prediction

Steve Jobs a music visionary? Judge for yourself

Steve Jobs is a Bob Dylan fan because the folk singer is, in the words of Apple's CEO, a "clear thinker."

Jobs' own lucid and careful contemplation of the music industry is apparent in a 2003 interview he gave to Rolling Stone magazine's Jeff Goodell. My colleague Tom Krazit pointed me to the story after stumbling on to it recently. We were bowled over by the preciseness of Jobs' assessment of what the future held for digital rights management, music subscription services, the four largest recording companies, and Apple. The interview in retrospect is a fascinating … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 883: 2009 Tech predictions

The JaMoTo Analysts throw down a healthy serving of tech predictions for the new year. Are you ready to rumble?

Listen now: Download today's podcast

5 predictions for 2009

Now that 2009 is only hours away, I thought it was time to unveil this year's 2009 predictions. There's no telling if what I think will happen will come true or not, but I thought I'd fill you in on five of my predictions for the New Year.

Please share your own 2009 predictions in the comments with the rest of us, so we can look back a year from now and see who did the best job.

1. PS3 pricing is reduced by $100

I don't think there's any doubt that PlayStation 3 pricing will be reduced by $100 in the next year. As the costs of building the console continue to fall and Sony's competitors continue to enjoy strong sales thanks to a lower price, the pressure Sony will feel will be too much and it'll be forced to bring the price of its PS3 down to $299 to compete more effectively against the Xbox 360 and the Wii.

Will it work? You bet.

2. Apple ends iPhone exclusivity deal with AT&T

This one isn't too much of a stretch and I'm sure many of you would agree that it's only a matter of time before Apple finally announces that the iPhone will be made available to more carriers.

AT&T exclusivity simply doesn't work for Apple anymore, since it's now one of the leaders in the cell phone space and it's doing itself a disservice by not opening its popular mobile phone up to the millions of people who have decided against AT&T as their mobile carrier.

Exclusivity was great for two years, but now that Apple has proven it has its sights set on RIM, it can't beat the BlackBerry maker unless it makes its iPhone available to any U.S. carrier.… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 882: Results of 2008 predictions

We take a look at our predictions for 2008 and see how many of them didn't come true. Much to our surprise, we actually didn't do half bad! (Except for the whole HD-DVD thing. That was pretty bad.) Listen now: Download today's podcast

Music tech predictions for 2009

As I said in my 2008 sum-up, people tend to overestimate the amount of change that will happen in one year--which means my best bet for 2009 would be to simply reiterate my almost-there predictions from 2008, like the death of DRM and the decline of the concert industry.

But that would be boring. Thus, behold my all-new-and-improved predictions for music and technology in 2009:

Zune phone--sort of. 2009 will finally be the year that Microsoft takes the wraps off its mobile-entertainment strategy, and the Zune brand will be prominently featured. Perhaps as early as next week at CES, Microsoft … Read more

How'd I do on 2008 predictions?

Update, 1/6/09: Today during the MacWorld keynote, Apple announced that it would offer the vast majority of songs for sale on iTunes without DRM restrictions, and would begin making iTunes downloads available over 3G cellular networks as well as Wi-Fi connections. Six days--I'll take a mulligan, raising my batting average to .350.

Not so great.

Predictions columns are always risky because it's easy to look back a year later and see how wrong you were. For the most part, I was on the right track, but too bold--as a wise prognosticator once said, we tend to … Read more

Tech policy predictions for 2009

It's that time of year again: predictions for the next 12 months, most of which are likely to be wrong, and a few that, if right, will further cement Surveillance State's status as a top tier tech blog...maybe.

President Obama will break the heart of Net neutrality activists by picking pro-telecom industry people for the FCC. On the other hand, Obama will pick someone great for the position of privacy czar, and then castrate him/her by not giving the position any power. Comcast, AT&T and other ISPs will begin the mass deployment of monthly … Read more

Worst open-source predictions of 2008

The VAR Guy dons a hairshirt for getting five things wrong in 2008 on open source, but other than his optimism on Mandriva, there's little in his predictions to criticize. Indeed, it may simply be too soon to call the game one way or the other on his other predictions related to Novell Suse, Google Android, Ubuntu Server Edition, and Sun/MySQL.

My own biggest failed prediction actually predates 2008, but it took me all of this year to understand just how wrong I had been (or, at least, to admit it). I talked about "burning the boats&… Read more

Gartner on IT vs. the economic crisis

The financial markets may be in turmoil, but business goes on. How exactly it's going on is a central theme at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo in Florida this week, as ZDNet Editor in Chief of ZDNet Larry Dignan reports

Analysts have already explained why they think the Internet is radically altering the economics of the media landscape. Now, Gartner's Mark Stahlman and Michael McGuire say in a "maverick" presentation, healthcare and the financial services industry could well be next.

It's a point well taken, Dignan says, but--

It's a bit of a stretch. Both … Read more