Predictions 2015

Retrospective of predictions 2014.

My mother will master Ubuntu 12.04 - a very cheap OS that allows you to focus on web browsing.

Well not a master but she was able to use it indeed for web-based email, web-based chat, and web searches. There was a complain nevertheless: "there are always updates". Interesting comment. Prompts for updates should IMHO be an easily findable opt-in. Then again 3% of the users think that the OS should ask confirmation for each byte of input/output by default, and that changing it should require to create your own fork of GNU.

Firefox OS will get a ridiculous but historical 2% of share among web users, and I will buy one.

I don't know what the market share of Firefox OS is, and I did not buy one. Very poor hardware is still the only one sold with support for Firefox OS. A camera that I don't regret to use is certainly a must feature for me. Hopefully during 2016 this will change.

Internet Explorer 9- will only matter if you are addressing hardcore dinosaurs. Hopefully jQuery guys will realize of this and will release a half-sized version of jQuery named jQuery 3, that I will not use anyway.

Yes! IE9- does not matter anymore. jQuery guys realized of this: no. Do I care: no.

The only remaining mainstream usage for desktop applications will be accessing USB devices. The rest of the mainstream things will be done through the web. asm.js' utopic but real 1.5x slower than native speed will be a big factor.

Wrong :( WebRTC is, as a matter of fact, still in "release candidate" state. There has not been also enough increase on web-based apps to acknowledge yet that "everything but USB stuff is on the web". ES6 will soon make things easier but I think the resulting apps will not flourish until 2016.

And now predictions 2015:

1. I will write few-to-none new posts on this blog. It feels like there is no point anymore. The situation now is so different. Back in 2009 Microsoft owned our asses, and all but using Windows caused unavoidable frustration. But now mobile _is_ the new personal computing platform, and Microsoft has lost this war by far. Android is the new Windows, and it comes with a first-class web browser. Now if only spreadsheets made on LibreOffice did not suck when opened on Excel...
2. There will be zero new projects made on Adobe Flash.
3. WebRTC will support VP9 and kick ass.
4. Somebody at YouTube will realize that refreshing the page on log-in sucks, and will do that on Ajax.
5. The most interesting OS in the world (Firefox OS) will continue to be shipped only on infra-hardware.
6. Will buy a new battery for my 4 year old laptop, since newer laptops are not really that better.