Dvorak Looks Back At 'Another Crappy Tech Year'

twitter writes "The Vista Death Watch is PC Magazine's most popular column. That is just one of many items in Dvorak's review of yet another 'disappointing' year in Technology. 'I was not a fan of 2007. It was another crappy tech year--just the latest in a string of bad years dating back to 2000. Let's see some of the highlights and lowlights in no particular order ... The whopper for Intel, though, was its Viiv initiative, which was a dog from the get-go and was dropped--finally. Somewhere along the way, Intel bought into the Silicon Valley crock that CPUs were not important any more. What a laugh. Luckily for the company, it refocused on processor chips and found itself in the driver's seat once again. Of course, Intel will fall off the path again, of that you can be sure.'"

He sounds bitter...

[kaiwai]

But can you honestly blame him? unless you're one of those energy drink sipping geek who bounces around the office like some sort of hyped up 8 year old who has just been given a new toy - I've yet to have a single year when I've looked back and thought, "wow, that was one hell of year" then look at awe over all the great products released that year.

1) The iPhone delivered only to the US and using GSM 2G - and people are hyping it? I'm looking around New Zealand; at the bottom of the world, sitting at the crevice of the ass crack when it comes to technology availability, and yet, I'm seeing far superior smart phones being delivered, CDMA and 3G GSM.

2) The PS3 - Sony just don't get it. They didn't get it with BetaMax, they didn't get it with MiniDisc, and now they're repeating the same mistake with BluRay - apart from the mouth frothing PS3 zealots/fanboys - PS3 and BluRay have been a resounding failure.

3) Windows Vista has only made inroads because of it being the default installation on new computers; the better view is this; look at the rate at which Apple's Mac sales are growing compared to the rest of the industry. If Windows Vista was such a resounding success, Apple's market share should be staying static of shrinking. Neither have happened.

I could go on and on, but you get the basic idea; nothing to do with 'maturity' - just people willing to tolerate technology thats 'good enough' rather than expecting the 'fuck thats awesome!' factor.

Minidisc?

[soilheart]

they didn't get it with MiniDisc

What's wrong with MiniDisc? Before the advent of mp3-players MiniDisc was the way to to for either the ones with style (who didn't want to run around with a large "portable" CD-player) or the amateur artists (easy digital recording options).
All the siblings in my family (from my 9 year older sister down to me) have had a minidisc (and my sister still uses it for easy piano recording).

The thing that actually killed MiniDisc was the late adoption of native mp3 playback on Hi-MD's though... A great mistake by Sony.

Re:He seems conflicted

[Kreigaffe]

Nothing that came out this year was really innovative, though.

the iPhone? Uh, ok. Mainstream. That just means someone took an already existing idea and slapped a lot of marketing and PR behind it... but the actual IDEA behind the iPhone is at least a decade old.
Hybrids are a wash through and through. They're neat.. and nothing special.
and VoIP? Uhm. 11 years ago there were several popular free internet telephone services.. OK, so you had to connect to the internet to use them, and OK, back in that day and age most everybody connected via modem, BUT.. it was there. As a teenager I was able to talk to many people all across the country with no long distance charges. THAT was cool. VoIP now? Merely an extention of that, made easier due to the proliferation of cable/dsl, and oh now you have to pay for it but hey you can use your regular phone now so I guess that's OK.

Honestly the only really innovative and new thing I can bring to mind is the Wii -- a successful console, wildly successful, that uses a non-traditional control mechanism? Now that's a miracle.

Well, what did we get?

[Animats]

• In hardware, the real action is in memory. Cost per bit for flash memory and disk drives continued to drop rapidly.
• In CPUs, we have two futures - shared memory multiprocessors, and GPU-like massively parallel machines. The GPU-like devices have turned out to be more useful than expected. Non-shared-memory multiprocessors with small memories, like the Cell, weren't too useful. This isn't surprising; that idea was a dud in supercomputers, where it was tried about ten times over the last 20 years.
• The big screen problem has finally been solved. It took fifty years, but the TV you can hang on the wall is finally the standard product at an easily affordable price.
• The Blu-Ray vs. HD controversy has stalemated. Both are losing. Something better than both may come along before either achieves significant market penetration.
• Batteries improved a little in energy density, but they're blowing up more. We may be reaching a limit there, as weight reduction reduces the safety margins. Fuel cell products remained vaporware.
• Networking is somewhat stable; most consumers have enough bandwidth right now. This may change as the demand to download HDTV-sized content increases. There's more action in the phone side of networking, as video to the phone becomes widespread.
• Desktop computing didn't really change much in 2007.

THUS

[Ibiwan]

I propose another topic of discussion, specifically a question raised by my dad after I read him several of the current comments:

What individual piece of tech do you use that you've used for the longest period of time?

For reference, he's got a computer he's happy has lasted 6 years, and some woodworking tools he's hoping will last 50.

Not such a bad year for F/OSS

[walterbyrd]

1) OLPC starts shipping; sales under G1G1 program exceed 150,000 units (number does not include sales to governments).

2) Dell ships Ubuntu loaded PCs.

3) Other computer manufacturers follow Dell's lead in preinstalling Linux on inexpensive laptops; Wal-Mart sells out of the 10,000 units of the model they carry in less than two weeks

4) Samba/Microsoft agreement defangs Microsoft's patent FUD

5) MS-Vista bombs. After years of delays, MS-Vista finally debuts. Even those kind to Microsoft admit that Vista is bloated and buggy. Adoption is slow.The public demanded XP be installed by default. This is the first time there was such a major backlash against a major Microsoft release.

6) Even after shameless bribing and ballot stuffing, Microsoft loses the first round in the OOXML approval process.

7) GPLv3 approved. This should have put an end to the Microsoft/Novell scam. But it didn't, the Microsoft/Novell scam was "grandfathered" in.

8) Patent troll Acacia sues Redhat, just two days after two top Microsoft executives leave to join Acacia.

9) After more than four years, Federal Judge Dale Kimball *finally* rules that The SCO Group does not own UNIX. The plain language of TSG's contract with Novell made it perfectly obvious that TSG did not own UNIX, and Kimball could have ruled on this years earlier. Considering that The SCO Group never had any evidence what-so-ever, no standing, and no prima-facia case, the length of time required for this ruling is, in my opinion, inexcusable. This ruling has not stopped The SCO Group from claiming they own UNIX - maybe in another four years. Still, this is some progress.

10)ASUS eee PC.

Re:Moan, moan, moan

[demachina]

I think Dvorak's problem is he is a Microsoft fan boy and since Vista was a resounding failure that colors his entire outlook on the world.

He obviously glosses over the Wii which was a huge success and changed the demographics of the game industry. I read recently retirement homes are buying Wii's in increasing numbers because it offers games seniors enjoy playing, encourages modest amounts of exercise and social interaction.

The iPhone is a bit overhyped but it certainly did cause tremors in the mobile space if not an earthquake. It has pushed all the players in the mobile space to work on usability and provide full browser support on mobile devices. When someone builds one with high speed access and low monthly fees it certainly will change how people live. It will also be interesting if Andorid can match it with a more open software stack. A full up mobile browser with Flash and video, GPS, location aware apps, high and unlimited bandwidth and low monthly fees would be awesome.

HDTV has finally started to happen. Unfortunately most of the programming is still crap but it sure is nice that we are finally ditching a 50 year old video standard for something that sucks a lot less. HDTV will accelerate convergence of PC and TV in the living room.

Apple iTunes isn't exactly new in 2007 but it is completely changing the music business and either it or a counterpart will change the video on demand business. It remains to be seen how it will shake out, but if the Internet destroys the monopoly hold a few brain dead companies have on the music industry and we actually get good music again that would be awesome.

Unfortunately Dvorak is sitting there staring at his PC running Vista and life does kind of suck for him. But he is a dinosaur and hasn't realized technology is moving past the Windows PC.

Re:slashdoters

[cgenman]

Great bits of technology this year:

Consoles finally hit their strides. This was the best year for videogames in a very, very long time.

The iPhone was released. Even if this particular phone has issues, suddenly everyone is talking about phone interfaces and features that aren't mired in 1993.

VOIP is really taking off. Sure, people are shutting it down, but it is doing well.

Amazon MP3 sales.

Re:He seems conflicted

[7-Vodka]

You seem to be confused. One could easily slaughter a great many cows in the US and keep their excrement out of the product. It would just cost more.

Also, there are treatments that kill 100% of e.coli, like radiation for example. The reason they are not allowed is not safety but because the beef industry would just use it as an excuses to get away with even cheaper methods of slaughter which leave even more excrement in your beef since even pure excrement can be consumed if properly irradiated.

It's a tough choice: make food safer by irradiation but eat more excrement.

Re:Life's good

[Targon]

The problem goes back to the number of people who are willing to start a new tech company. Back in 2000(before the stock market version of the tech crash), we were seeing a peak in the number of companies with some interesting ideas that attempted to come out with new products. In many cases, people NEED that venture money to develop the product they have in mind since they can't make it themselves, so with venture money being harder to come by after the crash of 2000, these ideas just don't get developed.

If the government were to actually encourage technology instead of treating technology like a necessary evil, we might see a new boom in the tech industry, and with it more great technologies. Governments all around the world have been encouraging technology, helping with fiber deployments, and getting high speed connections into homes. The government here in the USA has done so little to encourage the growth of technology that the USA is falling behind.

There are still some very cool things going on when it comes to technology, the problem is that the culture here in the USA has shifted from "we can start a company and turn our idea into a product" to "we do what we need to do just to survive". The consolidations we see with mergers and such are being caused by the economy stagnating, inflation being ahead of paychecks, and a feeling that it will be a long time before things improve.

So, when the ATTITUDE changes to a "we can do it", then we will see more new and great products being released. Until then, we will watch as the rest of the world makes progress and we see no progress here at home.