Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technologies with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everybody,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette. I
Speaker 1: am the tech editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as usual as he was just
Speaker 1: about a year ago, is Jonathan Strickland, a senior writer.
Speaker 1: I predict that this podcast will go smoothly. Well, let's
Speaker 1: see how that prediction did. About a year ago, we
Speaker 1: were actually uh talking about our predictions for two thousand
Speaker 1: nine and what we thought was going to happen in
Speaker 1: technology over the course of a year. That was kind
Speaker 1: of surprising because you know, that was the end of
Speaker 1: our first It wasn't even a full year we've been podcasting. Nope,
Speaker 1: it's been about six months. So who knew that we
Speaker 1: would would still be here? Yeah, of I know most
Speaker 1: of our listeners in Well, yeah, we thought we would
Speaker 1: look over the list of predictions we made and see
Speaker 1: how we did. Um, so let's I'm gonna start with
Speaker 1: one of Chris's predictions. Uh, we actually made up this
Speaker 1: list and uh we kind of did a cursory glance
Speaker 1: and gave a yea or nay as to whether or
Speaker 1: not each one had come true. But I think that
Speaker 1: some of these are open for debate. So but the
Speaker 1: first one I don't think is which was that Chris
Speaker 1: predicted that Steve Jobs would name a successor at Apple. Uh.
Speaker 1: He he kind of waffled on whether or not Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs would actually step down officially from Apple. And because
Speaker 1: remember this was back when we knew that Jobs was
Speaker 1: something was going on with his health, he had not
Speaker 1: quite he had not officially made his um announcement about
Speaker 1: taking leave. I think at that point, ye, it was
Speaker 1: a long time. Yeah, it does right, well, I mean
Speaker 1: because it was we knew something was up. We knew
Speaker 1: something was up. There were a lot of there's a
Speaker 1: lot of conjecture at the time that he was possibly
Speaker 1: having a remission with his cancer issues that he had
Speaker 1: had years before. And so Chris predicted that Steve Jobs would,
Speaker 1: in order to uh to be diligent in his duties
Speaker 1: as CEO of Apple, name a successor, which has not happened.
Speaker 1: So that's that's an X in that column. Let me
Speaker 1: just make a big X, all right, you know, you
Speaker 1: didn't have to use the red marker for that. I
Speaker 1: know I didn't have to. Um, okay, well we'll stick
Speaker 1: with Apple. And one of Jonathan's the uh he predicted
Speaker 1: that the Mac desktop computer would go away and it's
Speaker 1: still there. Yes it is. Yeah, that that one I was. Um,
Speaker 1: I was not right. There are new Imax out and
Speaker 1: they are beautiful and uh well, honestly though you had
Speaker 1: you had reasonable reason to believe that, because I mean
Speaker 1: netbooks and notebooks and all kinds of mobile computing devices,
Speaker 1: is even smartphones. They've been hot, flying off the shelves,
Speaker 1: and one might think that, you know, Apple, which is
Speaker 1: known for doing such crazy things as eliminating the floppy
Speaker 1: disk drive FROMMA, might go so far as to get
Speaker 1: rid of the desktop machine entirely. And I think, I think, um,
Speaker 1: I think people have made a good point and that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of legitimate reasons why you might
Speaker 1: want a larger desktop unit as opposed to a laptop
Speaker 1: or other mobile computing device, including things like if you're
Speaker 1: doing video editing or or any kind of media work. Um,
Speaker 1: you probably want a nice large screen to work with,
Speaker 1: and laptops just don't have that. I mean, once you
Speaker 1: get to a point where you have a nice large
Speaker 1: screen with a laptop, it's not no longer a laptop.
Speaker 1: It's just too big. And while you can use some
Speaker 1: devices where you can maybe hook up a second screen
Speaker 1: to a laptop or other mobile computing device, uh that's
Speaker 1: not ideal really. I mean, you could plug it into
Speaker 1: a dock and run a nice big monitor off of it.
Speaker 1: But the thing is a lot of the uh uh,
Speaker 1: the processors that you see in desktop computers are just
Speaker 1: take too much power um to use in a laptop
Speaker 1: computer when you're not hooked up to a power source. Um.
Speaker 1: So if you're out on the road. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that people expect is to have
Speaker 1: a nice long battery life. Well, if you have a
Speaker 1: super heavy duty processor and it that's the battery life's
Speaker 1: kind of just you know, it's gonna drop dramatically because
Speaker 1: that processor is using so much power. So I think
Speaker 1: that that niche is still around for a little while longer,
Speaker 1: although I I you know, I think laptops are out
Speaker 1: selling you know, both Windows and Mac laptops are out
Speaker 1: selling the desktops these days. Yeah, so we'll we'll keep
Speaker 1: an eye on it. I mean, I don't think the
Speaker 1: desktop form factor is going away quite as quickly as
Speaker 1: I imagined back a year ago. Uh, let's move to
Speaker 1: the next one. Um, hey, we gotta we got a
Speaker 1: ringer here. So Chris predicted that there would be rumors
Speaker 1: about the next gadget from Apple sometime in two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: Now the softball. But but no, not not entirely a softball,
Speaker 1: because we're not talking about an update to a gadget, right,
Speaker 1: We're not talking about a new kind of iPhone or whatever.
Speaker 1: We're talking about a totally new gadget. And you nailed
Speaker 1: it because the Apple tablet became the rumor of two
Speaker 1: thousand nine. Uh, and I mean the non existent Apple tablet, right,
Speaker 1: it may very well carry over to be the rumor
Speaker 1: of two thousand ten. The way we're going now, I mean,
Speaker 1: you keep on hearing things about people saying, oh, the
Speaker 1: Apple tablet has been delayed. Look, Apple never announced the tablet.
Speaker 1: At least as as of the recording of this podcast,
Speaker 1: Apple has not announced any plans for a tablet device. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence, circumstantial evidence that points to
Speaker 1: them developing a tablet. But if you haven't announced it,
Speaker 1: and you haven't given a release date. You can't say
Speaker 1: that the project has been delayed from an official standpoint
Speaker 1: because there was no date to overshoot. So I think, uh,
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna have to keep our eyes open
Speaker 1: see if this rumored device shows up. But yep, that's
Speaker 1: a win in your column. So let me just put
Speaker 1: a big X mark next to this. Wow, I guess
Speaker 1: I should have chosen a different shape and color because
Speaker 1: this is gonna be really confusing when I'm all done. Alright, Um,
Speaker 1: so you actually get an X here for no Apple netbook.
Speaker 1: There is not an Apple netbook, right, which again not
Speaker 1: a huge prediction, because Apple executives had gone so far
Speaker 1: as to specifically say they were not interested in developing
Speaker 1: a netbook because for them to develop a netbook that
Speaker 1: would meet the price point of your average netbooks, it
Speaker 1: would require them to, uh to not live up to
Speaker 1: their standards that they had established for their products, and
Speaker 1: so there was no way they could develop a product
Speaker 1: at that price point that was not a piece of crap.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much a direct quote. Alright. Alright, so net
Speaker 1: we had a web office launches and goes head to
Speaker 1: head with Google Docs, mm hmmm, which where does that go?
Speaker 1: Because there is a version of Office for the web,
Speaker 1: but it's not out. Yeah, it's still in beta. So
Speaker 1: I would say this is gray. So I'm gonna mark
Speaker 1: this with a big red X right here and there
Speaker 1: we go. Three red x is so far. So they
Speaker 1: they mean different things. But that's okay. I will remember
Speaker 1: that when we get to the end. A little concerned
Speaker 1: about this style. Um, oh, here's here's a win for you. Um,
Speaker 1: you've got to win. This is a partial win. Well okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Windows seven it's out, and you predicted last year that
Speaker 1: it was going to have a Microsoft was gonna have
Speaker 1: a hard time convincing people to adopt it after um
Speaker 1: the uh success. It hadn't with Windows Vista. It hung
Speaker 1: in the initial don't. It's a very very Douglas Adams
Speaker 1: kind of way of putting it now So so really,
Speaker 1: what I was saying was that because Windows Vista was
Speaker 1: considered by many people to be a failure, it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily even even through the whole I would say, through
Speaker 1: the whole life cycle of the product, many people, not
Speaker 1: necessarily Microsoft, but other people would consider the product to
Speaker 1: be a failure. And um, and I said that that
Speaker 1: would make people more reluctant to adopt Windows seven because
Speaker 1: it's an unknown quantity. Well, the reviews for Windows seven
Speaker 1: have been very positive. People have rushed out to purchase
Speaker 1: new Windows seven computers, So in that case, I was
Speaker 1: not correct. But what I was really thinking, i'd like
Speaker 1: to think since a year later and I can't really remember,
Speaker 1: but I was really thinking about things like corporations, you know,
Speaker 1: big companies, would they would they adopt Windows seven machines
Speaker 1: or would they wait and stick stick with Windows XP
Speaker 1: machines until they absolutely had to upgrade? And that's seems
Speaker 1: to be the case. It seems like a lot of
Speaker 1: corporations are have learned a lesson from Windows Vista and
Speaker 1: have decided that, you know, they've got legacy systems that
Speaker 1: run on XP that may not run on Windows seven,
Speaker 1: and they want to They don't want to get burned,
Speaker 1: so they want to make sure that Windows seven is
Speaker 1: a stable environment before moving to it, which is why
Speaker 1: I consider this a partial win. I think, uh, I
Speaker 1: think from a consumer standpoint, no, there's been no no
Speaker 1: perception problem with Windows seven, But from from a uh
Speaker 1: like a commercial standpoint with businesses, I think there still is. Yeah. Actually, uh,
Speaker 1: I have worked for a company that was large enough
Speaker 1: to the point where they were reluctant to install the
Speaker 1: next version of the operating system until they felt it
Speaker 1: was complete. For example, when an XP came out, they
Speaker 1: decided to upgrade two Windows two thousand from so because
Speaker 1: they wanted about a mistake. Well to see that's thing
Speaker 1: they had all finally all the patches in place, did it?
Speaker 1: But Windows two thousand was awful? Well okay, well you
Speaker 1: have that. I mean, they were very large companies are
Speaker 1: often reluctant to move up as a result. And there's
Speaker 1: there's another factor that plays into it too, the recession,
Speaker 1: because people don't want to spend the money to upgrade
Speaker 1: the software when XP is doing okay, sure them. So
Speaker 1: that that I mean, there has been. It hasn't been
Speaker 1: selling as well as Microsoft had hoped, at least after
Speaker 1: that first initial rush, although I think it's been somewhat steady. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's as bad as everybody thought it
Speaker 1: was gonna be, either a lot of people were saying
Speaker 1: it was going to be you know anyway, all right,
Speaker 1: so let's move on. You predicted that the Xbox seven
Speaker 1: twenty would be announced at E three ha ha, it
Speaker 1: was not not correct. X Microsoft has not mentioned anything
Speaker 1: about the successor to the Xbox three sixty. Uh in fact,
Speaker 1: project and at all, which is the next really big
Speaker 1: innovative can troll interface for the Xbox three sixty That
Speaker 1: was that was being marketed specifically as a three sixty product,
Speaker 1: which kind of suggests that they have plans for for
Speaker 1: a few more years of three sixty life before moving
Speaker 1: on to the next system, although not necessarily could turn
Speaker 1: out the natal really is the first step to a
Speaker 1: news system, but we'll have to keep our eyes open.
Speaker 1: Next okay, next, um oh here, look another checkbox in
Speaker 1: the wind column. I'll just put a big check but
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah, okay. The Google OS is out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the web based operating system. I said that there would
Speaker 1: Google would come out with a web based operating system.
Speaker 1: And now we have Chromos. Now, granted, Chromos is not
Speaker 1: available for purchase until next year, so but you know
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely and there's developer copies. If you're a developer,
Speaker 1: you can get your hands on one, and you can
Speaker 1: you can create applications for the Chromos. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not it's not on any commercial netbooks yet, which that's
Speaker 1: the main market for that our netbooks. So you said
Speaker 1: that would be a quiet year for Nintendo. At most
Speaker 1: you said there'd be a new peripheral announced. I think
Speaker 1: that's pretty safe to say that it was a pretty
Speaker 1: quiet year for Nintendo. Another softball except I mean, we
Speaker 1: even saw that WE sales for the first time lagged
Speaker 1: behind PS three sales in September. Yeah, so I mean
Speaker 1: that's big news for Nintendo. Not good news, but it
Speaker 1: definitely was a quiet year. I if you talk about peripherals,
Speaker 1: I would say that maybe the WE Motion Plus it's
Speaker 1: probably the closest to a new peripheral. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: mean anything big. Of course, they had the the balance board,
Speaker 1: which was the last one, and that was for the
Speaker 1: end of last year because and then plus was really
Speaker 1: more of an enhancement than an actual new perisher. Alright,
Speaker 1: moving on, unless you have that you know, new uh
Speaker 1: golf club thing that you clip on for the tyger
Speaker 1: Woods game chase after the SUV. Al Right, so let's
Speaker 1: move on. Um oh, look, another win for Jonathan another
Speaker 1: big check mark. He predicted that phone sales would take off, well,
Speaker 1: actually would would push Android up to new heights and hey,
Speaker 1: look a bunch of Android phones. Yeah. So when Android
Speaker 1: first came out in the United States, it was only
Speaker 1: available on one hand set for the longest time. It's
Speaker 1: the HTCG one, which I am looking at right now
Speaker 1: because that happens to be my phone. Well, now there
Speaker 1: are a whole bunch of them. Yeah, and once it
Speaker 1: once it moved to Horizon, I was thinking, Okay, now
Speaker 1: Android really come on, come into its own because Verizon
Speaker 1: is in the United States the largest cell phone carrier.
Speaker 1: So yeah, hey, what do you know a prediction that
Speaker 1: I got spot on. Now. Granted, the only other option
Speaker 1: at that point would have been for Android to kind
Speaker 1: of wither and die, which I guess could have also happened,
Speaker 1: but fortunately did not. So moving on, let's see here
Speaker 1: um work on the PS four and the end of
Speaker 1: PS three. So I guess this is that Sony would
Speaker 1: announce that the successor to the PS three was in
Speaker 1: the works and that the they were going to slowly
Speaker 1: phase out the PS three. No, no, I think you
Speaker 1: actually pointed out that I was being a little uh uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: To to end, the PSS said that that they they
Speaker 1: see a ten year lifespan in their consoles, which yeah,
Speaker 1: which means that we're halfway through. We still have another
Speaker 1: half to go. Okay, but they did uh end of
Speaker 1: life the older style PS three in favor of the
Speaker 1: new slimmer mark. I will, I will put a medium
Speaker 1: sized X mark. I'm just trying to salvage I'm still
Speaker 1: wrong and there we go. Okay, so oh well, UM,
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is sort of a maybe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one I make or break year for Blue ray,
Speaker 1: which is what's been for the last several years. What
Speaker 1: what again? This was gonna be one of those where
Speaker 1: I thought that two thousand nine would be the year
Speaker 1: when either Blue ray sales would finally start picking up
Speaker 1: and really give life to the format, or they would
Speaker 1: they would just falter so much that people would start
Speaker 1: to companies would start to abandon the format, like movie
Speaker 1: studios would just stop producing disks because the profit margin
Speaker 1: wouldn't be great enough. Um. I'd say that there's been
Speaker 1: incremental improvement, especially once the PS three's price dropped. I
Speaker 1: think that's really helped Blue ray quite a bit. But
Speaker 1: I don't think it's not the meteoric rise that I
Speaker 1: was thinking would need to happen in two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna say that that's just gonna be a
Speaker 1: small check mark right here, all right, and let's say, oh,
Speaker 1: that means I gotta read the next one. So the
Speaker 1: Linux community will make a big move in operating system adoption. Well,
Speaker 1: we saw some pretty high profile Linux distributions come out,
Speaker 1: and people who are Linux users really like them. I
Speaker 1: just don't know how many people adopted Linux. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: still think, Um, you know, honestly, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people are confused. People who are who aren't really
Speaker 1: tech eas are a little bit confused by all the
Speaker 1: different distributions. I mean, they don't necessarily understand works. There's
Speaker 1: usually just one current version of any particular operating system,
Speaker 1: like if you if you talk about mac os, yes
Speaker 1: there are multiple versions, but there's only one current version,
Speaker 1: like one specific one that's that's that's being updated right now. Um.
Speaker 1: Whereas we talk about Lenox, hundreds of distributions. So and
Speaker 1: that's what I meant about how Lenox works. They don't
Speaker 1: understand necessarily that it's supported by a whole community of
Speaker 1: people that is not really owned by anybody. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: it's owned by everybody but you know, I do think
Speaker 1: it probably gained some ground, and I heard many, many
Speaker 1: positive things. But yes, I'm afraid, Uh, I don't. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen anything that suggests that the new versions of
Speaker 1: Linux released this year have caused a surge in the
Speaker 1: number of Linux users. Ex. Oh, hey, look at this,
Speaker 1: cloud computing becomes a household term. Three checkmarks. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a smaller check mark, maybe three small check Well. No,
Speaker 1: it has become a much more favorite term, whether it's
Speaker 1: household term. Yeah, I don't think necessarily that Jane, average
Speaker 1: Jane housewife is talking about cloud computing, um, but she
Speaker 1: probably uses it. Yeah, So cloud computing I think, got
Speaker 1: a lot more uh noticed this past year, both for
Speaker 1: good and bad reasons, for things like think about like
Speaker 1: when when Gmail went down and Google Apps went down.
Speaker 1: That that made the news and people started thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: can I trust my documents to things like Google Docs
Speaker 1: because if the server goes down, how do I access
Speaker 1: my information? Well, that actually brought a lot of attention
Speaker 1: to cloud computing. Not positive attention necessarily, but it did
Speaker 1: raise questions in people's minds about is this the right
Speaker 1: way to go? Does it make sense? Is my data secure?
Speaker 1: Is it ivan can Uh is it really better than
Speaker 1: storing things on a on a local media storage device? Um?
Speaker 1: So I think uh. I think it's definitely in more
Speaker 1: minds now than it was this time last year. And
Speaker 1: here's one that's related to that one of yours that
Speaker 1: two thousand nine would be the year of the netbook.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a that's a big big X
Speaker 1: right there, meaning that of course that you got that
Speaker 1: exactly right. So this is a big right red X here,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, that's what that one means. So anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say the netbooks definitely are are here to stay.
Speaker 1: I mean they they're more popular this year than they
Speaker 1: were last year. I wrote an article recently where I
Speaker 1: saw that within the second quarter of two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: netbook sales accounted for around I think five percent. I think,
Speaker 1: if I recall correctly, around five of all mobile computer sales,
Speaker 1: and that's say quarter in two thousand nine it was
Speaker 1: closer to that's a pretty big jump. So I think
Speaker 1: you could say this was the year of the netbook. Now.
Speaker 1: Whether or not people like netbooks, I think that's still
Speaker 1: up for debate, because I'm not sure everyone knows what
Speaker 1: they're getting into when they buy one. But they definitely
Speaker 1: were very popular, I think mainly because of their price
Speaker 1: point and because they're so mobile. Um so Facebook, you
Speaker 1: predicted that they would put the uh do the fatal
Speaker 1: move on my Space and they a. My Space is
Speaker 1: bleeding pretty badly, but they don't seem to be completely dead.
Speaker 1: My Space is not dead, but I would argue this
Speaker 1: is still a a moderately sized check mark in my college.
Speaker 1: No no no, no, yeah, I mean they dealt them some
Speaker 1: serious damage this year because my Space is still around. Sure,
Speaker 1: but I think I think my Space is slowly turning
Speaker 1: into more of a content site and less of a
Speaker 1: social networking site, especially now that it looks like my
Speaker 1: Space is going to adopt Facebook Connect as part of
Speaker 1: their system, so that you would be able to do
Speaker 1: things like link to band pages on my Space through
Speaker 1: your Facebook account, because that's really what my Space has
Speaker 1: kind of become. It's become like the place for bands
Speaker 1: and band pages. That's something that my Space does really
Speaker 1: well that Facebook does not do really well. Unfortunately for
Speaker 1: my Space. Facebook does pretty much everything else better than
Speaker 1: my Space does. Yeah, yeah, I agree, all right, So
Speaker 1: let's see Twitter may go away. Huh. Let me check
Speaker 1: my Twitter account and see if Chris got that right. Alright,
Speaker 1: let's see. Oh I think I'm sorry, this is gonna
Speaker 1: be at least seven x is. Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: have to and in my defense, I have to point
Speaker 1: out that, you know, Twitter has, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: still no business model. It's still not making money at
Speaker 1: least not generating revenue. Yes, but it has many, many
Speaker 1: people now who have more than a million followers on it. So, um,
Speaker 1: I still don't know that it's going to survive on
Speaker 1: its own forever. But I think now I think it's
Speaker 1: around this stay. Eventually, something is gonna have to happen
Speaker 1: for Twitter to be able to stay around. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine it was there was a one
Speaker 1: billion dollar valuation on Twitter. Now, whether or not that
Speaker 1: would ever actually stand up if you did an I
Speaker 1: P O or anything, I don't I doubt it. But um,
Speaker 1: it does say that Twitter is extremely valuable and yet
Speaker 1: makes no money. Uh. We we can keep going, keep going,
Speaker 1: Come on, we can do this quickly. All right, we'll
Speaker 1: do this quickly. Uh. Here's here's an easy one. Venture
Speaker 1: capital drives up that would have to be a big
Speaker 1: new right, and I'll just I'll just put a negative
Speaker 1: big checkmark here. Yuh. Actually, uh, it's it's quite the opposite.
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of venture capital, especially in the
Speaker 1: latter half of the year, probably again sort of recession related,
Speaker 1: but yeah, people starting to fund companies. It was definitely
Speaker 1: counterintuitive to me. I didn't think that venture capitalists would
Speaker 1: fund more stuff during recession. But it turns out that
Speaker 1: a lot of people have had really good ideas and
Speaker 1: venture kevil has just got smarter about spending money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a different it's a totally different, uh environment than
Speaker 1: it was in two thousand nine. But people are still
Speaker 1: investing and people are still making money. Alright, so let's
Speaker 1: see where it was the next one to see the
Speaker 1: next big company to breakout will be, Um, well, you
Speaker 1: know what ACES is doing. Well, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: the next big company yet. No, Actually I think HTC.
Speaker 1: I think you're right, you know, I never even thought
Speaker 1: about that, but yeah, HTC, that was a company I
Speaker 1: had never even heard of before the g One hit.
Speaker 1: I was interested in the g one because of the
Speaker 1: Android operating system, but I had no clue who HTC
Speaker 1: was before that, and now you see so many handsets
Speaker 1: and they're even you know, net netbook computers coming out
Speaker 1: with HCC brand on them. Yeah. I think both of
Speaker 1: them actually had a similar past in that they made
Speaker 1: stuff for other people and then started branding their own.
Speaker 1: And uh, HTC is being known for a for their
Speaker 1: quality and I don't know. Uh, let's see, next one
Speaker 1: you had was a big jump in green tech. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was a I feel almost horrible about
Speaker 1: giving myself such a massive check mark for this one
Speaker 1: because it was a gimme. But yeah, I think that board.
Speaker 1: I'm actually uh yeah, I'm gonna you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm just gonna put check in a little plus corner,
Speaker 1: all right. So let's see the HDTVs have hit their
Speaker 1: price peak and will stagnate and drop not so much.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's I've seen a drop in prices, but
Speaker 1: I think there are more I feel, forgive me, cheapy
Speaker 1: models out there than there used to be. Yeah, it's well,
Speaker 1: it's it's the it's the continual process we see with
Speaker 1: all electronics. As more people adopted, the price drops. But
Speaker 1: the problem is that uh well not a problem, but
Speaker 1: the the trend is that as people start to adopt. UH,
Speaker 1: companies spend more money and innovation, and they start to
Speaker 1: uh come out with newer models that have newer features,
Speaker 1: and you get Internet capable computer television's not computers, internet
Speaker 1: capable televisions, UH, three D TVs, all this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that ends up driving the price back up again
Speaker 1: for the high models. So you know, I'll give you, um,
Speaker 1: I'll give you an X for this because I think
Speaker 1: you thank you pretty much. You know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: splaining the difference. So all right, and then you said
Speaker 1: that Yahoo would be bought or would collapse. I mean
Speaker 1: they were on the ropes for a while. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they've recovered quite well. Yeah, because they do have they
Speaker 1: are known as a content provider of swords, although I
Speaker 1: don't you know, I don't think people think of them
Speaker 1: that way. But and they formed they formed the partnership
Speaker 1: with Microsoft. So Microsoft will be assuming that this partnership
Speaker 1: does in fact go through, because it's still one of
Speaker 1: those things that seems tenuous in place. But Microsoft well
Speaker 1: will be providing the search engine power for Yahoo. So
Speaker 1: Yeahoo did not go away, did not apps, did not
Speaker 1: get bought out, but it did enter a partnership with Microsoft,
Speaker 1: which I think saved the company because under this partnership, Yahoo,
Speaker 1: for the first few years will be collecting the lion's
Speaker 1: share of the revenue from from search results, so in
Speaker 1: search advertising, and I had I had predicted that Yeahoo
Speaker 1: would stay independent, so we kind of split the difference there. So, UM,
Speaker 1: tell you what, I'll just I'll put a check in
Speaker 1: mine and an X in yours and uh and there
Speaker 1: we go. All right, So, well that happens to be
Speaker 1: all of of the predictions I made, but Chris made
Speaker 1: a few more because he was just in a Svengali nude.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna let's let's we're gonna burrow through the
Speaker 1: rest of these. So Amazon will release the second kindle. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's right. So let's see X They're best buy
Speaker 1: goes into chapter eleven. No, best by still around, not
Speaker 1: doing the best business ever, but it's still around. So
Speaker 1: let's just put an expert wrong there. Um, next, we've got,
Speaker 1: uh what A O L goes away? Well, you know
Speaker 1: what's interesting is it it did split off talking about
Speaker 1: selling you know, Time Warner finally getting out of that
Speaker 1: A O L deal, which is weird. Because A O
Speaker 1: L is the one that acquired Time Warner. But um
Speaker 1: but it didn't go away, so I'm sorry that's next.
Speaker 1: And then more magazines and newspapers go online. Only we
Speaker 1: saw a lot of that in two thousand nine. Of course,
Speaker 1: that was another kind of green tech gimme, so I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna have to give you an X for that one. Um.
Speaker 1: Then we got DRM goes away. Boy, we wish, but
Speaker 1: the kindle too pretty much keeps that around. Let's put
Speaker 1: an X there. And then we've got trade shows will decline,
Speaker 1: which you know what, CUS was a little less um
Speaker 1: uh crowded than it had been the previous year. I
Speaker 1: was at E three as well, but unfortunately that was
Speaker 1: my first E three, so I can't. Actually I think
Speaker 1: the three was heavier, had heavier attendance, but that was
Speaker 1: because they went back to the older format. Well. One
Speaker 1: thing too, is uh that games actually did better than
Speaker 1: a lot of the other parts of the tet. They didn't,
Speaker 1: they weren't completely recession proof. Towards the end of the
Speaker 1: year they really started the sales started to take a
Speaker 1: hit it but uh, yeah, they did better than most
Speaker 1: other technologies. So um yeah, I'm just gonna call that X.
Speaker 1: So let me let me Tellward here and um, wow, gee,
Speaker 1: you all those check marks on your side. I know
Speaker 1: that's well, this is embarrassing. Um, I'm just gonna wait, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: they mean different, but I don't remember was this positive
Speaker 1: or negative? You know what, We're just gonna have to
Speaker 1: We're just gonna have to go buy x's and checks.
Speaker 1: And it looks like I'm a winner this time. Guys,
Speaker 1: I'll get you next year. I'm sure you know. This
Speaker 1: is one of those things that I thought would be that.
Speaker 1: You know, I got in a mood where I was
Speaker 1: making all these predictions. It's really hard. Tech is such
Speaker 1: a mercurial field. I mean stuff say that. I say
Speaker 1: that in our next podcast recording Session two thousand predictions.
Speaker 1: It is. It is. We were gonna throw some at
Speaker 1: the end of this, but we're already over time, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna get this one off. So's it's fun. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously Jonathan walked away with it this year,
Speaker 1: but who knows next year. If it turns out whoever
Speaker 1: is holding the marker is the winner, then we will
Speaker 1: know that, Um that my my method works. So yeah,
Speaker 1: let's we'll make predictions in our next podcast recording session
Speaker 1: and which may or may not come out before January one.
Speaker 1: That's all right, because the beginning of the year, we'll
Speaker 1: make the predictions before the beginning of the year. Gosh
Speaker 1: darn it. So okay, all right, someone to look forward to. Well.
Speaker 1: If any of you guys have any interesting predictions or questions,
Speaker 1: comments suggestions for podcast topics, write us. Our email address
Speaker 1: is text us at how stuff works dot com. We
Speaker 1: have articles on tons of the topics that we covered
Speaker 1: today at how stuff works dot com. Go to the
Speaker 1: website check it out. If you haven't ever visited, you
Speaker 1: should really check it out because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: really great information, not just about tech either, all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff. And Chris and I will talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. And
Speaker 1: be sure to check out the new tech stuff block
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