Five Predictions for 2008
posted Saturday, 29 December 2007
Here are five predictions for 2008 - these are predictions based on no special knowledge - just simply looking at the state of where things are and where I think they will go :
 1. This is the year of the Social Desktop Applications. There will be increased focus on APIs that specifically target dynamic desktop social networking and interaction. The focus will be on delivering Social Desktop Applications. Up to this point - social networking has more or less lived in the browser - this is the year of live highly interactive social applications. (In this genre of applications - we have seen instant messaging - what developers will create will be much more interesting than Vampire's biting you).
2. This is the year for two Java-Based Platforms to grow rapidly : Groovy/Grails and JavaFX Script. Both Groovy and Grails are now virtually past or passing the 1.0 milestones. Groovy is now at 1.5 and Grails at 1.0 RC3 and will soon slide the 1.0 release. I see increasing adoption into this year at an accelerating rate. People are discovering it and are finding it as a powerful Java alternative to Ruby on Rails. That doesn't mean that Ruby on Rails will disappear - far from it - we will see a much more interesting competitive landscape though. This year will also see the emergence of JavaFX Script as a highly evolved platform for desktop and rich clients. Whereas last year - JavaFX Script was the buzz of JavaOne 2007. The fleshing out of the language will occur, new tools, APIs and a consumer-oriented JRE will make JavaFX Script a solid Java internet rich client offering that will challenge established proprietary platforms.
3. NetBeans growth and adoption continue all over the map but specifically - scripting languages and dynamic languages will be an area of huge growth. No question that NetBeans is and has been growing on the Java front - but another new and huge area of growth is now in the scripting and dynamic languages. Ruby, JavaFX Script, PHP, JavaScript and Groovy/ Grails will be at the heart of even wilder growth than we have seen. The Ruby community discovered NetBeans last year and they have NetBeans has been growing at a tear - it will continue. NetBeans has been seen as the innovative IDE in the past two or three years - this year the scales will tip further in its favor.
4. This is the year of a much more direct challenge to Apple's dominance in the music player space. Maybe, I'm a year early, but I think this is the year that there is a breach in iTunes/iPod dominance of the MP3 industry. Charles, are you insane ? The consumer will drive what happens - and this year new devices will spring up that will put much greater pressure on Apple. Already Apple is seeing some stress in Europe. I mean wouldn't it be nice if Apple made it easy for other MP3 players to use the iTunes music store to purchase the music - or for the iPod to make use of other music content systems. Why should they ? Well, it strikes me as fair - if you purchase a piece of music - you should be able to listen to it on whatever music player you want. Of course - you can if you know what you are doing - but convenience is the key to whether people do some thing. Steve Jobs is already writing somewhat defensively about this idea (see : The second alternative ....). At the height of Apple dominance how can one predict anything but more of the same ? Four reasons : the consumer, new technologies, new software and competing aggregation of content. The consumer is starting to push Apple in this direction. First, it was DRM versus DRM-free tracks ... we are now closing in on the second chapter which is the consumer controlling on which device he or she decides to place those tracks. Apple's iPod shuffle and Nano are somewhat anemic alternatives to some new and much more interesting offerings from the likes of iRiver (Clix Gen 2, Clix+ and W7), Samsung (for example the YP-P2), Creative (Zen) or (shock!) look at the new Zune (with social networking features built-in) or some of the cool new MP3/PMP offerings. Besides music & video - some of the new players (PMP) also include FM tuners, GPS, English dictionaries, Rhapsody, BlueTooth, miniSD expansion, Digital Mobile Broadcast (in countries that support DMB), etc. I don't think the thing that will keep Apple competitive are the iTouch and iPhone combination which form current high-end offerings - they will have to be offered at lower cost structures to compete with what is coming from others. The thing that keeps Apple's dominance is the combination of nice hardware with a limited feature-set and excellent iTunes software. The iTunes store is the strength of what they offer and it offers a quick-and-easy way to get content on your player (right now only iPod).
5. Java on the Desktop. I started on the desktop and my last prediction is on the desktop. The arrival of a consumer Java runtime, JavaFX Script and a mix of tools and new APIs like SceneGraph will further Java applications on the desktop. I don't mean a few applications - I mean the beginning of something very big. Those that believe Java will grow anemically on the desktop are going to be in for a shock. It will not be one thing that drives Java on the desktop it will be a mix. Start with a smaller Java runtime, add to it a GUI-oriented dynamic language that leverages existing Java APIs and finally add the weakness of some of the proprietary alternatives relative to security that have recently been exposed. | |
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