« Browser holes | Main | Norton Insecurity »
December 15, 2005
The year in technology
We'd be interested in hearing your summary of the year in technology. Here's ours:
It's the end of another year in technology and Bleeding Edge has just repacked the last box of gadgetry and sent it back to the last vendor. Now it's time to head for the beach, pausing only for our annual reflection on the mad world of technology.
What has been most memorable this year, in one respect at least, is that it wasn't all that mad.
PC makers have adopted a far more leisurely pace. They're no longer piling on extra megahertz every few months, and what with the shipping date for Windows Vista and Office 12 several months away, there's no urgent need for more speed.
PCs that are one and even two years old are perfectly capable of running today's operating systems with ease. Fortunately for computer shops, customers suddenly developed an urgent desire for smaller packages. People threw out their CRT displays and took advantage of substantial price cuts in LCD screens. And cheaper notebooks proved irresistible to many.
There was another sense, too, in which computers became more mobile. This year, they shifted from the office desk top firmly into the lounge room. personal video recorders and MP3 players - smaller versions of computers, but still computers - were suddenly hooked up to hi-fi systems and people started learning about "time shifting" (recording a radio or TV show to a hard drive to watch later without the commercials).
They also started to learn about electronic program guides, the most impressive of which was the ICE TV (icetv.com.au). Subscribe to that and recording a show becomes a matter of clicking a button on the remote control.
All that digital recording placed considerable pressure on hard drive storage.
At the beginning of the year we were specifying a 120GB hard drive for our quarterly workhorse PC. By the end of the year, we'd moved to 200GB.
The storage capacity of Apple's iPod continued to grow, and by year's end Australia finally got its iTunes Music Store, followed by the first video iPod. The store gave podcasting a massive boost by offering a more convenient way to find and download the free audio from individuals and increasingly from broadcasters, including the ABC and BBC.
Apple users welcomed the latest version of the Mac OS X operating system, Tiger, which Bleeding Edge rates as the year's best operating system.
On the other hand, Windows XP continued to perform well as Microsoft's most stable operating system. Linux continued to evolve, but remains in the realm of the expert.
It was a year in which the web suddenly gained furious new energy and web-based services arrived in a big way with AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript + XML) programming and services such as the personal organising tool Backpack, the Basecamp project management tool and other offerings from Chicago-based 37 Signals.
The web became a digital cornucopia of interesting applications and new communities as word leaked out of developments such as del.icio.us, which allows you to keep your favourite websites, music and books in a convenient place, share them and discover what other people regarded as memorable. Flickr offered a new way to store, search and share photographs.
By the end of the year, Microsoft announced its version of web services called Live, although details remain sketchy.
Microsoft spent the entire year being increasingly overshadowed by Google, which launched initiatives such as Google Maps and Google Earth and threatened to become a planetary force.
The demand for faster broadband connections spiralled, but Telstra proved incapable of responding.
The good news was that competitors such as iiNet suddenly started installing their own ADSL2 equipment in telephone exchanges and those who located fortuitously in the right suburbs started signing up for speeds of up to 12 Mbps.
At the same time, internet telephony has blossomed and VoIP devices such as Netcomm's My Net Fone and the Engin voice box, along with iiNet's Belkin VoIP routers, picked up significant sales.
Whatever bandwidth they had, Australians suddenly wanted to be able to access it wirelessly.
Wi-fi (and faster wi-fi at that) became ubiquitous.
iBurst mobile broadband technology became available in Melbourne, allowing Bleeding Edge to blog - wasn't everybody blogging in 2005? - on the tram.
So how would we characterise the year 2005 in terms of technology?
Well, it was the year that computers stopped being associated largely with work and suddenly started to be a tool for fun.
But not as much fun as a beach. See you in January.
Posted by cw at December 15, 2005 09:59 AM
Comments
Just a note to say thank you for Bleeding Edge in 2005.
For me the main thing in 2005 was following some of the links from Bleeding Edge and discovering the wider world of blogs.
Bloglines (www.bloglines.com)is an RSS aggregator. On Bloglines some of the people who subscribe to BLeeding Edge have public profiles. This means that you can see what other blogs those Bleeding Edge subscribers read - very, very interesting!!!
Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.
Posted by: Bert at December 15, 2005 07:40 PM
This would be the year that broadband really came into it's own to us. And I really have to thank Bleeding Edge/Razor for the steps forward. We moved our wireless connection upstairs so it now covers all the house, I started blogging on MT with smartyhost (before the awards debacle), and I reckon next year you will have saved me $2-3,000 thanks to your advice on iinet ADSL2 coming to St Kilda and VOIP. Oh, and this was the year that the hard drive/ backup drive on my filled up with multimedia and we decided not to upgrade our ancient 3 year old Imac G4 and wait for the new generation of macs next year. I've been meaning to say, seeing as I take most of my It advice from you (on Macs as I refuse to use Windows) that I would consider paying some sort of subscription as you are actually helping me sav money. From one journo/blogger to another trying to find a way to make money out of new media. Cheers
Posted by: Ed Charles at December 16, 2005 10:40 AM
Re the throwing out of CRT monitors ... dear dear dear!
At our place we have both a CRT and an LCD and the sad fact of the matter is that for viewing and editing photographs the LCD is hopeless. It is not just slightly off -- it is totally useless.
It would be nice to think that the day might come when there will be a small but super selection of large CRT monitors designed specifically for photo editing.
I suppose that the reason that might never happen is that there is an assumption that all photo editors use Apple -- all [but one] Apple computers come with LCD screens. Therefore if the pros are using LCD who needs CRT.
The Big Disappointment of 2005 -- LINUX IS STILL TOO NERDY!
We desperately need a Linux installation that scans your hard drive, detects all of your Windows files, settings, networks, drivers etc and converts them to Linux and then -- after getting permission -- removes the Windows installation.
In other words installing Linux has to be exactly the same as installing a new version of Windows.
Posted by: Apal at December 17, 2005 09:08 AM
I agree with Apal on this:
"We desperately need a Linux installation that scans your hard drive, detects all of your Windows files, settings, networks, drivers etc and converts them to Linux and then -- after getting permission -- removes the Windows installation.
In other words installing Linux has to be exactly the same as installing a new version of Windows."
This would be a major change and challenge to Windows, the only problem is, that a lot of the Linux community don't want a bar of it and are very anti-windows converts (n00bs). Until this mind set changes, linux will always lag behind and remain only for expert users.
Posted by: AvvY at December 17, 2005 11:01 AM
check out ubuntu 5.10 'breezy badger'.
it is the simplest linux distro, so easy to install and it just works. i was running red hat, then fedora, and both were troublesome as i'm not a linux pro, but ubuntu is just so easy - it detects drives, networks, installs the drivers.. etc all automatically. and unlike other distros has a really simple app for installing programmes, just run it, choose from the long list of programmes - for example thunderbird for email, and VLC for video footage - press install and it does the rest (well, its quick if you have broadband).
secondly, why convert files? it's one of the most annoying things about a windows installation. how can you do a clean install if it keeps every file, virus, trojan etc for the next OS to live with. and the whole point is to dump windoze and everything windoze like. if you want to keep your MP3's and video save them to dvd and reload them.
linux is no longer 'only for expert users'.
Posted by: whatrucrazy at December 19, 2005 07:38 PM