Another Tech Tuesday, where we answer reader questions!
Joan from Athol asks….What are your tech predictions for 2013?
I’ve got a few thoughts, in no particular order:
- Windows 8 will fail. Miserably. Sure, Microsoft will make it sound like it’s been accepted in the market, and will use accounting tricks to make it look like money has been made (they count new systems with Windows 7 that include Win8 “upgrade” disks as net sales, for example)
It will be so bad that Windows 2014 (they’ll change naming conventions again) will come out in December, 2013. Look for 2014 to be like Windows 8 desktop-mode, with a visible Start button and…well…stuff to click.
Microsoft Surface and Windows Phones will continue to sell to dyed-in-the-wool Microsoft fans. Exclusively. - There will be a new iPhone and iPad. Apple will make them sound magical and revolutionary even though they’re not. They’ll add some nice features and cost a lot of money. Millions will be sold, mainly to Apple fans who are upgrading from their iPhone 5’s.
Apple stock will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. I still wouldn’t buy it. - As many i-Devices as Apple sells…Samsung will sell twice as many of their not-yet-announced Galaxy S4s (this is a link to a concept video, not even “good” rumor yet.) Still a couple more years before these win the coolness war, though. Here’s a link to a more realistic look at what the actual 2013 S4 could be like. A lot of those will be to Galaxy S3 fans who have gone all cult-like over their phones…becoming every bit as ugly as the i-Fans they hate.
- There will be a major outage and/or security breach involving Quickbooks Online. Intuit hasn’t shown the management wherewithal or the development muscle to keep QBO running as a stable, truly redundant architecture. Many of the promised changes after the last several outages are still in the early planning stages.
- Speaking of big companies sucking really badly, I predict outage-prone Microsoft Office 365 will re-brand their service to distance from the current name. Maybe something like Office Anywhere… despite the name change there will be lawsuits from customers who will lose substantial data. Heads will roll, which at Microsoft means several Directors and VPs will make lateral moves to other divisions.
- Seems everyone is talking about BYOD (bring-your-own-device) right now. That’ll turn out to be a fad that no one will be talking about this time next year. It sounds good, ’til you think about what will really happen: We’ll “save” the cost of a $1,200 laptop by having Joe co-opt his kids’ computer, or do everything on an iPad. We’ve been hooking up new employees’ phones to the mail server and key resources for year. Add one clause in the employment agreement that says,
“Employee consents to installation of Company geolocation and monitoring software on employee-owned mobile devices; if such device is lost, stolen, or employment terminated the Company will securely erase all information contained on the device. Employee agrees that personal information on the device will be erased in this operation and holds Company and its agents harmless regarding deletion of such information.” (You should obviously ask you lawyer before you go sticking clauses in your employee handbook!)
There are some places where BYOD desktop etc strategy can work, and we’re ready to support it there, but it’s just a buzzword that’s going to go away.
- We’ll talk about Gesture Control as a next big thing. It won’t go anywhere. I won’t care ’til I can have my own J.A.R.V.I.S. (Y’know, Ironman’s house computer):
- This will be the year of the Linux Deskt……HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Even IF a good linux-based accounting system came out, and despite the confluence of Windows 8 sucking, Apple being evil, and mobile devices being too hard to actually do work on…it still wouldn’t be enough for a linux desktop to take hold.
I guarantee that at least four of these predictions will be completely wrong and that we’ll laugh about them (hopefully together) in 2014.
Happy New Year!
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