2007 IT Predictions - How did I do?
January 3, 2008I made several predictions for IT in my blog for 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:
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 
