And, we have much to be thankful for. Yes, in addition to water, food, shelter, transportation and healthcare (really ponder those), we also got a lot of really good tech that got measurably better over the last 360 or so days — the year in tech was much, much better than many are willing to give it credit for.
If you want to believe that 2013 was full of disappointing tech, Christopher Mims can top up your nearly-empty glass with vapid contempt and limp insight.
All in, 2013 was an embarrassment for the entire tech industry and the engine that powers it—Silicon Valley. Innovation was replaced by financial engineering, mergers and acquisitions, and evasion of regulations. Not a single breakthrough product was unveiled… If it’s in the nature of progress to move in leaps, there are necessarily lulls in between.
And, analysis was replaced by sweeping, thorough-going vapidity — impotent trickles of stupid. Fundamentally, progress is an endless battle for inches and the leaps ahead are really more about bundling those inches together into feet, yards and miles.
That is the 2007 iPhone in a nutshell, not to mention the radically improved iPhone 5s we have today. Moreover, Android is a glorious agglomeration of inches — vision and innovation are about those seeing inches differently.
Without doubt, a $100 unsubsidized burner Android phone is easier to use and more powerful than the PCs of yesteryear and 2013 really topped up that glass.
Let’s shelve our collective tech inferiority complex and cyncism masks for a moment, and really consider how far we’ve come in the last year. The power of an iPhone 5s, the lightness of an iPad Air, the helpfulness of a Moto X, the sensation of Google Glass, the optics of Lumia 1020, the brute force of a Mac Pro, the magic of SONOS surround sound, the brilliance of Hue lighting, the immediacy of the Pebble, and dozens of other amazing, life-enhancing developments just in the space I cover over the last twelve odd months leap immediately, optimistically, to mind — Rene Ritchee, iMore
So, yes, the year in tech 2013 was pretty darned good and I’m looking forward more in 2014…
What’s your take?
Via Daring Fireball