

Predictions for 2010 - treblig
http://erickerr.com/2010-predictions

======
Anon84

         20. Adobe CS5 makes biggest splash in the “Objective-C 
         is hard, here’s another way to make iPhone applications”
         space.
    

This can be pretty big. Specially if Apple releases the fabled iSlate with an
iPhone-like OS (although I hope it's a touch based feline). All the little
flash games and apps out there would suddenly become deployable in Apple
hardware and Steve Jobs would all of a sudden get a gazilion more developers
(for free) to help him push all of his lovely hardware.

~~~
cubicle67
There's still a number of factors this depends on before it becomes big.

I'm guessing how it will work is the iPhone apps will consist of an embedded
(in the app) flash platform that just plays the native flash code. This will
require Adobe to build a native flash player that doesn't suck

Flash devs have to be willing to get a Mac and pay Apple their $99

I'm guessing (again) that Flash based games won't be able to have the same
performance as native ones. The Flash player need to be able to be fast enough
for some decent games that people will be willing to pay for

The iPhone UI is quite different from kb + mouse based UI, so most things will
require a bit of a rethink regarding how the user interacts

~~~
seiji
Not quite.

Adobe is using LLVM to translate ActionScript into native ARM assembly. No
flash needed. See <http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/abansod_iphone.html>
and
[http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Applications_for_iPhone...](http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Applications_for_iPhone:Developer_FAQ)

~~~
blasdel
That just replaces their Actionscript interpreter + VM + JIT implementation
toolchain, which was already awesome.

What everyone complains about the terrible quality of is the _Runtime_ , which
sucks ass on every platform but desktop Windows (where it is _decent_ ), and
will continue to for the forseeable future.

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cmelbye
_The Droid is hands-down the best non-iPhone phone on the market._

Huh? I just tried the Droid tonight at the Verizon kiosk, and I found it slow
and confusing. HTC Sense on the HTC Hero is better by leaps and bounds.

~~~
ramchip
Now let me put on my troll face for a minute.

My Sharp SH001 has an autofocus 8.0MP camera, GPS, TV receiver, microSD card
port, flashlight, bluetooth, infrared emitter/receiver, internet & emails (via
cellphone network), built-in japanese & english OCR and QR code reader and
misc apps (GPS maps, train planner, dictionary, banking, alarm, calendar,
etc). Of course it can play music/videos, install apps and do what a phone
does. All that for a flexible contract (costs me 15$-20$ per month, I email a
lot, do a little internet, but almost never call) for 2 years and the phone
itself is free.

Sure, there's no WiFi and the user interface is sometimes frustrating. But I'm
not impressed by the iPhone. What makes it so great? The usable interface and
the app market?

Sorry for the trollish post. I have a hard time understanding the hype for
some american phones when a generic, free phone in Asia has better specs and
decent design. Why don't they import them back home? :/

~~~
jsz0
Mostly the UI and App Store but more importantly Apple has done a huge amount
of advertising which serves to educate consumers on why they might want a
SmartPhone. They show really compelling & practical uses for the iPhone. They
show off impressive games. They show how easy it is to use. I kind of feel
like the average consumer may not even be aware other phones offer similar
features at this point. Apple just leaped out ahead on marketing SmartPhones
to a wider market. Meanwhile their competition is spending their money on
weird ads like the Palm Pre & Droid marketing campaign that don't bother
showing off the device/software much at all.

~~~
ramchip
Thanks. That's quite it I guess.

I'm still puzzled by Sharp though. They do sell phones in America, but the
models they sell are vastly inferior to their Japanese offer. Perhaps as you
say people in general don't see a practical use for the extra features yet.

Compare <http://k-tai.sharp.co.jp/lineup/d/> and <http://sharp-
world.com/products/smartphone/index.html> . They have waterproof 12.1MP camera
smartphones...

------
bugs
Are Dropbox and GitHub wanting to get acquired?

~~~
pjhyett
We have no reason to sell GitHub, the business is doing very well and we're
all having a great time.

~~~
onewland
How about for $500m?

Not saying that's what would be offered, just noting that there is probably a
monetary threshold where "having a great time" no longer is relevant.

~~~
BerislavLopac
Also known as "everybody has their price". ;)

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mad44
I like this one: Bonus: RSS faces death as filtered content recommendation
systems on social services emerge. They, along with most real-time startups,
struggle to find a revenue model (in 2010). People almost get enjoyment out of
claiming “RSS Is Dead”. The main problem with completely switching off RSS and
on to Twitter is that there is a lot of noise – not to say that RSS isn’t
noisy either, but it’s at least generally focused. The complete switch for me
will occur when a service can leverage the vast amount of data collected by
these social services and curate it in to a personalized feed just for me.
Companies and investors are bullish on the real-time space, and I expect to
see this service come to light this year. That being said, It is unclear to me
that real-time content services have any significant revenue advantages over
almost-real-time services. Accordingly, I don’t predict any services will
figure out a way to monetize the added value of extreme recency in 2010.

~~~
SandB0x
I just don't get this. My RSS reader automatically receives articles from
sites I like, or subsections of sites I like, and in most cases the entire
article is fed through to my browser/phone in a nice readable format. Perfect.

I don't see why it's broken and why we need to reinvent the wheel. Maybe I
haven't subscribed to sufficiently noisy feeds. Can someone explain?

~~~
DoQrs
With RSS, you get a deep view at very narrow topics (a full feed by one blog).
You can set up filters and whatnot, but it's still a very narrow model.

A more social system leveraging your interests, your peers, and all that other
crap could surface good content you might otherwise have never seen, plus the
best content you were already seeing. It's a pipe dream, but I imagine that a
service will figure it out sooner rather than later. As I mention in the
article, whether or not they actually manage to make money remains to be seen.

~~~
ubernostrum
Google Reader is already trying to do this with its social features. So far,
not particularly well: I just use a combo of RSS and reddit to find things
which interest me.

~~~
city41
I use TweetDeck. I have found it to be an incredibly powerful application. At
any given time I have about 5 columns up and I see trends and interesting
content on the those subjects in real time. The noise is already reduced a lot
by the more pertinent info getting retweeted more making it easy to spot.

For example, during PDC, I had a #PDC column up, and I almost completely
effortlessly kept up with all the latest info. A #monotouch column is a more
permanent member of my collection, it alone has me staying on top of that
community, again, just about effortlessly.

I've actually completely abandoned RSS altogether.

~~~
ubernostrum
I guess the other part of this is also that on Twitter I mostly only follow...
well, my actual friends. The whole "follow 10,000 people and get a client app
to sort what they're saying" workflow just doesn't appeal to me, and it seems
that in order to do what you're doing you'd have to follow a huge number of
people.

~~~
city41
That's the beauty of TweetDeck. I only follow about 20 people. In TweetDeck
you can set up additional search columns and it will show you tweets across
all of Twitter (updated in real time) that match your search. IMO TweetDeck
takes Twitter to another level (and actually makes Twitter useful :) )

------
jsz0
AT&T/Verizon/Apple: Apple's affections change quickly. In a span of about 8
months we had Jobs cracking jokes on Intel to Paul Otellini on stage in a
bunny costume at an Apple event. If Verizon & Apple cannot reach a deal I
suspect we'll see the CDMA iPhone on Sprint instead. Is there _anything_
Sprint wouldn't do to get the iPhone?

------
icode
All of these predictions are so vague, one will never be able to judge if they
are right or wrong.

------
10ren
A few of these are predicated on an improved economy, which is probably right.

------
mdg
> 10\. Square realizes its bottleneck is additional hardware, so it gives card
> reader away for free.

Isn't this what PayPal was originally trying to do back in the day?
Interesting concept.

