Wozniak's Predictions For 2013: the Data Center, Mobility and Beyond 70
Nerval's Lobster writes "Tech icon Steve Wozniak has come forward with several predictions for 2013, with data center technologies an important part of the list. Wozniak's predictions are based on a series of conversations he had recently with Brett Shockley, senior vice president and general manager of applications and emerging technologies at Avaya. They trace an arc from the consumer space up through the enterprise, with an interesting take on the BYOD phenomenon: Woz believes that mobile devices will eventually become the 'remote controls,' so to speak, of the world. Although he's most famous as the co-founder of Apple, Wozniak currently serves as chief scientist at Fusion-io, a manufacturer of enterprise flash storage for data centers and other devices."
an interesting take on the BYOD phenomenon (Score:3, Interesting)
an interesting take on the BYOD phenomenon
I have noticed the death of the PBX. The desk phones are now nearly unused at the megacorp I work at. If you know someone you use their personal cell phone number, and if you don't know them you need the CYA audit trail that only email can provide. So the desk phones get dusty.
They have actually started ripping out the phones here. We'll probably always have them for queue, call center, help desk, help line type situations but the day of every drone having a phone are already over where I work.
Rather than being issued a laptop to work at home, my wife was issued rdesktop credentials to use as she saw fit, and had borrowing privileges at the travel laptop pool when she travels. Where I work they still use clunky as heck VPNs but I'm sure they'll catch up with the times and switch to a rdesktop/vnc solution sooner or later.
IT no longer creates new "client server apps" they create "intranet sites" and how you access them is pretty much seen as your responsibility.
If Woz can so can I... (Score:5, Interesting)
So here's my predictions for 2013:
1) Facebook is going to see it's user base decline. I suspect that many of the current accounts are fake, throwaway type accounts anyway. Full of fake birth dates, occupations and other such information attached to fake throwaway email accounts used for nothing other than signing up for Facebook. Sooner or later advertisers are going to catch on to this and stop wasting their time. Besides, Facebook is pissing everyone off with their intrusive privacy policies.
2) Tablets are going to become the new net books. In other words, cute and portable but ultimately not very useful. Just another expensive toy for bored, rich westerners.
3) Windows 8 is going to be a massive flop. Sure, the sales numbers will look good because it comes preinstalled on new PC's but user adoption will be poor. Windows 9 is going to look a lot like Windows 7.
4) HP is going to clean house. So long Meg.
5) SAAS (Software As A Service) is going to fizzle out. Salesforce will continue to do well though. Some things work well in a hosted environment (CRM for example), others not so well. Multi tenant architectures can save you money in the beginning but there are a lot of real limitations. You are sharing a database with other customers. You can't customize the software. Enterprise software will move back in house.
6) No contract phones will be the way to go. Smartphones are pretty much maxed out on features now. Why get a new one? Take your off contract phone to a no contract provider and start saving some serious money.
7) Factory in-car navigation systems will become obsolete. Too expensive to begin with and you have to update the maps (and pay again for that) every few years. Why bother when you've got Google maps on your phone for free? Simllarly, touch screen control centers in cars are going to go back to old fashioned knobs and dials. Touch screens are too distracting to use and difficult to see in direct sunlight. Maybe voice activation would be better - "Turn on the AC - 72 degrees".
8) The instant gas prices go back down below $2.50/gallon Americans are going to flock back to big hulking SUV's.
Re:Woz Deserves More Noteriety Than Jobs (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends what you value more - being able to see raw talent and nurture it (Jobs) or having talent (Woz).
Woz is a great engineer. However, he wasn't very social and more than likely, had it not been for Jobs, he would've been working away at HP's calculator division through and through. Woz loved HP and didn't consider leaving (in fact, it was the hardest single decision he made to resign from HP).
Jobs could talk the walk - he was the one who could talk to customers and suppliers and get orders in for the Apple I. Heck, he was the one who got Woz the DRAMs necessary for the Apple I (even sweet-talking Intel into sampling some). Woz at the time was incredibly shy - he wouldn't dare pick up the phone, call a component supplier and ask for parts he couldn't afford to buy. Jobs could.
Jobs and Woz like the yin and yang - complete opposites, yet completely complementary. What Woz lacked, Jobs had. What Jobs lacked, Woz had.
Engineers favor Woz naturally because he was the technical guy behind it all - without Woz, Apple wouldn't have existed. On the flip side, it was Jobs who managed to make it a business - Woz was happy to sell circuit boards and everything to hobbyists, while Jobs was the one who wanted to sell complete assemblies to everyone. Without Jobs' social talent, Woz would have continued designing calculators for HP, the Apple I board being just a mere curiosity and probably just a footnote in the history of computers. Had the two not get together it's likely the technology field as we know it would be completely different. The only thing I can't tell you is if we would be better or worse off, though. Woz and Jobs would've just been regular no-names in the field, though