Surviving 2009
Microsoft
Microsoft may or may not make a deal for Yahoo’s search service. What neither firm realizes yet is there is a better way to do searches with value advertising. It will be easier than what Google is doing and can produce more tangible results. Right now both firms are in the mind set of “competing with Google” instead of being creative and innovative. When they start thinking independently and start tuning into what the customer needs, Google will have some competition.
Apple
If Apple would port its Mac software (iWork, iLife, Final Cut, etc) to Windows it could quickly OWN the software market. Microsoft’s competitive advantage is not Windows — it is Office. Apple could take them out if it chose to. They won’t in 2009. But if the economic crisis really hurts Apple’s 2009 business, taking business away from Microsoft in 2010 could become a real consideration.
Android, Google’s phone software will suddenly become much better and will become the preferred software platform for the cell phone industry. Competitors of the iPhone will jump on the Android bandwagon and rush many new products to market in 2009. This will force AT&T and Apple into some uncomfortable decisions. Should AT&T be open to iPhone competitive products? Should Apple open up to other telco providers?
IBM
Thanks to the economic crisis, the IT industry will take a beating. To survive many IT providers will cut costs and services to the point of driving away customers. IBM is more diversified and has deeper financial reserves. In time customers will begin to return to IBM, but with some new expectations. They’ll be willing to pay more for help desk workers who speak understandably. They will want to see more people on site, more face-to-face support. This won’t stop the rush to offshore IT jobs. It will however signal a change in the direction of the pendulum and will force IT providers to rethink their business model.
So far IBM and most IT providers have cut support costs by shipping work offshore to lower paid workers. Someone in the industry will finally realize there is another way to cut — by using quality improvement techniques to reduce the occurrence of problems. This will become a game changer in the industry. Sadly IBM is too big, too bureaucratic, too set in its ways to catch this wave. What will happen instead is firms will start in-sourcing their IT again. Watch for this in the next 5 years.
Yahoo
Someone will buy a controlling interest in Yahoo. There will finally be a big house cleaning of Yahoo’s board and senior management. Then either of two things will happen. The new leadership will unlock Yahoo’s value and creativity — and Yahoo will soar again. Or, Yahoo will flounder and continue to become less relevant over time.
DTV
There will be problems with conversion to DTV. It will take months, perhaps a couple years for the problems to become apparent. The original NTSC system was basically an “open” system. All stations, satellite, and cable providers used it and it worked on every television made. With DTV content providers will attempt to introduce proprietary technology in an attempt to “lock in customers.” Only open-air transmissions will use DTV. Cable and satellite will use different and proprietary digital communications. Cable and satellite will start increasing their prices to the point where consumers start spending less. To make matters worse, the Internet will become a big provider of DTV content and it will also use “different” technology. At the same time ISP’s will implement bandwidth restrictions to thwart DTV content that is not their own. It won’t take long for the S consumer to get very upset with things.
Internet Centric devices
Theft of smart phones and Internet centric devices will become a big problem. Thieves will figure out how to steal identity information, raid bank accounts and investments, and so on. This will become a big problem.
Intel/AMD
Intel will launch an 8-core processor for the PC market. It’s price point will be too high for the consumer market and the product will languish — forcing Intel to lower the prices of its product line. Worse, Microsoft will limit its support of this chip to Vista. While we can expect Vista to continue to get better and better, the extra cost and hassle of Microsoft’s software, Office upgrades, etc will limit sales. Apple will swoop in and take more market share.
Obama
As a result of all the economic problems and scandals on Wall Street, I predict the Obama administration will propose a comprehensive financial monitoring system for the banking and investment community. It will be proposed in 2009 and will take a few years to implement. With it government agencies will have the means to thoroughly monitor and regulate the industry.
The Obama administration will move forward, as promised with a national program to computerize medical records. They will however, miss one of the greatest values of such an effort. Because of privacy concern, government ignorance of technology, etc the system will not have the ability for the medical industry to do data mining. With computerized records we will finally have the ability to spot drug interaction problems and perform research on the effectiveness of treatments. With data mining with patient privacy protection, our health care system can be greatly improved. We will miss that opportunity.
The Obama administration and/or Google will create a new Google Gov service. Like its news service, Google Gov will start tracking everything going on in Congress. Committee hearings, votes, discussion of bills and amendments will be captured by Google and made public within days. We will finally be able to see in real time what our elected leaders are really doing, who is influencing them, etc. This will be a game changer.
I’ve been picking up digital tv adapters for my Macs this month. Took me a few minutes research to figure out I needed a Clear QAM capable adapter to work with my cable service (Comcast). I can see how the various modulations and encodings the cable companies use will make a fast moving target for the hardware vendors and damn difficult for regular users like my Mom. Oh well, she’s on my tech support list.
Also, have dropped special movie channels as we have a couple Apple TV’s now, and they’re working pretty well. Took awhile to get all our movies ripped (ooh, bad user!) but with enough HD space, am pretty close to the StarTrek like “Computer, play xyz” from any room/system in the house. Cool!
Yes government in the past has has exhibited a certain ignorance of technology, but they do fund some great research, such as the Assured Information Sharing LifeCycle (AISL) out of the University of Maryland, which is working on problems such as secure framework for sharing information. This program has a state goal of potential use in healthcare. Check out the below presentation.
Privacy Preserving Distributed Data Mining: A Game-Theoretic Approach
http://bit.ly/b0Db
Bob,
Interestingly, though you are down on Microsoft in 2009, the thanksgiving/black friday edition of the PC Mag podcast recommended the XBox 360 (with Netflix) as a more compelling entertainment device than Wii or AppleTV. They felt that Apple and Nitendo’s offering were stale and in need of an update. Sony’s PlayStation 3 was a close second.
This being the Information Age and the Hypertexted Internet, I think it might improve your rapid fire predictions if you annotated the reasoning behind them. I read the glossy, glib summaries and I think, ‘what is he basing that on?’ The occasional link or three to corroborating intelligence would be appreciated.
My main prediction:
1. Chrome ships with Netbooks and price drops to $200 for Nov 2009
2. 2010: Chrome and Google Apps in Netbooks price is $150
3. 2011: Netbooks hit $100. Google provides them free to grade school students.
4. 2012: Netbooks free when purchased with integrated Google Apps services.
I’d love a column on how long it will take Netbooks to retrace the path of the calculator, and get to basically free. How will Microsoft survive that?
The Bush administration started the electronic medical record initiative. It’s good to hear the Obama admin will carry on/improve on the idea. If you want to see how it’s already being used, look at the VA (they’ve won numerous awards). You’d be surprised what they’ve done with “old” technology and what they’re doing going forward. You’d be surprised at how much research and data mining is going on there.
Request a tour of your nearest VA facility. You will be humbled by the dedication of the clinical staff and impressed with what they can do with a “legacy” system.
P.S. Thank you for your years of commentary and humble predictions
Bob,
I hope your new platform will mean more frequent posts! Thanks for the ideas.
Nice new page. Micro$oft needs to implement one of your old ideas and do a “Windows 360″ for the xbox, not so much for marketshare as to eventually reduce the reservoir of unpatched PCs that spread viruses so well. User-friendly linux and Apple could accomplish as much, but a healthy M$ reduces the possibility of a “Fat, dumb and happy ” Apple. A happy holiday to you and yours.
Thanks for your work, Bob. We’ll keep on reading this new URL from Spain.
Thanks for continuing your efforts. As a long time reader, turned listener (podcast), I would really appreciate you considering the continuation of your weekly podcast. Video may have killed the radio star, but your (and a couple other) podcasts killed the radio drones for me. I hope to hear the words — and voice — of Mr Cringely again soon.
Keep up the great work.
Here’s hoping 2009 is not quite as sucktacular as 2008… Welcome to the independent blogotubes!
So, is it back to delivering pizza, then? I’m excited about this new blog, but I’m wondering how you’ll make money now that PBS won’t be paying anymore …
Re: Google Gov
I ran across this on Lessig’s blog (http://lessig.org/blog/2008/12/apture.html) It’s pretty much exactly what you are describing. I’d love to hear Bob’s take on their implementation.
Greetings from New Mexico. Mrs. Cringley is everything I would have expected of you and more!
Thank you for switching to WordPress. I think its one of the most underrated OSS platforms on the planet. I’ve built an entire business around it from my living room couch by linking in Adobe’s much needed revamp of Dreamweaver to allow WYSIWYG with WordPress. The result? Better looking sites. Let me know if you want a custom and snazzy theme design! Would love to it for free! (oh and here’s the shameless plug: http://www.themedreamer.com)
Thanks for all your work on PBS. I’ve been reading your column for years, hopefully you will be writing to us for many, many more.
Hi Bob,
You and Dan Eran of RDM should merge your journalistic endeavours in one fell swoop. I read both of your columns almost on a daily habit and I see you guys delve into moderate-liberal politics of-so-often mixed with Apple-MS-centric tech news with passion. Eran being more on the Apple-MS squat than generic Google-MS-Yahoo nuggets you generate quite often.
You are on your free-wheeling days post PBS and rightfully so. Dan Eran’s RDM is a good site and he is a master of all things Mac (MS fiend nevertheless) and tech’s future – much like the Cringely I have been reading all these years.
You need, or will need in a hurry, to monetize your Cringely brand of web fronts – including this one. We loyal and endearing fans will not mind a few ads here and there – one caveat, no FLV ads that make us schizophrenic and no PHISHING ads taking us to who-knows-where. We want a clean Cringely site that we can support for the long term.
Besides that your ’09 predictions are very interesting. I would like for some of them to bear fruit especially Obama’s promises and Yahoo! on the upswing. Mind you, a monopolistic Google is not what you think it would be – think your cyber privacy of all things. Not fun at all.
BTW, I too am a liberal-moderate guy that loves tech just as much as you and Dan Eran do. Hope to see you at CES 2009.
Hello Bob and Lovely Lady,
I am very relieved to find that your other life as a techno pundit continues in the blogowhatever.
Just one comment about your predictions / how to survive 2009 blog. You predict Apple will challenge MS Office. My prediction (based on very sophisticated guessing I assure you) is Apple will not do much in the way of word processing or databases or spreadsheets. Their killed apps are connectivity with flair and personal “new media” authoring.
However, Google will lead the attack on MS Office with its host of productivity applications, all free, and all on the internets. Google wants your content … so they can manage it for you. Only a bit of what is written / drafted gets online where they can get at it. That stuff offline is a valuable, desired resource (if not exactly a commodity.)
But the real, longterm challenge for MS Office is the erosion of Enterprise use by a generational change in Personal use. For the casual, personal user, Office is no longer as necessary. Okay, maybe the occasional resume? But technology is beginning to change how we communicate, for better or worse. That a change would occur was expected. It does look like it is starting to become a reality.
Remember the “cool” factor when new fonts were released for Word? You could mimic your favorite 17th century font style. Now, the printed book is quickly losing its predominance as the standard for text communication. I am very interested is seeing how methods and habits of communicating will change and be changed.
Phil
ps
One comment concerning the photograph on this new blog site … Bob, you are my hero.
“I predict the Obama administration will propose a comprehensive financial monitoring system for the banking and investment community”
See the blog of Mark Cuban of Dell on this:
http://blogmaverick.com/2008/12/16/the-sec-madoff-and-xbrl/
Transparency and automated monitoring via the web!
The SEC is phasing it in, but it should apply to the government too, or first!
Bob,
Good site and pleased to see you are still writing in one form or another.
2009 predictions for IBM are 2 years too late.
Among IBMs LEAN program goals is standard design, build and maintain of IT systems, sensibly enough. This is supposed to produce stable systems with reduced standard support.
It also drives away the creative types meaning novel and better systems will not occur easily or rapidly if and when required.
Other outsourcers are trying similar approaches.
It may also upset customers who often want customisation, sometimes, “just because” IMNSHO.
On government regulation: Who will regulate the regulators. To have any chance of success the G-Men have to be magically more virtuous than those of us in the private sector. Yet the reason most people go into government is that they are incompetents yearning for virtually total job security. Does that sound like a recipe for trueness of character? BLURRRRT…sorry wrong!
Speaking of Google needing competition, will we again limp through the year with this half-blind search engine? When will someone get off their ass and eat Google’s lunch?
What about the world’s most popular search engine am I ranting about? It’s total inability to perform “complex” searches.
Two simple examples:
1) What on earth is the “S consumer” mentioned in your article? Put that phrase into Google – with quotes to force an exact match – and see if you find anything useful.
2) Curious about any new Macintosh models that might introduced at MacWorld in January? Go to Google’s advanced search page. Put the phrase “new Macintosh” into Google, with quotes to force an exact match, and select the Date filter “past month” to exclude old stuff. Not only are the 2,210 results not in date order, but you cannot re-sort them to be. Oh, yes, even for the first page results, once you follow the links, many of these articles are hopelessly out of date. (Reminiscences about 1990′s IIsi, anyone?)
I am mortified.
I did NOT mean to type “It’s”, but “Its”.
Hey Cringe, an edit function for posters would be a welcome addition!
[...] Published December 29, 2008 Uncategorized Thought I’d ring in the New Year with some tech prophesy for 2009, including volleys between Microsoft and Apple as well as snuggling between Google and the Obama [...]
That “Google Gov” service sounds a lot like http://TheyWorkForYou.com/ , a UK service that tracks politicians. It’s run by a non-commercial group called MySociety.
Thanks to share this. Would be great if i can do that also
cell phone tracking systems…
.) Some individuals or companies have abused the TrackBack feature to insert spam links on some blogs (see sping). As a result, TrackBack…
I must say, I could not agree with you in 100%, but that’s just my opinion, which indeed could be very wrong.
p.s. You have a very good template . Where have you got it from?
I noticed that this is not the first time you mention the topic. Why have you decided to write about it again?
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.
Thanks! That is a fine post. It sounds interesting.
My ipod touch 1G is our main iPod, Personal digital assistant and far more, plus has happen to be ever since I acquired it. It also work on the latest iPod system software, and any application I need it to run. I’m working with it to post this remark at the moment. Iwould say it really is a much more compared to simply an “excellent hobbyist system” — it is really an exceptional iPod
This article was a nice read! I couldn’t have said things better myself.
Fascinating… I have to agree this site is providing a great resource. Keep it up. Maegan Walters
Google has grown to big for their own britches. It is time for people to start using other search engines and show the mighty G that they cannot control the internet because of greed.
I only want to post quick hi and want to say thanks for this very useful letter. I keep trying to find through the web for some kind of enlightened like this, or at least a website. That coveredwhat i looked in to
Thanks a lot.
I want to say kindly hello and want to say appriciate for this very useful article. I keep trying to find through the web for some kind of enlightenedpost. like that, or at least a website. That coveredwhat i looked in to
Thanks a lot.
Download to see
Here is the 2nd moment I have encountered your blog post in the last few weeks. Seems as if I ought to take a note of it.
Extremely helpful post. Great info for anyone interested inthis sort of thing. I can’t wait to read more from you.
Thank you for your reading, and i’m glad that you like what you find here, which definitely cheers me up to keep on working.
I only want to post quick hi and want to say thanks for this very useful letter. I keep trying to find through the web for some kind of enlightened like this, or at least a website. That coveredwhat i looked in to
Thanks a lot.cheap VPS