A Posteriori

Since I did so well (60%) in 2007, I figure it’s time for another shot.

1) Cheap Linux PC’s will take 10% of the U.S. PC market, mostly at the expense of Windows.

2) Java will become 100% open source, both Java 7 and Java 6 (with compensations for encumberences). Most Linux distros will come with OpenJDK loaded by default in place GCJ and GNU Classpath.

3) The iPhone will handily surpasse Steve Jobs’ goal of 1% of the mobile phone market.

4) A fully implemented version of Soy Latte will be added to the OpenJDK ports, along with a complete Swing implementation as other developers contribute to Landon Fuller’s work.

5) Microsoft will completely scrap Windows Genuine Advantage completely out of fear of Mac and Linux adaption, but this does not reverse Windows’ fortunes.

6) Apple and RIAA labels will agree on selling DRM-free music on iTunes in exchange for limited pricing flexibility, which Apple will cave in on. The only remaining non-DRM holdout, Sony, will start selling its digital music DRM-free.

7) Apple and Google will join forces to clean up at the upcoming U.S. 700 Mhz wireless auction, putting massive pressure on U.S. telcos and cell phone service providers to become more competitive.

8) Client-side Java will finally take off, with the help of the Consumer JRE in the Java 6 N Update. Swing and Applets become the new vanguards of rich GUI applications and rich internet applications for non-media business applications that require rich GUI functionality. Flex market share, as well as AJAX toolkits such as Ext JS will decline as a result.

9) Apple open source WebKit will gain feature parity with Firefox, and in some cases, surpass it. Firefox mobile efforts will fail to gain traction.

10) OpenSolaris’s Project Indiana will be complete and will surpass Ubuntu in reliability, hardware support, and ease of use. Features such as the superior Solaris kernel, DTrace and ZFS will make it a favourite among developers.

I made several predictions for IT in my blog for 2007:

IT Predictions: 2007

Let’s review how I did:

1) The Wii outsells both the PS3 and XBox 360 in 2007 (each, not combined).

According to site http://www.vgchartz.com, the Wii sold 19.04 million consoles, compared to 16.02 million for the XBox 360.

Verdict: Narrow win.

2) Apple makes a major push for the gaming market, releasing their own killer app game that does for Macs what Halo did for the XBox.

Apple has made virtually no gaming announcements aside from its WWDC announcement that EA would write games to the Cider Wine implementation for OS X, resulting in simultaneous Windows-Mac game releases. Still, the verdict is still out on whether EA has succeeded in this endeavour.

Verdict: Loss.

3) One major record label will give up on selling only DRM’d music, and will license the sale of their content in MP3 format.

This is one is in the bag. Not only did EMI start selling DRM-free digital music downlaods, but so did Universal and Warner Music (albeit the last two specifically refused to sell that DRM-free music on iTunes).

Verdict: Overwhealming victory.

4) Leopard will allow multiple OS’s to run real-time, and enable fast switching between those OS’s.

Totally wrong. Apple never made such an announcement, having left the dirty work of Windows emulation to Parallels and VMWare.

Verdict: Crushing defeat.

5) Linux GUI developers start abandoning GTK and Qt in favour of OpenJDK Swing to do their development, at the same time submitting fixes for Swing to run better on Linux.

Aside from Trolltech announcing a Java-Qt compatibility layer, there has been no such Swing adoption by the open source community. This may be due to the unexpected development that Sun was not able to open source 100% of the Java API’s by the end of 2007.

Verdict: Total loss.

6) Firefox development stagnates even further.

This is debatable. The Firefox 3 beta came out, but it was well behind schedule. Still, I’ll declare victory on the basis of the fact that Firefox 3 is not yet production ready, as some were saying at the begin of 2007.

Verdict: Narrow win.

7) Consumers reject HD-DVD and BluRay.

According to this NY Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/business/31dvd.html?ex=1356757200&en=5fd426e7a62710f4&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Consumers are thus far not flocking to buy Blu-Ray or HD-DVD players. Things may change in 2008, but this is outside the scope of this prediction.

Verdict: Victory.

8) Thin clients finally start taking off due to SOX and regulatory compliance/security/cost issues, with Microsoft as a possible vendor.

As far as I can tell, this has not yet happened.

Verdict: Clear loss.

9) At least one Linux distro tries to completely imitate OS X.

It’s not much of a distro, but it is Linux and it does try to imitate OS X:

http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Environment/Window-Managers/Etoile-23982.shtml

Verdict: Narrow Victory.

10) Vista sees no uptake significantly beyond new users being forced to buy it for new PC’s and any corporation that needs its DRM features.

I have to admit this one was easy, but I was right.

http://www.news.com/Running-the-numbers-on-Vista/2100-1016_3-6207375.html

Verdict: Dishonourable victory.

Total record:

6/10 — 60% success rate.

I narrowly avoided losing overall. Still, as a rookie “IT forecaster”, I think I did pretty well