I, Cringely: Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back: Bob’s Predictions for 2004

“I wrote that Linux would continue to give Microsoft fits
(that’s true) and that Microsoft would be forced to compete on
quality. This latter part is hard to call because Microsoft CLAIMS
to be competing on quality, but I think that’s still more marketing
than reality. Overall though, I think I got this one correct.

“I said that Sun would decline further, generally because of the
success of Linux. There is no doubt that this was correct.

“Here is one I got wrong. I predicted that China would
standardize on Linux running on MIPS hardware. I still think the
software side of this is coming since China, Japan and Korea have
committed to joint development of a non-Microsoft operating system,
but I was clearly over-optimistic in terms of timing. I tend to do
that. On the hardware side, I was flat-out wrong. I figured the
Chinese MIPS-compatible Dragon chip would become the standard, but
didn’t take into account its lower performance compared to Intel
and AMD…”

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