Inbound Thinking

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a post covering a handful of items that I was looking forward to. With a year’s worth of new perspective I figured I would revisit each item and update my thoughts. My original comments from last year are provided in block quotes below.

Windows 7 (Sometime in 2009)

I hate Windows Vista. Barely a day goes by that it doesn’t make my technologogy-saturated life more difficult. So I’m really looking forward to the next major version of Windows. I hope that they took time to address all the issues from Vista. Of course this is Microsoft, so that’s probably hoping for too much.

Who could have predicted that Microsoft would actually get a Windows 7 release candidate finished on schedule? Well they did and boy am I glad. I have been running Windows 7 RC on my primary work computer for a few weeks now and I’ve been really pleased. W7 is everything that Vista should have been: It’s fast, intuitive, stable and has some remarkable productivity enhancements. For the first time in years I am not a disgruntled Windows user.

iPhone version 2.0 (June, 2008)

Although I don’t own an iPhone, I absolutely adore them. I would have bought one the day it was released (June 29th, 2007) if the AT&T network weren’t part of the deal. So I am very excited to see what happens with version 2. Will it have 3G, a new design, come in black and white? Probably all of those will happen, but as with most Apple product announcements I love being blindsided by some great features that nobody has dumped on a mac rumor site.

Version 2.0 of the iPhone was not much of a surprise. It was announced at the end of June exactly as expected and the feature set was nearly everything that was predicted. I still love the iPhone yet I won’t buy one because of the network. There’s just too little incentive to move to AT&T when I have Verizon. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a Verizon iPhone in 2010 when the AT&T exclusivity deal expires.

Facebook profile redesign (June, 2008)

I’m excited to see such a major social application unwind the clutter and put good design ahead of customization. I hate MySpace more than anyone, mostly because of the unruly profile pages. Facebook is making a preemptive strike against clutter and moving all the disruptive junk into separate pages or tabs. The timeframe on this one is a little speculative, but the screenshots have been available for some time and release is imminent.

As it turned out, I got to see two major Facebook redesigns in the last year. The first was exactly what I expected, a clean-up of sorts for profile pages. It killed the clutter and I thank them for that. In 2009 we’ve seen a major revamp of the home page with introduction of the Stream, bringing Facebook into spitting-distance of Twitter and FriendFeed.

24 season 7 (January, 2009)

I’ve been on the 24 bandwagon since the first episode, and I miss how entertaining the first seasons were. I think the show was a victim of it’s own success for a few seasons but I’m expecting a return to form with season 7. The writers strike, combined with a major re-working of the plot caused the 2008 season to be scrapped. With all the extra time the writers have had, I think season 7 could be one of the best yet.

I was looking forward to 24, but as part of my 2009 new years resolutions I wanted to watch less TV and 24 didn’t make the cut. I missed the pre-season event “Redemption” and then missed the Sunday night premier of the new season. Since I was so far behind I never even tried to catch up. The season just wrapped up last night and from what I’ve read the finale was a dissapointment. I might watch the season on DVD next year but probably not.