I think the tradition of making predictions of the future near the turn of the New Year is vacuous and stupid. That’s why I’m planning on making predictions for the first time here on my blog- “vacuous and stupid” is my middle name 😉

Without further ado, here are my predictions for the next twelve to eighteen months. Just like this website, most of the content is technically-oriented, but other weird stuff creeps in as well

• Apple will release a new iPhone supporting G3 (faster mobile networking). Unfortunately, it will still be the world’s most expensive disposable phone as Apple will persist in making the battery impossible for the consumer to replace. Another 15 million iPhones will be sold during 2008 despite this and the fact that there are innumerable other, more capable phones out there,
• Apple will announce a new ultra-mobile PC: it will essentially be a giant iPhone, with a more complete OS X user interface. It will have no keyboard (although it will have the option to add one), will use a touch sensitive screen about 8″ x 5″ in size, and will weigh somewhere between 1.5 and 2 pounds. It will cost about $1,500 at launch, and may actually have a user battery that can be replaced by the owner. There will be inevitable comparisons to the Newton
• the tiger that killed the one boy and injured two others will turn out to have been provoked by the victims themselves. The “victims” will be shown to have either entered the enclosure and/or have released the tiger as part of a pre-Christmas prank. The boys parents will still sue the San Francisco Zoo because in America personal responsibility is a dead concept and litigation is a national sport
• Microsoft will release Vista Service Pack 1, and it will make using Vista significantly more pleasurable. The next version of Windows will be announced with a target ship date of mid-2009. There is almost zero chance of it actually shipping by that date
• Starcraft 2 will be delayed until 2009
• Duke Nukem Forever will not be released
• The format war between HD DVD and Blu Ray will be resolved. Unfortunately, almost no one will care
• SSD (flash memory “drives”) with a capacity of 32 GB will drop in price to approximately $600
• there won’t be a single new successful (I.E.: > 500,000 paid month-to-month subscribers) massively multi-player role playing game released during 2008. Only one or two of the new games released during the year will survive for more than twelve months
• Stock market analysts will begin to recognize that Google has a massively over-inflated value. There will be a downward price adjustment in Google stock of over 20%, making it only over-valued by a factor of about 50:1

I expect that my track record for “correct” predictions will be at least as good as that demonstrated by most tabloid telepaths..