That was the decade that was
Never mind the New Year, what about the New Decade? We look back on the 2000s and see some of the decade's astonishing changes in technology.
14 December 2009
It's been a busy year, but it's been a busier decade. We had a think about some of the technology changes that have taken place in the last ten years, then took our pick of what we think were the most important.
The iPod
In the 1980s, desktop publishing arrived and within a decade the whole way that print publications are created was totally rewritten. Make no mistake, that's what the iPod and iTunes combination has done for the music industry during this decade. Yes, the iPod's not the only digital music player - and nor was it even the first. It quite possibly isn't the best. But it's by far the most successful. In terms of a combined music (and films, and television) sales and delivery system aimed at portable media, it's really the only horse in town. What's more, it's upended everyone else's thinking too, about how entertainment can be sold, packaged and delivered. Following Apple's success, music and entertainment businesses are transforming how they distribute entertainment, and the CD and DVD could well all but evaporate in the decade to come.
Smart phones
Smart phones - originally called 'device convergence' didn't half get off to a shaky start. Expensive and limited devices that really didn't do much more than a phone didn't gain any real market share. Windows Mobile helped to give us PDAs and combined phones that were also PDAs - they did well enough, but didn't really make an impression on the 'real' phone market, and for the most part were just another device for us to cart around in addition to our normal phones. BlackBerry really got the ball rolling, with a phone that is also an indispensable corporate communications device - which is to say, it has great e-mail. But it wasn't as smart as smart phones needed to be, and Apple changed the name of the game with a phone that was really a mobile computer. A real Web browser, e-mail and synchronised contact information made a solid start, but that's not really much that's new - it was the App Store that changed the name of the game. Whatever you want, 'there's an app for that'. Other phone manufacturers are following suit, with big improvements to the latest Windows Mobile, Android and BlackBerry working hard - but Apple is growing its market share faster than anyone. The real winners are us, who now finally have the smart phone we always wanted.
Operating systems
The last decade has seen four versions of Windows - 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7. Windows 2000 gave us the first unified server/client codebase and some would argue truly solid version of Windows. Windows XP went on to build on that with a version of Windows so solid that, eight years on, people are still hanging onto it. Vista brought an unaccustomed dip to Microsoft's sales figures, with some initial teething problems combined with a crashed economy that resulted in people hanging on to XP - but Windows 7 is doing very nicely, thank you. And anyone who thinks that Windows hasn't really come on much should go back to Windows 98 or Me for a few weeks and see how they feel! On the Apple front, the return of Steve Jobs as leader saw OS 9 consigned to the bin and a ground-up rewrite - based on Next Step and FreeBSD - was launched in the shape of OS X. It's been through eight versions (Kodiak - the public beta, Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard) and is a solid Unix-based OS. Linux continues to go from strength to strength. Based on Unix, it's now not only a well-established server and desktop OS, it's built into many devices we use every day - such as SatNavs and network storage devices.
Social networking
Writer Douglas Adams said: "First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII - and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realised it's a brochure." Sadly, Adams died in 2001, so didn't see one of this decade's real growth areas - social networking. Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace and so on have changed the Web from being 'a brochure' to being 'a community' - one that millions of people use every day. Social networking is only really in its infancy, but already companies are using websites such as Twitter to advertise jobs, products and services in preference to more traditional means. People keep in touch by Facebook and share their creations via YouTube and Flickr. And finally the Internet became what we've always been told it would be: a community.
Firefox
Another game changer of the last decade was Firefox. The name of the game was the browser wars, and quite frankly it was over. Game, set and match to Microsoft. Opera struggled bravely on, but even Apple preinstalled Internet Explorer for Mac. Firefox changed all of that - delivering a browser that was fast, open (allowing plugins) and secure, Firefox caught the imagination of many and accrued an impressive market share. More importantly, Firefox did something that Microsoft's browser hadn't - it was standards-compliant, a stance that has since not only been taken by other browser developers but also Microsoft itself. It's really to Firefox that we have to tip our hat and say 'thanks' because we no longer have the embarrassment of websites that say 'this site is designed for...' on them. Microsoft, which had parked the development of Internet Explorer as being essentially pointless, was forced by customers migrating away to take Web standards and browser features more seriously. Today, the browser wars are back and to the good of all, with some excellent browsers in the shape of Internet Explorer 8, Firefox itself, Safari, Opera and Google Chrome.
Broadband and wireless networking
At the start of this decade, most of us connected to the Internet via phone lines, using modems that crawled along, took ages to connect and stopped us receiving telephone calls. At the end of the decade, the modem is almost a thing of the past. Most of us connect by broadband and many of us connect wirelessly wherever we are. Although the Internet is still far from global, it's getting there and all of us now view an Internet connection as a utility that we expect anywhere civilised to offer. This, more than anything else, has enabled Web-based services such as iTunes, the BBC iPlayer and Internet radio to flourish, and gives us the very real possibility that most of our entertainment will soon come over the Internet, not via the television and radio networks.
Flat-screen monitors
Sat on our desks ten years ago was a large, low-resolution CRT monitor that went through electricity like a shark through krill. We'd squint and peer at 800x600 displays if we were lucky. The CRT is now all but dead, with LCD and LED taking over wholesale - giving us bigger, high-resolution displays that don't result in environmental disaster when we come to dump them. It's also given the laptop market a boost, so higher resolution screens on decent-sized laptops have become the norm.
So, as we enter 2010, we enjoy the Internet almost everywhere, carry low-cost mobile computers, receive a growing amount of our entertainment digitally and have websites that work (mostly) in the same way from browser to browser. That's good progress. Roll on the next decade.
