. New Adobe software: Photoshop - 90%, Illustrator - 75%, InDesign - 80%, After Effects (by September) - 65%. Illustrator w/ FreeHand compatibility - 5%. New Final Cut Studio - 95%. Full Blu-Ray authoring support - 45%. Some Blu-Ray support - 70%. New iLife and iWorks - 85%. Partially right. Did pretty good, for the most part.
  • New MacBook Pros by the end of Summer - an 80% chance of happening. A super-lightweight MacBook - 35%. Partially right. MacBook Pros were updated during the Summer, but still used the old form factor. Lightweight MacBooks aren't here... yet.
  • AppleTV will become more useful and TiVo-like. But there's only a 20% of this. Wrong. Still hasn't happened. But I was right in that it was a long-shot.

Apple products that I predicted wouldn't happen in 2007:

  • Apple-branded high-definition TVs. Right. Still not here, and still won't happen.
  • A tablet computer. Right. Not yet.
  • Apple officially supporting Windows on their computers. Right. Still nope. You can run it, but they don't offer support for it.
  • Apple allowing OS X to run on generic PCs. Right. Still nope, and never will.

And now...

Apple predictions for '08:

  • Apple will release a lightweight MacBook. Most likely at MacWorld Expo. Rumor has it that it will use flash memory for storage. I think it will use a combination of flash memory (for ultra-low power consumption) and a hard drive for capacity, and will shuffle files back and forth as it needs to, transparent to the user. Also rumored is that it will have an external optical drive to cut down on space, but I'm not sure I buy into that. That seems a little too inelegant for Apple. Rather, if there's no internal optical drive, there will be some sort of docking station to hook it up to a desktop Mac (or larger notebook) to piggy-back that machine's optical drive. Basically, you'll sync it up to a host computer, the way you would with an iPod (or the Apple TV). (Addendum: If the flash memory is 64 GB or higher, there will be no hard drive in it.)
  • Apple will release a touch-screen tablet computer, with a stand/docking station that basically turns it into an iMac (with the addition of a wireless keyboard and mouse). I don't expect to see this until Summer, but it could be Steve Jobs' "one more thing" at MWExpo on Tuesday. Axiotron will decide to go out of business shortly thereafter.
  • Some major update of the Apple TV. I don't think Apple has given up on this yet. I'm hoping they'll add DVR capabilities to it, but I'm not holding my breath. I expect it to be more of a movie/TV show player for stuff you buy (or rent) through iTunes. The difference will be - you can rent movies directly through it from the comfort of your sofa.
  • Updated iPhone. 3G is already a given, but I expect to see one with GPS built-in, too. Hopefully. But not until Summer.
  • Blu-Ray support will finally show up this Summer at WWDC. With it, will come either an update to DVD Studio Pro, or an all new app for authoring Blu-Ray discs. More on Blu-Ray predictions right about ... now.

HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray, and the next-gen console wars predictions

Okay, I'm reaching back almost two years for these:

  • The PS3 would be the dominant console, and the XBox 360 would be second place. Wrong. The extra time on the market, price difference, and Halo 3 all gave Microsoft a big lead over the PS3. This despite a lot of quality control problems with the 360.
  • The Wii might climb over Microsoft to take second place. Sort-of right. The Wii did pass Microsoft, but it has now taken over first place.
  • Blu-Ray will beat out HD-DVD. Not yet, but soon. See below.

And finally...

HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray, and the next-gen console wars predictions for 2008:

  • The Wii will increase its lead - if it can keep good software coming. People will get bored playing tennis in their living room after awhile.
  • The PS3 will remain a distant third unless two things happen:
    1. Blu-Ray is declared the winner, and the format wars end. Then people will be actively looking for a Blu-Ray player. But only if:
    2. Sony slashes the price of the PS3. I expect to see a slim-line, lower cost PS3, but not until the end of 2009. Sony needs to cut their prices this Summer, to be competitive with the XBox 360. If they were really smart, they'd undercut the 360 by $50. Timing the price cut with the release of Gran Turismo 5 wouldn't hurt, either.

    • Blu-Ray will win over HD-DVD. The other week (right before CES) Warner announced it would be dropping HD-DVD, in favor of Blu-Ray. The latest news suggests that the last two major studios - Paramount and Universal - may also abandon HD-DVD, since together they represent only about 30% of the potential content. Paramount reportedly has an escape clause in its exclusivity deal with the HD-DVD consortium, that lets them out if Warner drops out. Also, some reports indicate that Universal's deal has already expired. Things look bad for HD-DVD, since right after the Warner announcement, the HD-DVD backers postponed, then outright canceled their CES keynote presentation. HD-DVD is on life-support, and the plug is about to be pulled. Sales for HD-DVD were reportedly 1/3 of Blu-Ray sales, and with more studios jumping ship, retail stores aren't going to want to waste shelf space on a handful of movies for a dying format. I expect HD-DVD to be gone by the end of Summer. Completely gone. Remember how fast Divx DVDs vanished? Look for the same thing. HD-DVD had an uphill battle all the way. Here are some other factors contributing to its demise:
      1. Sony was determined to win. At any cost. Toshiba underestimated them, and their ability to partner with (or bully) other manufacturers and movie studios. Toshiba is not a movie studio. They didn't have as much credibility with them.
      2. HD-DVD: the acronym. Guess what? Average consumers are confused by acronyms. Consumers hate being confused by acronyms. There are a lot of them floating around right now. HDTV, HDV, HD-DVD, HDMI, DVD... but only one Blu-Ray. At first, I thought Sony was stupid to call it that. But what it does, is distance Blu-Ray from everything else. It removes a layer of confusion, by being different. I understood this most clearly when talking to my parents about the hi-def formats. They knew what Blu-Ray was. HD-DVD got lost in amongst other acronyms. Sony still has some work to do though - my folks didn't think their current DVDs would play on a Blu-Ray player.
      3. Toshiba was (for all intents and purposes) the only company making HD-DVD players. This scares consumers. There's strength in numbers. Toshiba is a well-known company - but it's not Sony, Pioneer, Panasonic, Philips, Sharp, Samsung and LG.

    • Lawsuits galore. After HD-DVD disappears, expect people to start suing retailers, movie studios and Toshiba, for having sold them an obsolete technology. Movie studios (or retailers) will probably offer a coupon for $5 off of Blu-Ray movies, for every HD-DVD turned in, just to appease people and boost sales. The lawsuits will all be thrown out, because hey - that's technology, kiddies.

Well, that's enough of that. As early as Tuesday, we'll start seeing just how wrong one person can be! :roll:

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SpiceWare

A number of people are buying the PS3 just to use as a blu-ray player as it's one of the best players.

 

I've not heard of any supply issues with the 360.

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Nathan Strum

Toshiba is officially "reviewing" whether or not (ie. "when") it will drop HD-DVD. Some news sites say it could be as early as tomorrow that they make the announcement, and that they'd phase it out completely by the end of March.

 

Regarding the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player: supposedly, the PS3 is considered the best Blu-Ray player out there. Some of the early stand-alone players shipped prior to the final specs being hammered out, and lack the capability of upgrading their firmware. So future discs could be (at least partially) incompatible with those early players. The PS3 however, is fully compliant (or upgradeable) to the final Blu-Ray specs.

 

I think Sony would do really well right now, to cut $50 off the price. According to the March '08 issue of Consumer Reports, about 1/3 of American households now have a high-def TV. I find that number to be pretty incredible. But even if it's anywhere close to that, there are going to be a lot of people looking for high-def content. Still, for my money, there just aren't enough movies in the format to justify it. Bring out the original Star Wars in high-def, and then we'll talk. Blu-Ray still needs a killer app, in my opinion.

 

I watched the Daytona 500 in high-def yesterday, and really had a hard time going back to watching standard def content afterwards. I only have a handful of high-def channels, but can't afford anything else right now. But I'm at least thinking about it.

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SpiceWare

I've been an HD snob for the past few years, if it's not HD it has to be really peek my interest for me to watch it, and odds are I won't know about a show as I don't watch the SD channels. Right now the only SD shows in my DVR list are Battlestar Galactica and Dr. Who - both of which are currently between seasons.

 

When I first got my HDTV, back in 2001, Time Warner had 9 channels of HD while DirecTV had 2 - and one of those was Pay-Per-View. One top of that the cable box was $5 a month vs. $800 purchase for the DirecTV box(plus whatever the wider dish cost). That was when I switched back to cable. I think I'm now up to 30 HD channels. DirecTV has more channels now, but I know they'd been downgrading the 1920x1080 signal to 1280x1080 to fit in more channels.

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Nathan Strum

I'm thinking of looking into AT&T's "U-Verse" fiber optic package, but the phone part of it isn't available here yet. Verizon's FiOS isn't available here at all. I'd really like to dump the cable company.

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SpiceWare

I have Verizon for my phone service, but FiOS hasn't made it to my area yet(can't even get DSL from them). My neighbor works for Verizon, I ask him every 2-3 months if he's heard anything about FiOS for our area, but nothing so far.

 

I'd love to get FiOS, especially since Comcast has started dicking around with the connection speeds. Per a speed check I just ran, I get 22,034 kbps down and 1771 kbps up; however, after about 1-2 minutes of video conferencing with my folks or my brother, my outbound connection gets throttled to 30 kbps(yep, slower than dialup) and they can no longer hear or see me.

 

Others have noticed it too - http://www.iconnectdots.com/ctd/2007/12/comcast-no-choi.html

 

Definitely not Comcastic...

 

I have found if I limit iChat's bandwidth usage we can chat for longer before the throttling starts, but that's still unacceptable.

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supercat
I've been an HD snob for the past few years, if it's not HD it has to be really peek my interest for me to watch it, and odds are I won't know about a show as I don't watch the SD channels. Right now the only SD shows in my DVR list are Battlestar Galactica and Dr. Who - both of which are currently between seasons.

 

I have an HD set, but SD is fine for me (using a $120 DVD recorder). VHF reception for the CBS affiliate is dodgy at best, though.

 

BTW, is there any easy way to edit the 'anamorphic' flag on DVD+RW titles? My DVD recorder never sets it, even when it should, which means playback on a normal TV set gets stretched. Further, if my DVD did set it properly, there would be times I'd want to clear it since some stations stretch out 4:3 material to fill the 16:9 frame generally ugh, though if I'm recording to DVD it would actually be nicer to have the transmission stretch out the material and then show it on a 4:3 screen than have blank borders on the side and then additional borders on the top and bottom when viewed 4:3.

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Nathan Strum

Universal announced they're now backing Blu-Ray instead of HD-DVD.

 

Well... DUH! :lolblue:

 

With any luck though, maybe we'll finally see a remastered version of WarGames.

 

Just waiting now for Paramount to make the second most "obvious press release of the week".

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DaveD

HD DVD was actually a client of ours @ work. During the holiday break we were working many late hours and coming in over vacation break to get a ton of things ready for CES. Exhibits, displays, signage, wearables & premiums, you name it. But given all the work that went into it and the general attitude and "vibe" in the weeks prior to CES, I was kind of surprised that defeat was so readily accepted. No announcements, no debates, no "but we've got...", etc. I suppose when you're licked, you're licked but still. Dramatic shift from one week to the next.

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Nathan Strum

IGN (of all places) actually has a fairly insightful article regarding the death of HD-DVD. They point out, and rightly so, that the consumers didn't make the choice, as much as the manufacturers and studios did. They got tired of waiting for fickle consumers to choose a dominant format.

 

I expected HD-DVD to take months to die off ("end of Summer"). I wouldn't have guessed it would go this fast. It would be really interesting to find out just what happened during this whole format war - how much money changed hands, and between whom. From what I've read, hundreds of millions of dollars were passed around from Sony and Toshiba (and allegedly Microsoft) to the various studios as incentive to go with one format over the other.

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Nathan Strum

Well, the 3G iPhone (with GPS) came out today. I was wrong about it having a 32 GB model though (which I'd posted in the comments). Still, it's an impressive update, especially since they managed to cut the price, add GPS, increase the battery life, and fix the headphone jack. (Okay... that last point is minor, but it does show they listen to some degree.)

 

Still no tablet computer or Blu-Ray yet. I think the tablet may not happen after all, since Apple is focusing those technologies on the iPhone/iPod Touch which really are tablet computers now. Besides that, a slightly larger iPhone isn't going to fit in a pocket, and a laptop-sized one isn't going to be a full-fledged laptop (ie, no keyboard, except a virtual one) which would restrict it to being a niche product. I'm still hoping to see Blu-Ray support at some point, but maybe Apple is waiting for cheaper/more readily available drives and the cost of blank media to come down.

 

Anyway, I'm seriously considering an iPhone now. I've got over a month to think about it though, since they aren't shipping until mid-July.

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DaveD
Anyway, I'm seriously considering an iPhone now. I've got over a month to think about it though, since they aren't shipping until mid-July.

 

I'm one of the last "no cell phone" holdouts on the planet I think. I never really saw a need for them. However with the addition of GPS this looks like a really cool device. A perfect geocaching companion and a whole lot cheaper than a dedicated GPS device. Hmmm...

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Nathan Strum

Yeah - the GPS is a major selling point for me, too. It'd be a great thing to have on vacations.

 

I don't have a cell phone either, and even if I owned one, I'd keep it switched off the whole time, since I don't want to be on the end of an electronic leash. Also they're really annoying when people answer them right in the middle of a conversation, or dinner, or whatever. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to slap one out of someone's hand - "Excuse me... you were talking to ME!"

 

But there are times when I would like to be able to make a call (and good luck finding pay phones anymore), and some of the other features (e-mail in particular) could be very handy when traveling. I wouldn't have to lug a laptop around.

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batari

I'm happy with my old iPhone, as the EDGE speed is usually acceptable and the faux-GPS is better than nothing, but the one feature I really want is copy and paste. It's annoying that Apple did not give you any way to do that, when any Windows Mobile phone has been able to do that for years.

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Nathan Strum
I'm happy with my old iPhone, as the EDGE speed is usually acceptable and the faux-GPS is better than nothing, but the one feature I really want is copy and paste. It's annoying that Apple did not give you any way to do that, when any Windows Mobile phone has been able to do that for years.

I'd be surprised if that didn't show up in the software update.

 

There is a workaround of sorts though. But it's hardly elegant.

 

Most people I know who have an iPhone are really happy with them. One even called it "life-changing", but I'm not sure I'd go quite that far. Maybe "life enhancing".

 

The keynote is up on Apple's site now. Some of those medical apps are pretty amazing. It's really a pretty cool little computing platform.

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batari
I'm happy with my old iPhone, as the EDGE speed is usually acceptable and the faux-GPS is better than nothing, but the one feature I really want is copy and paste. It's annoying that Apple did not give you any way to do that, when any Windows Mobile phone has been able to do that for years.

I'd be surprised if that didn't show up in the software update.

 

There is a workaround of sorts though. But it's hardly elegant.

 

Most people I know who have an iPhone are really happy with them. One even called it "life-changing", but I'm not sure I'd go quite that far. Maybe "life enhancing".

 

The keynote is up on Apple's site now. Some of those medical apps are pretty amazing. It's really a pretty cool little computing platform.

Not life-changing for me. My requirement for that is it needs to be as useful as a microwave oven - i.e. you realize how much you rely on it when it's not there. Well, I've went several days without using it at all, and have left it at home a few times (not intentionally) but didn't miss it as much as I missed the microwave when the magnetron failed :)

 

Tivo, on the other hand, is comparable to a microwave :D

 

I'll try the copy-and-paste app, however.

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