Now that CES 2009 has been and gone and the world's media has cast its vote, what stands out as the good and bad of tech coming this year?
1 Internet-enabled TVs
If there was one clear theme emerging at CES, it was that TV manufacturers want to ensure that their sets can get access to internet content (without needing a console or extender or some other device plugged into them).
This is a welcome development for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it means that the endless battle to see who can come up with the biggest set is now effectively over. That's good news both for environmental reasons and because we were about two years away from someone building a TV set larger than the typical home, let alone the typical lounge room.
Secondly, it means that yet another segment of the industry has recognised that online delivery is the way of the future. Now, if only those sets worked properly in Australia . . .
2 Windows 7 sticking to the schedule
It wasn't a great shock when Microsoft announced the general public availability of the Windows 7 beta at CES — the company had hinted as much when it said that a beta release was due in early 2009. Nonetheless, it was a rare example of Microsoft actually sticking to its release schedule for Windows. Even more notably, it managed to get a beta out of the door that (unlike Vista at a comparable stage) wasn't so poorly executed that it tended to make grown men cry in the streets. Late 2009 for the actual release might even be a realistic prospect.
3 Netbooks are king
If you thought 2008 was the year of the netbook, you really haven't seen anything yet. Better displays and a broader acceptance of solid-state as a storage factor means that there's barely a manufacturer who doesn't want to dip their toes into the netbook waters, even if some of them want to charge too much for the privilege (Sony) and others can't make up their mind how long a given model deserves to stay on the market (everyone, really). The big question remains though: will netbook makers embrace Windows 7 or just stick with XP?
4 Phones and accessories concentrate on sound quality
We might all like drooling at the thought of a good touchscreen, but beyond that the major improvements that are needed in phones are mostly on the hardware level, as making them any smaller isn't practical for anyone with normal-sized hands. The big improvement that everyone seemed to be talking about at CES was getting better sound quality by cutting out interference from wind, traffic and other noise sources. Some are aiming to do it in the phone (LG), others in the headset (BlueAnt, pictured) — but wherever it happens, it's a bloody good idea.
5 Tom Hanks giving it to Sony
What's more fun than a major celebrity showing up for a keynote? A major celebrity showing up for a keynote and then heaping ridicule on the sponsors. Tom Hanks came on early for Sony's keynote, made it clear that this was pretty much a contractual obligation stemming from his forthcoming Sony-backed flick Angels & Demons, and proceeded to ignore his autocue and make a mockery of Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer and most of the products he was supposed to be flogging. As Hanks proclaimed: "They write the lines but I tell the truth."
Sony used the speech to pledge to use open standards in its products from now on, the closest we'll probably ever get to an apology for rootkit DRM, Memory Stick and various other transgressions by the electronics giant that has been giving the company a slow and tortuous path to certain death.
"Open technologies are winning the game. Consumers expect choice — they expect services to work with any device," Stringer said, in words reminiscent of Steve Jobs upon his re-entry to Apply when the company was at the brink of collapse, promising standards-compliance. (We all know where that got us. The somewhat standards-oriented OS X groaning under the weight of a tonne of proprietary iPod accessories and FairPlay DRM.)
That represents a remarkable about-face for Sony, which has largely relied on proprietary technologies in the past — a strategy which has worked well in some areas (Blu-ray) but been less successful in others (Memory Stick, MiniDisc and countless others).
Underscoring the point, Stringer demonstrated a "bedside companion" co-developed with Chumby, which can stream a range of Internet content, including photos, music and videos. "Because the device uses an open platform, professional developers and everyday users alike can create applications," Stringer said.
Perhaps Tom Hanks, like the rest of the tech media, was sceptical that Sony would stick to its word.
6 Skype getting seriously multi-platform
Skype has decided to get serious about mobile phones, using CES to launch new versions that run on Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian platforms. While BlackBerry is proving a harder nut to crack, Skype hopes to crack that one eventually as well. By definition, any Skype call on a mobile handset is going to be costlier than on a PC. The interesting thing to observe will be how long it takes before carriers get wise to the presence of Skype and try rorting consumers with excessive charges. If nothing else, that'll give you a good idea of how to avoid it.
7 Stevie Wonder sticking it to touch screens and Apple
I'll freely admit that I'm quite keen to stick it to the iPod, but it never occurred to me that its rancid interface was more or less entirely unusable for the blind until Stevie Wonder pointed it out in a press conference.
“As technology gets smaller and chips become a little cheaper, people should understand the value of the very simple things that can make technology accessible in the real world,” said Wonder.
Given his early adoption of synthesisers and other studio technology, it’s no surprise to discover that Wonder is something of a gadget freak.
“We’re often just comparing gadgets. He’s another gadget guy,” said Mike May, founder and president of audio GPS manufacturer Sendero and a longtime friend of Wonder’s.
“Many times I have come here [to CES], and one of the things that always puzzled me each time was how I could have more accessibility to these different products,” Wonder said.
“I want to encourage all of the various manufacturers to be a part of making technology more accessible. If you can take that a few steps further, you’ll give us the excitement, the pleasure and the freedom of being part of a world we can all share together.”
There have been some improvements in recent years. Apple’s 2008 iPod redesign, for instance, offered larger fonts and audio cues on the iPod Nano, making it an option where previous models had essentially been unusable.
“The iPod is now more accessible to a blind person than ever before, which is a great thing for a person who does not understand why there is so much excitement about it,” Wonder said. “It gives us a sense of how you can really appreciate the significance of the downloading and all those kinds of things.
Designing gadgets for use by the visually impaired doesn’t necessarily mean radical new approaches are needed.
“A lot of times people come up with crazy ideas of what they think blind people need, and it’s not the priority,” said Mark Riccobono, executive director of the Jernigan Institute at the National Federation of the Blind. “It doesn’t reflect the everyday hopes and dreams that we have.”
Often, simple modifications such as additional audio cues and raised buttons can make a device accessible. “The excitement is that many people have made their technology accessible without them realising they were doing it,” Wonder said.
Sometimes, novelty devices can even prove useful; Wonder gave the example of talking clocks. “That gave us a way of getting that information immediately.”
More high-tech changes Wonder would like to see include more channel information on satellite radio, and a vision-free version of services like Shazam which identify music from brief audio snippets.
But when asked what one device he’d like to have enabled for the vision-impaired , Wonder doesn’t have any trouble answering. “A car. I’m waiting for the day when they have all the little things in the road, I can find me a car and drive where I want to. That may be a while away.”
8 Blu-ray getting well established
With the stench of rival HD DVD now just a distant memory, Blu-ray had the whole of 2008 to establish itself as the movie format of choice. And while it didn't manage to overtake DVD, Blu-ray did manage to sell well enough to convince most market watchers that it's a better bet than earlier format failures like MiniDisc. The big development at CES was more players supporting BD Live, which allows interactive features via the internet, though that's still in its infancy (just 21 titles support it so far, according to the Blu-ray Disc Association).
9 Greenpeace identifying the world's greenest monitor
Every other company at CES wanted to rave about its commitment to the environment, but Greenpeace had actually gone to the trouble of assessing their claims. The biggest surprise of the second Electronics Survey was not that Apple declined to participate, but that the product which received the highest score was, of all things, a 24-inch LCD monitor from Lenovo. With a score of 6.9, that demonstrates that size doesn't necessarily matter, though there's still a way to go in making products as minimally damaging as possible. As Greenpeace researcher Casey Harrell put it: "We don't want green products to be a niche product — we want them to be the product."
10 The OhMiBod FreeStyle
The OhMiBod FreeStyle can be simply explained in three words: wireless iPod vibrator. Technically speaking, this wasn't launched at CES, but at the neighbouring Adult Entertainment Expo, which always runs at exactly the same time (I suspect there's a background deal going on so that the bored IT types can spend their evenings in Vegas bars ogling women with improbably plastic chests.) Nonetheless, this is the kind of innovation that's so obvious that you wonder why it took so long, and why designer Suki Dunham hasn't been offered a keynote.
The Top 10 Disappointments
1 The Palm Pre
Palm's new WebOS operating system and Pre phone (both due in the US in the first half of 2009) attracted lots of favourable commentary, but upon closer examination, I can't convince myself that this is anything more than a minor delay in Palm's slow, undignified death. Yes, a phone that can automatically integrate all your contacts, sync over the air with online services like Google Calendar and Contacts and offers a combination of touch-screen interface and keyboard would be nice, but no-one else on the market has managed to get more than one of those elements to work well. Palm is aiming for a combination and BlackBerry mail ease of use, but it's just as likely to offer something as buggy as MobileMe with the interface horror of the BlackBerry Storm.
It's not that the promise of the Pre is disappointing, but it's just that I can't believe Palm will pull it off with style. We've all been burned way too many times over vaporware promises over the years to get excited about something that's preannounced so far in advance, and where the spokesdroids won't let anyone try out the product first-hand.
2 Not enough Android
Smartphone OS Android has the backing of one of the world's most prominent brands (Google), it's an open source product which can be used by anyone, and it's entering into a market where the existing competitors are either hopelessly tied to a single provider (iPhone, BlackBerry), hoping that people realise they're actually in the market (Sybmian) or just plain hopeless (Windows Mobile). Yet despite that, there was an absolute dearth of Android phones at CES. A handful of no-name vendors were showing off non-phone devices running Android, but let's get real people; Linux is plenty good enough for most notebooks. It's decent, affordable phones we want. The market gap is good news for Aussie company Kogan, whose Agora phone was a major talking point, but it still astounds me.
3 No monkey dance from Steve Ballmer
Steve Ballmer took over the pre-CES keynote and did a perfectly competent job; his chronic inability to control his speaking volume is just one of those things we have to accept. But in the absence of anything vaguely resembling an exciting announcement (Windows 7 having already leaked like the Titanic weeks before) and with no celebrities in sight — Aussie comedy rockers Tripod were great, but sadly celebrities they are not — Ballmer needed to do something to entrench himself in the wider consciousness. Microsoft has made plenty of amusing send-up videos in the past, but apparently no-one had the guts to say: "Steve, just dance like a sweaty loon. That's what the public wants."
4 3D is still pretty much rubbish
As well as loading up big time on celebrities and studio executives, Sony sprinkled a selection of 3D transmissions (from, respectively, a Cars short, a US college football game and the forthcoming Dreamworks flick Monsters & Aliens) into its keynote and handed out polarised glasses so we could all watch. The animated movies were relatively impressive, but not to the point where you'd think "that's the only way I'd ever want to watch that". And the football was dire, cheap and cheesy looking. That spells bad news for the numerous "3D-ready" televisions on display. Arguably, that's good news for studios who want consumers to spend even more at the cinema, but I'd be advising you to keep saving your dollars for a few years yet.
5 An apparently compulsory obsession with the economy
During CES, I attended dozens of press briefings. Not a single one managed to begin itself without using some variation on the phrase "These are tough economic times." I think we know that. If I wanted to hear about finance, I'd bore myself stupid at some conference where you have to wear a tie. Agora mastermind Ruslan Kogan summed it up pretty well: "Even though we're in tough economic conditions, innovation is still flourishing. There's still new products coming out." So let's hear about 'em, Mr CEO. You can still sack everyone next week, OK?
6 International is still a dirty word
CES ostentatiously displays the word "International" on its logo, but while there are people attending from every corner of the globe, the fact remains that hardly anyone who's showing off their wares ever gives much thought to selling stuff to anyone who doesn't already live in the USA. The fact that amongst first-world countries they're the ones who have the least money doesn't seem to have registered yet. This is particularly annoying when it comes to internet partnerships, which were all the rage. Yes, it's very nice that you can access Netflix via your device, but if you can't subscribe to Netflix, it's about as much use as an eight-track tape recorder. I'd say try for a global partnership with someone meaningful like Google, but even it tends to put Australia fairly low on the "get this service next" list.
7 Idiots are still paying $2,000 for cables
The most cursory research online will demonstrate that there's no point in spending massive amounts of money on the connections between your devices, and yet Monster Cable can cheerfully introduce $2,000 HDMI cables and get an audience of journalists to clap. Harvey Norman was Monster's top international seller for 2008, so we can't even blame it all on those dumb Americans. No wonder Monster can afford to get celebrities like rapper Ludcaris and singer Diana Ross to rock up for their events. This is the literal definition of "laughing all the way to the bank".
8 Netbook cluelessness
There might have been plenty of new netbooks on display, but it seems that the whole trend of compact computers was in danger of passing the whole industry by. While the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) was happy to predict that netbooks would sell 18 million units around the world in 2009, they were conspicuously absent from its list of the fastest-growing technologies for 2008. That wasn't because of how they sold, but because the organisation didn't bother to track them during the year, having decided early on that they were simply a niche category. D'oh!
9 People acting like Macworld is even vaguely as important
Just before CES, Apple (sans Steve Jobs) made its last appearance at the Macworld trade show and made a lot of dull announcements. Rumours were soon flying that Jobs might show up at CES 2010. Potentially interesting stuff. But let's not delude ourselves that Macworld actually means anything near as much as CES. It's an event that's largely about one company which has a dominant market share in media players and a minority luxury stake in the PC market. CES is about the whole industry. And why would Apple want to come to CES, which has negotiating deals as one of its mean activities? With Apple, negotiation tends to be a rather one-sided process.
10 No booth babes
Booth babes — scantily clad women who serve no other purpose than attracting the attention of passers-by — are an outdated and sexist concept. In these economically desperate times, I'm amazed we didn't see more of them, but CES was pretty much a booth-babe-free zone, even in areas like the automotive displays that can rarely resist an opportunity for a bikini. In a vain attempt to get my booth babes dosage, I ventured once again into the neighbouring Adult Entertainment Expo. As I think the accompanying picture proves, this was also a mistake. A very, very large mistake.