2007: Tops and Flops
For our first post in 2008, what about looking back at 2007 ? Any decent tech-related blog should go through the ritual overview of last year’s tech headlines. However, feeling quite lazy today, I finally chose to come up with a (personal) list of the big winners and losers of the year elapsed, which is a less exhaustive yet quicker way of recollecting the main events of the twelve last months.
Let’s begin with the flops:
1) Netscape. Last October, the last version of Netscape, Netscape Navigator 9, was released. In fact the browser was no more than a revamped version of Firefox 2 – fair enough, the Mozilla project was launched by Netscape after all. But apart from a tiny number of geeks or nostalgics, the Internet users did not see the point in using it rather than Firefox and its thousands of available plugins. Even the buggy Safari made larger inroads in the PC market. AOL finally discontinued the browser at the end of 2007 and announced it would no longer develop newer releases. RIP Netscape, Long Live Firefox !
2) YouTube users. In 2006 many people and corporations discovered YouTube. In 2007, many people and corporations tried to use YouTube to their own benefit, mainly for promotional purposes. The result can be just disastrous, like this EU-sponsored video.
3) DRMs. Since the DRMs were first introduced many pundits were skeptical about its virtues. After all these systems were mutually incompatible, introduced unwanted restrictions (such as preventing you from ripping music on CDs, which is absolutely legal as long as CDs are kept for a personal use, etc…).
Step by step, the vast anti-DRM movement strenghtened in 2007. EMI was the boldest major, the first to disavow DRMs, soon backed by music industry giant Apple (which also happens to sell PCs). Universal followed, and now Warner may have hammered the last nail in the DRMs coffin. SonyBMG, anyone ?
4) Apple TV. Steve Jobs is always bragging and this is becoming quite unbearable. Yet there is a subject on which he should really shut up right now: AppleTV. This expensive and limited multimedia set-top box was a massive failure, such a failure that in fact Steve Jobs refused to unveiled the sales figures of the little marvel. In fact the whole concept of multimedia set-top boxes seems quite lousy or at least immature for now. It might become more interesting when people finally get HD TVs though.
5) Optimus Keyboard. The vaporware of the year? In fact this next-generation keyboard, with keys that are actually tiny screens displaying dynamic pictures, was highly expected – and not only by the fools who pre-ordered it in May 2007. The product is still “in development”as of today…
Runner-ups: Mac OS X Leopard, Windows Vista
Not everything is gloomy in the high-tech world. Here are the Tops:
1) Facebook. With almost 60 million active users and a valuation well above the $10bln, everything is rosy for 2007′s most successful social network. Despite some recent mistakes, Facebook might very well be the next Google.
2) iPhone. OK, it has no 3G nor GPS, the touch keyboard isn’t convenient, and Apple’s third party application limitation policy is just loathesome. Yet the iPhone generated a huge buzz for Apple, sold quite well, and instantly unlocked the industry – competitors just have to innovate or lower prices. Why complain ?
3) Wii. The epitome of Blue Ocean strategy, the Wii turned out to be a considerable success this year, with almost 5.8 million units sold. The production facilities just cannot follow.
4) Zune. Zune’s latest avatars, which seem to have been more than inspired by the highly successful iPod, are quite decent MP3 players. So decent that they made it to the top-list of Amazon’s best sales last November. But since one of our flagship contributors no longer works for Microsoft, there is no need to insist to much on that point now.
5) Tech IT Easy. With a steadily growing reader base, we are happy to say that Tech IT Easy finally succeeded in finding its place amongst the blogosphere, and satisfying our readers. We hope 2008 will see even more improvements, blogposts, recruits, comments, and an even larger traffic.
Runner-ups: Twitter, Netvibes, Blackberry.
What is your list then ?
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I’m not going to touch ‘Tech IT Easy,’ as I’m not considered an “objective” source.
The OLPC is way up there as a flop, as is the Playstation 3, though I have faith for 2008 for the latter.
The iPhone, while revolutionary, disappointed with its mobile carrier-associations. I wish a phone-maker (e.g. Nokia) looked beyond the traditional carrier-lock-in and did something with other communication-technologies. And I have a feeling (of hope) that something in that regard will happen in 2008.
The iTouch, I think, is a great success however. And it will be great as soon as applications are installable on it.
DRM was maybe a flop, but rather I would place “no-DRM” as a top.
As far as I know, Safari on Windows was a flop. IE7, though it was released in 2006, I think, was a top.
Firefox 2 was a flop (again, not sure if that was released in 2007, though sentiments definitely sunk that year).
Adobe AIR was a top, Silverlight is, so far, a flop. 2008 could be interesting for SL though.
Google Video service was a flop, as was the TV-app (the name escapes me) by the makers of Skype.
Skype was a flop… for eBay… not for users.
Tumblr was a top. Jaiku is, in my book, a flop.
Leopard was a top, Vista was a flop (again so far, MSFT has deep pockets, but I think Vista is the next-gen Win ME).
TechMeme was a top, Technorati a flop.
HDTV, and particular HD-media, was, so far, a flop. But it’s early days yet.
Blockbuster was a flop, Flixter a top.
That’s all I can think of for now.
Thanks Vincent.
Safari for Windows was nested with bugs indeed but it was heavily downloaded.
The iPhone…well, maybe it is too early to draw a conclusion, but in terms of buzz-making, it seems a tremendous success. An analyst estimated that the sole Keynote presentation on last January was worth a $500 mln ad campaign.
Firefox…I don’t really know, i have got mixed feelings. It is not a very stable nor innovative version, but plugins sometimes compensate for that and it grabbed a really significant market share against IE, and made Microsoft get back to the job and release a newer version.
The TV app: you mean Joost ? I definitely agree.
Google Video is useless, agreed, but then it became useless after the YouTube acquisition.
Leopard a top…granted, it did very well in terms of sales, but technically speaking Apple just f… up quite a number of things, as explained by Paul Thurrott or John Siracusa in their consistent reviews (www.winsupersite.com and http://www.arstechnica.com respectively).
Thanks for your thoughts…
Awesome conversation-starter btw. Now for that conversation…
Readers will flock in tomorrow !
@Steve : excellent troll-post for a new year kick-off
The Zune #4 in the Top-list ? Come on Man, stop that Reality Distorsion Field engine of yours !
Steve, it seems we aren’t the only ones enjoying the Zune: http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2007/12/microsofts-2008-whats-going-well.html
Marc, the Zune seems to have benefitted from a reverse-engineering of the iPod itself…;-)
@Steve : you bet ! Fact is, Microsoft is used to do reverse-engineering on every Apple stuff since the early 80′s
Seriously speaking, from an old-timer perspective (FYI, I’ve just celebrated my 25th year in business today – I assume most of you guys are even younger than that, sniff ), the Wii and the iPhone are true paradigm-shifting / breakthrough products : for the first time ever, everybody can touch and feel high-tech. Just those two examples : scrolling photos on a screen with your fingertip was pure Sci-Fi 25 years ago, as was playing tennis holding a remote control like a raquette. For you Youngsters, this is *just* normal. For most of the people out there, this is Sci-Fi made real. Which is not the Zune, nor Facebook, by the way
Marc, regarding Facebook, I must say that I always dreamed of knowing on real-time when X or Y is going to the bathroom…
…and we don’t know YOUR list BTW
You have to be somehow related to Microsoft to have Zune in the tops.
Strange Twitter does not appear here.
Agree with Marc for the Wii and iPhone impact on 2007 (eventhough Wii was out in 2006). These really changed the way we interact with electronic communication and entertainment and as such, they did changed our lives.
Twitter was a runner-up: in fact I am not that confident in the future of microblogging (at least in this format), I think there is a lot of temporary excitement there.
To be more explicit, I believe that the success of Twitter and Jaiku relies in their user base involvement. If you fail to maintain that at a high level, users might just drop these systems. You’ve got to provide incentives (other than just “being fashionabe”) to keep people spending their much-wanted time on such services.
@Steve : “knowing on real-time when X or Y is going to the bathroom” was Twitter first !
ps : my own list is pretty short :
flop = Windows Vista. 2007 was supposed to be the year of massive roll-out for the new MS OS.
top = iPhone. For it has changed the way we deal with mobile communications at large.
Seems the iPhone steers controversy at least !
Guys, you’re missing one very important flop of the year: Ruby on Rails. The hype was enormous for 2007, but it seemed have peaked. I just hope it doesn’t take Ruby with it on the way down, as I kinda like the language. The framework had lots of promise, looked good on the paper, and showed a new way forward, but implementation and deployment were a way too big challenge.
Good catch !
Yet in the development world, it seems that some very promising technologies may wait years and years before they finally succeed (eg: Java).
Am I wrong ?
Has Java succeeded?
In any case, this is the first I’ve heard of RoR flopping. Even Amazon’s using it for chris’s sake: link .
Well, my SonyEricsson runs Java games, my PC is infested with (slow) Java apps, etc…
Is this a success ? It depends on the initials expectations, back in 1995, but at that time I was barely discovering computers.
Yeah, I guess you’re right. Don’t have much use for mobile apps at the moment, so I didn’t think of it.
(19 comments, you’re on a roll.)
Half of them = Steve Danino…
Steve – a vast majority of enterprise applications are running server-side Java. I believe that between 60 or 70% of new projects in France are Java projects.
Java appeared in 1996 and was mainstream in 2000/01. I wouldn’t say it took time.
However, I could witness during the last couple of years a wish to move away from Java Enterprise Platform (extremely complicated) towards such framework as RoR.
Beyond Ruby, all scripting languages are now seen as a threat for Java Dominance on the enterprise market. Sun answer to that was in Java 6 to include a JSR to support scripting languages.
Besides, the Java implementation of Ruby (JRuby) written by 2 pure geeks (including Ola Bini) on their spare time have been bought by Sun, presumably for later inclusion in the JVM, as the new Sun Java Strategy is slowly moving from “Write Once run Everywhere” to “One JVM, many languages”.
I also disagree with what has been said about RoR. Many web 2.0 success stories are built on RoR (37 Signals, Twitter, Slideshare …). A lot has been learnt regarding how to deploy and scale RoR solutions.
So watch for RoR in 2008, especially now that RoR 2.0 has just been released.
Cecil, thanks for your valuable insights.
Regarding scripting languages, they have always been there, right ? But Python, TCL/Tk, and others (Mac users: remember AppleScript ?) are just scripting languages, ie for me they serve very particular purposes only, don’t you agree ?
It takes two to have a conversation…
So, some more tops/flops:
Top: the hybrid car & Toyota
Flops: Palm products
Flop: HD-DVD lost out to Blue-ray
Top: NYTimes conversion to new media
Flop: independent blogging
Top: vlogging
Flop: Google pack
Flop: Spore (game)
Top: Gaming industry in general
Top: online advertising
Top: robots
Flop: second life
Ok, brainfreeze.
Gee, how could I have forgotten the Foleo, maybe 2007′s worst flop !
I definitely agree for the Google Pack and Second Life. But in the latter case, maybe the technology is just too immature while the concept could prove somehow valuable. History will tell us.
You could say that about anything really. In my opinion, Second Life is a solution in search of a problem.
Well, I can see very well myself spending hours in virtual worlds, as long as they don’t eat up 98% of my CPU, slow down my PC, display ugly 3D graphics, and use a terrible interface…
Welcome to First Life ™
Some people’s first lives are just too depressing…
I’m late on this, I know. But: When we talk about the Tops (and Flops) of 2007 and we mention Microsoft I would consider their new Surface-Table as a real Top, although this product didn’t hit market yet (or did it?).
Surface got more attention in my opinion than Zune. And while Zune is just another gadget, Surface is a real breakthrough innovation.
Why, sure, but let’s wait until one can actually touch it…
Steve, there’s no real difference between modern “scripting” languages or “proper” programming languages. Yes, some of them are more suited to a certain task, but that’s about it. As Larry Wall said in the latest State of the Onion, “Basically, scripting is not a technical term. When we call something a scripting language, we’re primarily making a linguistic and cultural judgment, not a technical judgment.”
I wouldn’t say Java was a success (compared to what it was hyped as), but it succeeded C as the enterprise programming language. My guess is that thanks to SOA and stuff like it there won’t be another “the one” enterprise language in the future.
The problem that might never be solved is that how to run Rails on a shared host (f.e. http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/01/07/how-ruby-on-rails-could-be-much-better/ ) and Ruby support in general is rare. Pretty much all (shared or not) webhosts support PHP, Perl and some Python.
Cecil, yes, maybe we’ll see more Rails in 2008, but as for 2007, I consider it was a flop.
Thanks for these insights Kari, I’m learning things every day with TIE.
I believed (not knowing very much on the subject obviously) that there was some kind of strong script/language dichotomy. In my non-specialist mind, scripting languages usually run over specific applications and are somehow easier to develop at the expense of functionality.
Anyways, this is not a big issue I guess.
BTW, to sum up everything for our readers, the most interesting points I see in the whole comments threads are the following:
1) Nobody agrees on whether the iPhone is a top or a flop – maybe we’ll need to wait a bit before knowing the answer;
2) Nobody seems to like the Zune apart from Jeremy (yet it did sell well indeed)
3) RoR was clearly overhyped
4) Surfaces might be the next big thing for 2008
5) More flops: Palm Foleo, Second Life, Vista (arguably), HD-DVD, Joost
6) More tops: Twitter, Blu-Ray, Leopard, Flixter
For the iPhone, I speak only as a European, who’s been following the hype in the US, only to see lacklustre movement in Europe. There is still no iPhone in the Netherlands and, while it’s possible that a Europe-wide release can happen at Macworld (Jobs called all European journalists ), I really, really, really don’t like the idea of buying a device and enslaving myself to a carrier for 2 years (and paying approx. € 3000 in the process).
So for me, right now, it is a flop. I won’t speak for everyone though. How many French people do you know that have an iPhone vs. perhaps an iTouch?
Also, since iPhone/iTouch is a video-playing device, I wonder what effect a lacking European video-store has had on sales here.
Well, I am considering buying an iPod Touch, and not use the video function at all…but I can speak only for myself.