Has it Been a Year? Wow, I Guess I'm a Statistic.

Well, it's hard to believe it's been more than a year since I last posted. I suppose that's pretty normal. Setup a blog, post like mad, and then abandon it. That's what people do now, right?

Part of the reason is personal. But as I reflect back on the last year by looking at the last few posts from a year ago I'm struck by just how little happened over the last year. It certainly seemed like things were happening, but in hindsight, what really big thing changed in tech?

The PS3 came out and got no love.

The Wii came out and is getting mucho mucho love and continues to get mucho mucho love. (Though I question why - see my next few posts.)

Windows Vista launched and no one really wanted it, especially the people who did want it and installed it and then realized they like the consistency and reliability (gasp!) of Windows XP. (If you're reading this on a Vista machine you will be interupted any second now by a dialouge box asking if it's ok for Vista to wipe it's own ass. Then it will ask you if you're sure it's ok.) People are only going to upgrade to Vista because they're going to feel like they have to. Software makers will eventually proclaim that XP is dead and push people to upgrade. But do we really need Vista? No. OS X maybe. But not Vista.

Apple is still the envy of the tech world, but what have they given us in the last year? I say, nothing. 1 full year of nothing.

Sure, the iPhone is coming. Uh, when?

Sure, they gave us Apple TV. Yes, it's simple and elegant. Great. I'll save the rant about this product for another post to come. Suffice it to say, Apple does not understand the market for this product, and the RIAA, MPAA, and the NAB do not understand their customers.

And what about the OS update. On hold. Delayed 6 months. And the Apple faithful just take it all in stride because Apple said they were too busy bringing us the iPhone. A freakin $500 phone.

So what else happened?

Hard drives got bigger and cheaper. Wow, big news.

CPUs got a little faster and the folks who make them dangled news in front of us to tell us that they'll get even faster very soon, making those of us who hate buying a system and seeing something faster come out in a month, wait even longer to replace our aging P4/Athlons.

AMD is in a death spiral and Intel is stepping on their necks. But watch out, VIA and Cyrix may come back out of the shadows. OK, maybe not. I was always an Intel fan anyway. Who cares.

Seriously, did anything really significant happen this year?

I say no.