2011’s epic losers

In any year of tech picking out five stories that made a difference can be a tough task, sometimes for all the wrong reasons. Not so 2011, which gave no shortage of drama. Here is a selection of stories that didn’t have the impact they might have over the last 12 months, but could make a comeback next year. We begin with a prime example:

Windows 8
Windows 7 was a welcome relief because it solved a pressing problem for users: Windows Vista. Now at 400 million copies and counting, the world’s fastest-selling operating system has assumed Windows XP’s position as software of choice. Where Windows Vista customers were given the option to downgrade to XP no such choice was offered, or indeed needed, here. It’s faster, more secure and easy to use, does great things with networking and is stable as you like. And people like it. Shorter development cycles and the arrival of Windows Phone 7 and its Metro interface, however, have given added hype to the next iteration of Windows, which is due a full release in 2012. Unfortunately for Microsoft there just isn’t the same sense of need as there was for its predecessor.
The main selling point this time is the benefits of Windows 8 on tablets, on which it is an impressive prospect. Touch-based logins, fast boot times and that distinctive tiled interface will go down a storm on tablets, but add nothing to the less tactile desktop experience. What’s ‘worse’ if you don’t like the new graphical user interface you can switch back to a conventional Windows desktop in one touch, which kind of ruins the effect.
As a mobile OS, Windows 8 will do for tablets what Phone 7 did for handsets – ie not much, but what it does it will do well. For desktops and non-touch screen laptops it’s Windows 7 with a top layer you can live without.
If it solved a problem Windows 7 couldn’t we’d be a whole lot more interested. Unfortunately a new user interface and the prospect of a dedicated app store won’t be enough for the desktop space, regardless of whether Apple has managed it already.
For an introduction, have a look at this introductory clip and read the Windows 8 developer blog.

Patent battles
A strange kind of mutual assured destruction is in effect in the mobile space. Despite being intertwined through manufacturing and software development deals every player seems to be in litigation with their business partners. Legal actions of this kind tend to result in some kind of standoff that ends in an agreement for a license fee to use a piece of patented piece of technology (or something like it), but worst case scenarios of stock being pulled from shelves have happened as well.
The licensing model works for large law firms picking on start-ups that don’t have the resources for protracted legal battles, but the mobile space is being fought to a stalemate by Apple, Samsung, Motorola, Microsoft, Google, RIM, Sony, Amazon, HTC, LG and more. High profile victories have seen the Samsung Galaxy 10 tablet taken off the shelves, and later returned with mild modifications, in Germany and Australia.
Also in Germany, a legal firm is sending letters to HTC retailers threatening to sue for complicity in patent infringement over a piece of technology no longer in use in HTC handsets.
The issues of intellectual property and patent trolling are of massive import to consumer choice, but also intensely boring to track. This chart from Reuters gives some idea of the nonsensical tangled web that is the mobile space.

The copyright dance continues
2011 could have ended with a bang with the passing of the Stop Online Piracy Act in the US, but the breakup of Congress for the holidays has kicked that can down the road. Had it been entered into law SOPA’s filtering provisions would have given bodies like the RIAA and corporate entities like Viacom the right to demand ISPs block access to websites believed to be making pirated material available, or facilitating illegal file sharing. If such a bill was passed in 2005 YouTube wouldn’t have lasted beyond a few months and a form of expression unique to the Internet would never have flourished.
In the meantime the strategy of suing individual users and issuing takedown notices to locker services like Megaupload (sometimes for material not owned by the complainant) continues.
At home it looks like filtering may be on the way as well as incoming amendments to copyright law that could see websites like Bittorrent and link aggregators like Surfthechannel.com become inaccessible at the level of service provider – with nothing the user can do about it.
A recent poll on TechCentral.ie found that 75% of respondents would change their ISP over the right to download material without the rights holder’s consent. Let’s see how that pans out in reality.

Tablet market chases own tail
Over-priced and locked in to iTunes, the iPad is just waiting to be knocked from the top of the tablet market it reinvented. The lack of innovation in the tablet space this year, however, reduced the market to a series of less-interesting-than-the-last black screens. RIM’s Blackberry Playbook floundered as HP’s TouchPad and Dell’s 5" Streak led short and uninteresting lives. That the technically impressive Motorola Xoom has revised its sales projections downwards from 3- to 5 million to 100,000 for the year shows just how much of a race to the bottom the tablet space has become.
The most likely threat the iPad dominance is not the sophisticated Samsung Galaxy Tab, but the deliberately simple Kindle Fire – the little tablet that just might.
Early adopters might not be too pleased with the Kindle Fire but it shouldn’t be considered a device in itself so much as a portal to Amazon’s store; a very different user experience to Android Honeycomb-based tablets.

Google enters social networking
Google Wave failed to reinvent e-mail, Twitter-clone Jaiku was finally discontinued and Buzz got shorted after over a year of indifference. In a year where Google rationalised its offerings, Google+ was something worth getting excited about. Operating on the same release schedule as Gmail (limited invite-only beta before a general release), Google+ attracted 40 million users in the six months from June to October and is now open to all.
Why Google+ is not big news comes down to Facebook pulling its old trick of copying other websites’ ideas and putting rough implementations on its own service.
Despite bring a brighter, more integrated, friendlier product than Facebook, Google+ is simply not where the population is right now. Expect it to remain popular with early adopters and people suffering from Facebook fatigue.

Next up, the stories that changed everything…

Read More: Blog Niall Kitson