10 Failed Technology Trends of 2005

mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech's Loyd Case muses on ten trends of 2005 that never panned out. He points the finger at analysts like himself for waxing glowy-eyed at technologies like the BTX form factor and the 64-bit version of Windows XP. On DRM and the Sony rootkit fiasco: 'Hint to the music publishers: It's not going to work. There have been easy workarounds to every system that's been tried, and the more stringent the copy protection, the greater the risk of having angry customers who won't buy CDs. I suggest you start investigating new business models, as the old ones ride off into the sunset.'"

Why rag on Gmail?

[thewldisntenuff]

I find it odd that Case complains about Gmail. He goes on about how hard
it is to add attachments - it's really not that hard.

And why does he bitch about it still being in Beta? Hell,
most of the stuff on Google STILL is in Beta. Besides,
invites are like a dime a dozen now (as I type this, I have
100 invites). But GMail being a "failed tech trend?". Hmph.

BTW, the article layout is disgusting - 11 pages!

Gmail

[JonN]

Alright so let me get this straight about Gmail. First:

First off, the Gmail screen still reads "BETA." Will it ever not be beta? Who knows? That means that you still need to be invited to, uh, participate in the beta.

Alright, so it is still in beta. To most people (the author seems to forget this) this means that there are probably little bugs or issues with the service. It may have been in beta for quite awhile, which could mean that they are still working on bugs, but then again most geeks are quite fickle about release dates (The author of TFA even admits this when he discusses Windows x64). Next, he goes on to say:

Gmail is inconvenient in many ways. Managing a mailing list isn't trivial. Trying to send legitimate attachments with executable files is damn near impossible. Even ZIP files are a chore.

Wait a second...Didn't we just determine that Gmail is still in beta? Don't we all know that beta == issues? Alright, so we have a service that shouldn't be in beta, but that has issues. Gotcha. Perhaps the arguement should be that there aren't enough resources going into Gmail, then perhaps I would buy the arguement.

Re:Save yourself the trouble...

[dotgain]

I think copy protection on music CDs is a _great_ thing.

I used to buy 80% of my CDs, pirate the rest, and fell a little guilty about it. Now there's no _point_ in me buying CDs. They're useless to me. So I pirate every single one now.

Why do I think copy protection is great (for me) ?

Because I don't feel guilty anymore.

Congrats on the +5 insightful,

[soupdevil]

but your example is flawed. CD sales have not plummeted. While total sales are down slightly, labels have axed their research/product development, and numbers of artists. Their sales per release are up, and their profits are way up. Digital downloads are currently a drop in the bucket. People with iPods generally still buy CDs. They are filling up their iPods the same way we filled up their glove boxes with mix tapes in the 80s: by copying our CDs, and our friends' CDs. Except that, thanks to P2P, we all have a lot more friends to share with.

pretty stupid list

[Tibor the Hun]

BTX form factor? didn't it just come out? it's a good form factor, but in this age of reusing old and outdated inventories to keep the prices down it'll take a year or two for BTX to be accepted. (just like not all cars have side-impact airbags...)

HD video for PC? I'm on a mac, with broadband, so I enjoy HD trailers [apple.com] all the time. Works on PCs too. The problem is not in HD or PCs, the problem is in the low DVD resolution. Once HighDef video discs come about it'll be better. (720p pr0n torrents are pretty popular)

HD optical drives? they haven't even started selling them. WTF?

GMail? sure, it doesn't give you a BJ every time a new message comes in, but otherwise it's pretty nice. (Quick & Dirty)

Dual Grapics Cards? most macs can support 2 displays on the existing card. Windows users can't seem to think that browser tabs are a good thing, why would they want dual displays? (Sure, 2 graphics cards can still work on a single display and share the load, but people who need that, apart from gamers, already have Macs...)

Anyway, I'm not trolling, it's just not a very well thought out list.

Re:Why rag on Gmail?

[Kredal]

If you start typing in the "To:" box, either the first name, last name, or email address of the contact you want to send it to (and you should know one of those three, I'd hope) it starts an autocomplete list below the cursor that you can choose from once you've got it signifigately narrowed down. It really is easy.

Re:List is Windows-Centered

[nxtw]

Tiger has been a huge success. (it's 64-bit)

It's not completely 64-bit. It's capable of running 64-bit software on a capable CPU, but much of the OS is still 32-bit. I believe you can't have 64-bit software that uses the GUI.

The current Intel OS X builds are 32-bit. Assuming Apple is indeed going to be shipping Yonah-based notebooks, this won't change (as Yonah does not support EM64T/x64.)

Compare this to the x64 versions of Windows XP/2003, which are actually 64-bit, use 64-bit drivers, etc., and can run 32-bit and 64-bit GUI software simultaneously. The shell (explorer.exe) is 64-bit, as is most of the OS software (notepad, all the services, etc.) Both 32- and 64-bit versions of IE and Win Media Player are included, for compatibility with old codecs/plugins/etc. You can run a 64-bit Internet Explorer and a 32-bit Firefox simultaneously with no issues.
Still, just about every program I use is 32-bit only or runs the same way in 32- and 64-bit.

Re:List is Windows-Centered

[shawb]

10. Market share still sucks
This really only affects no. 6: the selection for games isn't all that hot.

9. iPod still can't do bluetooth
Why would you want your iPod to do bluetooth? transfering music at 2-12 MB/s would be painfully slow compared to Firewire or even USB2.0. And that wire you plug in? It recharges the iPod. Unless you want to transfer the music FROM the iPod via bluetooth, which means it has to be compressed far enough to push it through that little pipe: yuck. That leaves... a bluetooth remote control. Yippie, that would be SOOO useful.

8. Market share is what 3% or something now
See number 10.

7. Turns out the G5 wasn't a supercomputer on a chip
Have no comment, as I'm not really a mac hardware guy.

6. No Civ IV
Yes, Macs have been known to lack on games, especially since Bungie has been drawn over to "The Dark Side." I thought the macintosh was a hip and trendy tool for getting stuff done, not a toy for playing games. Games go in the living room, not the office.

5. Have to wait more than 3 months for 10.5
How long do Windows users have to wait till Vista? Will there actually be any new features?

4. Mac mini turned out not do have anything to do with Tivo
I thought it was just a little Macintosh. Taking the iMac concept without the builtin monitor. Perfect for a living room media box (play mp3s you downloaded^H^H^H... err... AACs purchased from iTunes.

3. Damn, that market share sucks
So... are YOU happy using your Mac? Now you get to gloat over being exclusive and not part of the unwashed masses. Besides, I really doubt Macintosh as a single company would be able to consistantly handle production of such a high volume of computers and maintain such tight integration of their hardware while keeping prices reasonable. PCs are primarilly so ubiquitous because of all the different companies offering piecemeal upgrades to individual components: this really doesn't fit into the Apple perspective of tight integration between hardware and software (I've never seen driver hell on an Apple like I have on a PC.)

2. OS X still can't read minds
I suppose you have a point there.

1. Fucking market share
Tell me, how do you really feel about Apple's market share? I think you're holding back. Oh, and regarding iPod competitors emerge:
eh. again, I felt the article was saying that the tight integration between iTunes and the iPod made it a winning combination. It was the video aspect that they felt was entry level, and the author didn't even specifically say that it was entry level for portable video players, could have meant video players in general (probably stretching here.) I have no experience or authority to comment on this feeling, as I generally think that portable movies are a bit too extravagant. But they also felt that, unlike the WMV versions, the iPod video is not painful to use.

But yeah, whenever the author mentioned Apple, it seemed to be saying "Hey PC industry, you're doing this all wrong. Look how Apple did it." Oh, and it makes sense to be PCcentric since the website is modder/gamer focused which, sorry to say, falls mostly outside the realm of Mac enthusiasts. probably because 1)Macs are generally built to be less user servicable 2)macs are already designed to look nice and 3)Well, let's refer to point number 6 that you made. There's not a whole lot of video games on a Mac. But fear not, because I feel that those used to the macintosh Aesthetic would be pleased playing video games on this [lowdown411.com]. I mean... color scheme, simple layout, and that controller just screams "think different." And you know the Revolution will have Mario Kart, and that Macintosh people actually would have friends to play it with. And imagine the realism if they would import the fishing mini-game from Zelda Ocarina of time to the Revolution.

Gmail a failed tech trend?

[dogbreathcanada]

Gmail a failed tech trend? What? As far as I can tell it's been wildly successful. Everyone I know who uses it, has been slowly moving all their email capabilities to it. For the past few months I've been forwarding all my email from all my various accounts to my Gmail account. I haven't opened Outlook Express in a couple months. Sure, it takes a little while to get used to Gmail, but I found that the more I used it, the more intuitive it was as an email service. The labeling is far better than the directory/folder paradigms from other email systems. I prefer it's filtering structure. The search functionality is the best I've come across (which you'd expect from Google). So, Gmail a failed tech trend? I think not. Hell, Gmail sort of launched the new AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) tech trend (or if you want to argue over the semantics of "launched", at least brought AJAX into the forefront of web development). Besides, how can any email service be considered a trend?

Re:With insightful rhetoric like that

[Anonymous Coward]

The amusing thing is that Microsoft never generated hype about Windows XP x64. They kept quiet about it and toiled slowly behind closed doors. They knew it would be an explosive leap. They knew, and announced many times, that driver support would be very lax out of the gate. Shit, most of that time that we sat waiting and bitching MS was trying to get vendors to make drivers.

We created our own hype and now we're bitching that the product didn't live up to it. Microsoft's stance on 64-bit computing has been for years that it is a niche market for now, and they're correct. Having the OS means little if there are few drivers and virtually no applications. And very few applications really benefit from being 64-bit anyway. MS poised WinXP64 to the workstation market. They have released VC++ for x64, .NET for x64 and SQL Server for x64. They're ready for the market, but the market has to arive on it's own. Until then, it's a niche.

Of course the editorial does mention that the hype fault is their own.

Re:Congrats on the +5 insightful,

[Saige]

I know my amount of CD purchasing has went up lately. But it's not mainstream crap that I just can't stomach, but more and more independent stuff that has nothing to do with the RIAA. But that's cause Last.fm [www.last.fm] has directed my music tastes in a new direction that is decidedly not mainstream. In fact, I think I'm going to get a handful of new CDs soon - The Cruxshadows, Icon of Coil, Autumn's Grey Solace, and Collide. Take that, RIAA, they're all artists that you don't have anything to do with. :)

You know...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't buy the Gmail bit. You can just rename any forbidden extensions in Gmail and it'll pass inspection... For example, I tried sending a ZIP file with a few DLLs and EXEs - Gmail wouldn't let me. Renamed the .zip to .zip.rename, and it worked fine. Just rename it again on the other end.

Re:Congrats on the +5 insightful,

[geekoid]

you keep advertising like that, some label will pick them up and they will become mainstream. And you hate mainstream! what will you do?

Re:Save yourself the trouble...

[r7]

Seems like a bit premature to label most of these "failed". We just need
to separate concepts from implementation, that and keep in ExtremeTech's
need to sell papers.

• The BTX Form Factor
  
    Home systems need to be quieter more than cooler. Colo servers are
    better off with larger/fewer drives and more energy efficient cpus.
  
  
• High-Definition Video on the PC
  
    PCs are replacing TV in this respect. People want better content more
    than prettier pictures. Then too there's the problem with bandwidth
    and storage capacities. This is a technology whose time will come when
    the supporting infrastructure catches up.
  
  
• High Fidelity Digital Audio
  
    Demand is there but cheap storage is not
  
  
• Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
  
    Microsoft FUD, just like IPnP.
  
  
• High Definition Optical Drives
  
    WTF? CDs are dead.
  
  
• Copy Protection for Music CDs
  
    RIAA/MPAA/Sony FUD.
  
  
• iPod Competitors Emerge
  
    As the owner of a Creative MP3 player it seems to me that iPod
    competitors have always had better technology but need to match Apple's
    marketing.
  
  
• The Digital Home
  
    Haven't you been eating your X10 spam? Seriously though, this is as
    promising a field as it gets, especially regarding energy efficiency.
    Only reason there's little development is the fear of Microsoft's
    monopoly. Thanks due utterly clueless Republican economic policies.
  
  
• Google's Gmail Service
  
    Privacy issues, spam problems, nothing really new about this service.
  
  
• Dual Graphics Cards

  Preempted by workspace ergonomics, cubicle size, and multiple virtual
  desktops.

Re:Dead on: Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

[(startx)]

Yeah, I tried out XP64 and Slamd64 (64-bit Slackware port) on my desktop for a few months recently, and I've since switched back to Win2k and regular Slackware. Some of the brokenness that forced me to switch back include:

• Windows:
  
• Services for Unix (SFU) has not been, and will not be, ported to XP64. I need NFS.
• x86-64 programs are put in C:\Program Files, and 32bit programs are put in C:\Program Files (x86). Many old windows programs (including the steam installer) can't handle parenthesis in a path.
• NVidia's windows x86-64 driver installer doesn't support my gf4 ti4600, although modifying the .inf file allows it to install and run fine.
• Useful things like Daemon Tools don't work because of driver format changes.

• Slamd64
  
• /usr/lib and /usr/lib64 confuse some programs
• some poorly written software (like mplayer) assume 32bit pointers and won't compile
• Shell script game installers blow up very, very badly. So badly, in fact, that I've been unable to run any of my native games (Q3, UT, UT2k3, etc)

Overall, neither OS is ready for everyday use, but MS should be asshamed of themselves for charging people full price for beta(at best, probably alpha at this point)-quality software.

Re:Uh

[gasjews]

Windows XP x64 is a gigantic failure. Where are the masses of 64-bit apps? What about drivers? Sorry, they are pitiful and few.

As it stands, I can't even get 64-bit drivers for half of the devices on my Athlon64 notebook, despite it being sold to me as "64-bit ready" by HP. Hell, half of the drivers for 32-bit Windows haven't been updated for over 1.5 years (my mistake for buying HP, won't do it again!).

The average desktop user doesn't need 64-bits. Maybe when software becomes so bloated that the minimum reccomended RAM for a PC is 10GB it will catch on. Otherwise, it was premature. Hell, Intel still makes processors that are only 32-bit.

64-bit computing is old news

[JimmytheGeek]

This retard seems to think that 64-bit computing will arrive when windows supports it. I've been doing real work on 64 bit platform for 4 years.

Windows is backwards. So is the columnist.

Re:List is Windows-Centered

[LoRdTAW]

I will say one thing and that is SCREW EXTREMETECH. My reason is more personal and OT but hell I will tell it anyway. Few years back at PC Expo here in NYC Extremetech had a booth. They were offering a top of the line athlon PC to the winner of a contest. All you had to do was stand in line. Well the would-be contestants (including myself) all lined up for a chance. The slots quickly filled up and unfortunately I did not get a spot. The Extremetech staff then made the following announcement "There will be absolutely no more entries today come back tomorrow at 10am sharp for a chance". The contest was simple, a bare pc case with motherboard and power supply was given to each contestant along with ram, video card hdd etc. You then assembled all the parts as fast as you could and if the pc properly booted to windows 98 you won. Well the next day came and I was about number 13 on the line. After number 12 was given his slot the staff then informed the rest of us in line that the contest was now closed. Closed? Most of the people in line including myself asked why it closed so soon. The extreme tech guy then said that later on yesterday they started taking in more contestants. When I got home me and my brother put together a near exact setup they had on stage. My time in assembling was 1:46. The next day the winner's time was about 2:30 and was not only awarded the new fancy Athlon system but also a trip to California to appear on TechTV.

Yea I sound bitter but the people in line and I was all lied to due to there poor management. Plus the guy who won was a cocky prick (everyone in the crowd watching wanted to punch him).
Mod me down if you like but I am just telling my little story.
   

Re:A pro audio engineer writes . . .

[h3llfish]

I think you sorta prove my point - you're a pro, so that puts you in that less than one percent that I would expect to hear the difference. I don't think Apple is going to worry about making their ipods to please the audio engineers of the world.

But now that you say warble and shimmer, I'm curious if I can note that same effect. Can you think of a particular audio track where the difference is noteable? Something that I have a decent shot at finding in both lossey and lossless formats? Not that I usually download music illegally, but this is different - it's for science!

Also, another thing that hasn't been mentioned is the fact that if you are ripping from a CD that has already compromised the audio, then lossless compression isn't going to give you back what was lost. I've heard people mention that the cymbals on The Who's "Live at Leeds" sounded good to them on the original LP, but the CD version is butchered and just provides layers of noise where the ride was being, well, ridden particularly hard.

And that point brings me to my next question, which is that if 44.1 KHz produces a constrained sound, doesn't that mean that all CDs are constrained? I've heard people say that 48KHz was much better, but I thought that the CD format just wasn't capable of that. So in essence, you could make an original recording at that rate, then compress it with FLAC and preserve the full range, but with a CD, that info is already gone. Your thoughts? And thanks for post - mod this dude up, informative!

Re:Multiple Standards for DVD

[Tim Browse]

My favourite stupid thing about DVD-R and DVD+R, is that DVD+R was produced (think I have this the right way around) by the DVD ReWritable group, which was a breakaway/different group from the DVD Consortium.

So, impressed by their own cleverness, they get people to stamp their logo on DVD+ format discs. Which puts you in the situation I was in where I'd bought a spindle of DVD+R discs (precisely to avoid RW compatibility issues) only to take one out and find it had the letters 'RW' stamped on the disc in a prominent way.

This was not to indicate that the disc was re-writeable - it was to indicate that the disc was in a format of a type specified by the RW group. It took me a few minutes of googling to confirm that I did in fact have R and not an RW disc in my hand.

I mean, what a bunch of goddamn muppets.

Re:A pro audio engineer writes . . .

[ElephanTS]

Hi, as for 'warble and shimmer' try a live recording that you have on CD with a fairly open drum sound. Live rock gigs that have been well recorded are good (Led Zep that kind of thing, The Who etc) - most recordings from the 70s have better dynamic ranges than today so it's a good place to start. Then use your favourite MP3 ripper (I use iTunes) to generate a few rips at different bit rates. Try 48, 64, 96, 112, 128, 160, 192, 256k. When you listen to the 48k one you'll notice resolution breaking down in the top end where the cymbals are - you should be able to notice distinct bands appearing. That's how MP3 works - it gathers the sound around a freq band into one seperate frequency and so effectively quantises the audio spectrum (continuous) into discrete bands. As you move up the MP3 bit rates you'll notice this effect dissappearing although it never entirely disappears. Once you've learned what this sounds like you'll be able to hear it at higher and higher bit rates. Also, what we call 'transients' -- the speed of attack in drum sounds --- tends to slow down with MP3 at any bitrate. The stereo image particularly in the top end can move around a little too.

I do think 44.1KHz conversion adds all kinds of nasties into the sound and tends to strip the sound of some life. That's due to the very unmusical digital filters that need to be applied to prevent aliasing (where the top end become bass again - the old wagon wheels on film problem if you know what I mean). Like you say even 48KHz would be better but 44.1KHz was chosen as it's a sub-carrier of the PAL frequency format. It was in my mind a bad choice but one that we've had to live with for 20 years now. Most projects now are recorded at 96Khz, 24 bit and then mastered down to 44.1KHz, 16bit. That's where all our lovely work gets really chopped down to size and is definitely the most lossy stage of the recording process today. So I do think CDs do have a constrained sound and modern multiband digital compression tends to make it even worse. Sometimes it's refered to as a 'plasticky' sound - somehow it's not quite the real thing. I used to work on 30ips multitrackers (analogue) that never suffered in that way - always had a lovely non-constrained open sound all the way to where only dogs could hear. (Typically flat response from 30Hz to 35KHz on a good recorder)

Having said all this unless you have high quality sound cards and monitors it can be hard to hear what I'm talking about. The iPod has a pretty good sound though especially when put through some hi quality headphones. My soundcard is a MOTU 828MkII at home driving some Mackie HR824 monitors - that's probably too much for most people just for audio.