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7 Top Technology Trends That Ruled 2009

Posted on 24. Dec, 2009 by admin in Hi-tech

Netbooks

iny, low-priced, low-power PCs were the tech product story of the year. However, these high-selling devices are a mixed blessing for PC makers and consumers. While hardware manufacturers are thrilled to have a hit on their hands, the computers generally have razor-thin profit margins. Meanwhile, consumers who buy netbooks get cheap, super light computers that frequently run old operating systems (like Windows XP), lack optical drives and are far slower than they’d otherwise expect on a desktop or full-sized notebook.

Phones that Navigate

Starting in 2009, GPS companies became scared of the mobile phone. This year, the iPhone became capable of handling turn-by-turn auto navigation programs such as the $100 app offered by TomTom. Even more remarkable: Google released free turn-by-turn navigation software for Android phones—a development that caused TomTom and Garmin stocks to nosedive overnight. The fact that phones can easily update their maps and POI databases over the Internet doesn’t help the matter for GPS companies. While it’s too early to declare the stand-alone automotive GPS systems obsolete, the burden is on traditional GPS-makers to find new ways of staying relevant.

3D Cinema

Although digital 3D movies have now been around for a couple of years, the technology’s widespread adoption has been hampered by a stalemate of sort: Studios were reluctant to invest in big-budget 3D movies that could only be played on a small number of screens, but without a steady stream of 3D movies, theater-owners were reluctant to spend the money installing these screens.
This nut was finally cracked this year—the mushrooming number of 3D theaters now numbers in the thousands, and is almost (but not quite) at that critical point where a blockbuster film can be released exclusively in 3D, without having to simultaneously release a watered-down 2D version in order to break even. And while it’s tempting to chalk this conversion up the force of personality behind Avatar auteur James Cameron, who has been pushing the technology relentlessly, this year has just seen an incredibly strong line-up of 3D films across the board: from the gorgeous Up and Coraline, to the cheesy-but-fun My Bloody Valentine and Monsters vs Aliens. A large line-up of 3D TVs and Blu-ray movies is expected to bring the experience home in 2010.

Inductive Power Gets Real

No matter how many cords we cut, electronics still need electricity, usually in the form of power from lithium-ion batteries. But before this year, a cord was pretty much the only way for those batteries to get the charge they need. Enter the era of inductive power. There are now numerous products—such as the Palm Pre and the Powermat charging station—aimed at allowing gadgets to charge without owners having to fumble with cords. And while these solutions still typically require tethered charging pads and special adaptors, that will soon change, as manufacturers begin to build the technology into both gadgets and table tops. The prospect: a future where a phone can pull a charge just be sitting on a table at Starbucks

Operating Systems Bulk Up, Then Slim Down

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Microsoft’s Windows Vista Operating System was panned by critics and users alike when it was released in 2006. It presented a missed opportunity, if not a complete blunder for the company. So a lot rested on Microsoft’s much-anticipated follow-up, Windows 7. And while it’s too early to declare it an unequivocal success, initial impressions are extremely promising for the OS, which is basically a streamlined (faster, slimmer) version of its predecessor. Gone are the way-too-long start-up time and endless hand-holding (“Are you SURE you want to open that file?”).
This year’s Mac OS upgrade, Snow Leopard, was also an incremental upgrade, one that left you with more hard drive space, rather than less, when you installed it onto a computer running Leopard. The trend is clear: People are tired of bloated kitchen-sink operating systems, and manufacturers know it.
Still, when it comes to slimness, nothing from Microsoft or Apple compares to Google’s upcoming Chrome OS, which will be little more than a browser-link to the Web, opting for lightning-quick start-up speeds over heavy computing

App Stores Are All the Rage

Barely a year after its launch, the iPhone App Store now has a staggering number of applications—a hundred-thousand-plus. Buoyed by this success, other mobile platforms—such as BlackBerry, Android, and Palm—have put out their own stores. But it doesn’t end there—manufacturers are now setting up app stores for all sorts of non-phone consumer electronics, such HP’s Internet-enabled printers and Livescribe’s Pulse smartpen. App store overload? Potentially.
Next year we can look forward to a minor backlash, as dozens of competing app stores become intolerably difficult for consumers to parse through, and developers get peeved at being forced to make a dozen different versions of the same program.

Android in Everything

Although Google’s Android OS for mobile phones came out in 2008, it spent the greater part of the year as a relatively niche platform tied to a single phone and carrier. That changed this year, with an explosion of Android phones across manufacturers and carriers (most notably, Motorola’s Droid on Verizon). The platform is even beginning to pop up in non-phone devices, such as the Barnes & Noble Nook e-book reader, and a tablet made by Archos.
Thanks to a thriving app store, a strong arsenal of hardware and an impressive user experience, it can now be considered the chief competitor to the iPhone. Its open aesthetic may appeal to those who are fed up with Apple’s closed ecosystem. The lingering question: With Android moving off of phones and onto other types of machines, will it compete with, or complement, Google’s upcoming Chrome computer operating system?

Tags: Computers, featured, operatins system, phones, Ruled 2009, Technology