In this, the sixth review of the year on the Tame Geek website, we’re going to be keeping to the tried and tested formula of scoring our 2018 predictions and highlighting any other trends.
Scoring the Specifics
- The new iPhone will be announced on the week commencing the 10th of September. There will be an update to the whole line, possibly bringing the ‘notch’ to everything.
– Ding ding! Full points on this! - This same event will be the announcement of a new Apple Watch with a new form factor / size option.
– Yep, we’re calling that a win with two new sizes and a new form factor - iOS 12, the new MacOS and all the extra operating systems will be announced at the world wide developers conference on the week commencing the 4th of June.
– This one is down to the day! - At some point in the year (probably at WWDC), we’ll get new iPads, probably Pros with Face ID but perhaps not the edgeless display of the iPhone X (we can but hope that we do though).
– They were later in the year, but we got all of these design elements. - We’ll also get to see the mentioned new Mac Pro, most likely at WWDC (and we may even get an Apple 5K or 8K Display).
– Total fail on this one! Perhaps 2019 will be better for the pros.
So the score for 2018, 6 out of 7. Not too bad!
On to the rest of the year
Well, from the vague points of last year, Apple did finish moving in to the new campus, a lot more VR games came out but no idea if Sony broke 4 million units (they have done over 2, which is impressive). Oh, and Infinity war did break over $2 billion in the world wide box office.
When considering what happened to the ecosystem war, we need to look at how all of the platforms with hardware backgrounds have been pushing connected home technology and how software platforms have failed.
Alexa from Amazon and Google Home are making big in roads, as is Apple with HomeKit and Siri (all be it slower due to the cost of the HomePod). People are becoming more comfortable with having these devices in the home but it is striking up a debate whether or not children should be taught to say please and thank you to a digital assistant. As a Brit, I’d say it’s good manors to do so, even if the devices don’t respond to it.
Where there was push back however for Facebook. The two billion user strong platform received a huge amount of flack during the year, which didn’t come as much of a surprise.
Firstly, when they were linked to interference with the US election thanks to the level of access companies such as Cambridge Analytica were given and later the sessions testifying to the US government for said actions, Facebook has been suffering from a huge trust problem with the public. That’s why when they tried to launch a home speaker / info screen, people immediately balked at the proposal.
In the automotive space, we saw the Jaguar i-Pace hit the roads in a bid to break the Tesla dominance on the executive electric market. With other big players like Audi getting involved with their e-tron range, the next two years should be interesting. That is if we get UK charging networks sorted out.
Round up
At the beginning of 2018, I ventured that software needs to do a better job of teaching users how to get the best from it and from what I’ve seen, we’re still waiting.
2018 has been a decent year for the march on of tech. It’s a ‘toc’ year, as 2017 was a ‘tic’ with some big new technologies coming to the forefront and 2018 has improved upon them. 2019 should be a fully fledged ‘tic’ year, so let’s see what we get.
