Ten things to beware of in 2008
21 Jan 2008 | 17:07 GMT
They may never happen
IT'S EARLY in a new year of IT warfare. It's time for new
alliances to be forged and great battles to be fought. While scrutinising the
murky waters of the IT future can be difficult at best, we have seen from the
past years that what goes around, comes around and, where there's smoke, there's
fire. So where do we head from here? Since we've just entered 2008, some more or
less cautious assumptions are in order. Stakeholders shouldn't put their
fortunes on this though.
1. Blu-ray's popularisation
Although not entirely surprising, Blu's almost assured victory in the world of
HD content will be a thing of the past soon. The HD initials will still haunt us
because the disc itself will still mostly be used for storing High Definition
content, but that's about the only thing which will remain from the poor old
HD-DVD acronym. As soon as the dust settles over this long and tiresome debate,
we'll be invaded by plenty of burners and the corresponding media upon which to
inscribe data. Prices will drop and it shouldn't be long until we'll all posses
units which merrily burn zeros and ones with blue-violet lasers.
Still, there's one memory of a certain incident which happened a few years ago concerning one rather eminent member of the Blu-ray Disc Association. It's that old rootkit squabble which brought Sony under the crosshairs of both hardware and software analysts. A pity for the people at the Repression of Information Association of America (RIAA) that Sony failed to get away with that. Let's just hope they don't get any funny ideas on "expanding the capabilities" of the Blu-ray disc.
2. Intel's hibernation
After wiping the floor with AMD in the past 18 months, Intel has it easy these
days, almost too easy. It's obvious to see what the absence of proper combat in
the CPU arena brings: boredom. The lack of sparking innovations in this sector
got most hardware websites reviewing budget CPUs and writing articles about o
verclocking God-knows-what. AMD put a brave face and got back to the drawing
board and we can expect them to recover nicely. But until then, Intel has the
crown, whether we like it or not. And they know that. That's too bad, because
whether it's because of design problems or simply because they don't have a
serious competitor, they keep a rather relaxed timeline on new top products.
Intel simply doesn't have any reason to hurry things up. And that's ok for now,
since uber-CPUs are up for grabs at bargain prices.
AMD on the other hand will probably use 2008 to pick up the gauntlet and teach Intel some comeback lessons. Some claim the new Opteron isn't so bad, especially in the power consumption segment, while the Phenom proves to be an able contender in the value sector. But what will happen with AMD's financial situation? While Intel can afford three more market defeats, AMD can barely handle one. Let's all hope we'll have a serious competition out there at the end of this year, no matter who's the winner.
3. Less freedom
The past years have statistically proven that efforts are continuously mounting
towards an all-out offensive against all sorts of online or real life liberties.
While an Orwellian society is still out of the question, we should all expect
the big names in DRM and such to push things even further against online
information sharing. And, as some money hungry leaders get even more preoccupied
with controlling the masses and everything which moves online or offline, expect
less freedom everywhere.
4. XP's triumph over Vista
The number one question is... will we really be forced to switch to Windows
hasta la Vista? Even though Microsoft is putting all efforts into that,
apparently, the more money they invest, the greater the resistance to their
born-handicapped child. Will really pulling the plug on XP this summer solve
anything? First of all, there's still a good chance that Microsoft will change
its plan. Secondly, millions of people across the world use XP without the need
for live updates and such without the slightest problem. Even Windows 98
lingered on a while at good percentages after it got its ticket to heaven from
the Vole. 2008 may very well see the good old XP holding the front against the
lumbering sack of confirmation dialog boxes also known as Vista.
5. The rise of SSD
If 2007 represented the commercial introduction for end users of the Solid State
Drives, 2008 may very well be the breakout year for these devices. Last year was
dominated by the first attempts of various companies to produce and market SSD
and things were rather chaotic, with very confusing price ranges, availability
and performance. It is to be expected that this will all be sorted out until the
last days of this year and, as the hardware manufacturers iron-out some of the
imperfections of the technology, we will see a much broader offer in both
spectrums of interest, price and capacity. In the future, we'll probably use SSD
for our OS partitions and magnetic drives to store high volume data.
6. More physics mania
It should come as no surprise to anybody when all the following games,
especially First Person Shooters, will all feature physically realistic
environments where the gamer can indulge in the use of fancy weapons which
manipulate objects. After games like Doom 3 and Half Life 2 popularized the
stuff, in-game physics, fancy effects and real-world behaviour of objects has
become the norm for any respectable game. So what of the companies which hope to
squeeze a profit out of this?
Right now, Ageia is still in the game with Intel preparing some heavy assault now that they got Havok in their pocket. Envy-dia and DAAMIT would have hoped for some piece of the pie when Havok announced that they'll enable their SDK to work on the GPUs produced by the two companies. Too bad Intel decided to scrap that and now the reds and the greens are left scratching their heads in search of other competitive solutions to enter the gravity gun hungry gamers segment. Nevertheless, 2008 will definitely see the heat in this battle step up a notch. Today, physics is clearly <i>the</i> trend to follow, as it was in the past few years.
7. Video boredom
In a striking similarity with the CPU arena, the DAAMIT camp lies somewhere in
the far corner, beaten and licking its wounds. Nobody contests that the new
video cards based on the latest evolutions of the RV chipset are giving nVidia a
run for their money in the value segment, but the number 1 spot is still firmly
in the clutches of the GeForce 8 series... and the number 2 spot, and the number
3, and so on. This situation is likely to change somewhere in the summer if we
don't get more delays from Canada, but even so, Envy-dia isn't too alert these
days. They're too busy messing with the naming of their products. As if it
wasn't enough that in the past years ATi named their products using the Chaos
Theory.
8. MySQL to shine
Sun's acquisition of MySQL puts them in a very comfy position in the world of
software developers. Java is still being used across the globe with a constant
popularity, defying Microsoft's monopolistic efforts. The fact that MySQL now
has such an illustrious master will probably be good for everybody. Sun became
quite open saucy lately and this seems to be working out nicely for them. What's
most important is that Microsoft's SQL Server might be facing some very heavy
fire quite soon. MySQL was popular enough without Sun's involvement, but a good
capital injection together with some know-how, strong business partners and vast
opportunities might bring MySQL to heights not previously suspected.
9. Apple to fool more people
Never underestimate the power of fruity marketing. Apple, the company which
spawned the telly computer and made a hard disk sing mp3s and then gave it a
fancy name to sell millions will most likely be just fine in 2008. Even though
the iFoam doesn't have the predicted success, the Fruit has plenty of momentum
and there are a lot of people out there which didn't yet realize that the device
which Apple is selling is a bunch of restrictions packed together under a shiny
hood. Just a bit less annoying than Vista, the iPhone is trailing almost all the
other PDA-Phone producers not only in features but also in price, since the
gizmo costs a lot more than it offers. Alas, here's to the power of seemingly
smart naming and powerful marketing strategies.
10. That incredible news
Haven't you heard it? It's unbelievable, fantastic, shocking, amazing and
unexpected. You bet we're going to hear about it sometimes this year. It's
impossible to guess what it is and will come out of the blue and strike us all
senseless. Each year in the IT world holds at least one of these bombs. That's
the beauty of the game, not knowing when it'll hit. µ
© 2007 Incisive Media Investments Ltd. 2007