At this time of year I like to look back over the past 365 days and pick out the stories that really got my attention. Now if you have something that you think that should be on this list, leave a comment with your thoughts. Now on to the top stories of the year:
It Was The Best Of Times For Apple: New iPads, new iPhones, a stunningly amazing 5K iMac, the much rumored Apple Watch got announced (though it won’t ship until next year), it was a busy year for Apple. All of this was topped off by Tim Cook being named CNN‘s CEO of the year, the Financial Times‘ Person of the Year and being a Time Magazine Person of the Year runner up. Oh, they also added $200 billion to their market cap after splitting the stock 7 for 1. Not to mention that a whole lot of people activated iDevices over Christmas, in the process dominating every other mobile phone vendor.
Samsung Gets Smoked: Life isn’t as good for Samsung. They are just getting hammered as evidenced by this BGR report that illustrates falling profits and declining handset sales. Barring some sort of turnaround in Q4…. Which I don’t see coming given that Apple had a ton of iDevices activated over the holidays…… Samsung may be in deep trouble going into 2015.
Rising From The Dead: BlackBerry is a company I’ve written off more than once. But I am going to stop doing that as they have clearly pulled off the Lazarus act of the year. The Passport won my award for best smartphone this year and the Classic will stop people from defecting to other phone brands. That will give companies a reason to buy BES 12. Not to mention that their QNX operating system will be popping up in cars in 2015 led by Ford and Apple’s CarPlay. All of that shows that there’s a lot of reason to watch this company as they are clearly alive and kicking.
It Was The Worst Of Times For Apple: Whether it was offering up a free U2 LP and shoving it onto every iDevice whether you wanted it or not, a buggy iOS update that bricked iPhones, major WiFi issues with OS X Yosemite that still are not resolved, or celebs getting their iCloud accounts hacked which forced an embarrassed Apple to up their game when it comes to security after blaming the celebs for the issue and potentially knowing about holes in iCloud that could have led to this sort of issue months beforehand, it wasn’t all good for Apple. And that doesn’t include my recent run of bad luck with hard drives in my MacBook Pro that indicate a systemic quality issue with the MacBook Pro highlighted by a lawsuit over faulty graphics adapters in MacBooks that Apple has failed to address. Apple will really need to have a stellar 2015 to make some of their users, myself included, to forget about what happened in 2014.
Computer Security Becomes Top Of Mind For The Average Person: Poodle, Heartbleed and Shellshock made computer security everybody’s problem this year and not just the problem of your IT department. As we become more connected, these sorts of problems will increasingly affect you in very negative ways. Because of that, you can fully expect this to be a top story in 2015 unfortunately.
Comcast Customer Service Hits New Lows: Comcast really outdid themselves this year with some high profile customer service debacles. They even managed to end the year with an absolutely epic customer service fail. The company known for having the worst customer service around enters 2015 with their customers being forced to actively record each and every interaction they have with the company. Take it from me, when your customers feel compelled to record every customer interaction because your customer service sucks, you have a serious problem that you need to fix. The question is, will Comcast actually do something about their customer service woes?
Wearables Get Real: The Apple Watch was likely the best example of wearable devices becoming mainstream. It seemed that everyone and their dog had an offering of some sort in 2014. We will have to see if this momentum continues in 2015. The first big test? What’s the reaction to the Apple Watch when it finally gets into the hands of users?
2014 – The Year Of The Hacker: Sony Pictures and The Canada Revenue Agency are two examples of large organizations who were the victims of high profile hacks this year. This is a trend that will not only continue into 2015, but will likely become much worse of a problem. You may want to take pity on the guy responsible for network security in your office. You may also want to worry about how well the businesses that you deal with are able to protect your personal information from hackers.
Uber: This company got into all sorts of trouble this year. Examples include Surge pricing during the hostage incident in Sydney as well as an app that sent all sorts of data home without your permission for purposes only they understand. As a result, Uber quickly became my least favorite company this year. Expect the bad behavior to continue from Uber in 2015, along with jurisdictions all over the planet trying to eradicate them off the face of the Earth.
Bye Bye Hailo: Retreating from North America this year was Hailo. They really coudn’t make a go of it here in North America because of services like Lyft and Uber who don’t play by the same rules as Hailo who operates as a licensed taxi service. That’s very unfortunate as I really thought that they were going to make a difference here.
Rogers Reboots: Rogers CEO Guy Laurence really wants to reshape the company. So he’s got a plan to reinvent their customer service and they also made a move to dominate hockey broadcasting in Canada. Not to mention that they are rolling out LTE Advanced nationwide. It’s clear that Rogers is going into 2015 looking to convince Canadians that they are the choice when it comes to telco services. I’ll be watching to see if they succeed or stumble.
Telus Wins Hearts And Minds: I regularly bash the big three wireless carriers in Canada. But perhaps it’s time to start calling them the big two as Telus is pulling away from Rogers and Bell by being distinctly different. I say that because in 2014, Telus had very few complaints from customers according to The Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services, and they appear to be best able to attract and retain customers better than the other two. Clearly it’s not just their cute ads that a fueling this. Telus is doing something right and Rogers and Bell will have to take notice.
Reviews, Reviews, And More Reviews: This year was a busy one for me as I did more product review than ever before. 86 of them to be exact. That includes doing reviews of cars from newcomers (at least to this blog) Hyundai and Mazda along with reviews of Chrysler and Volvo products. Plus I did the first annual IT Nerd Awards, which was very fun to do. Without giving too much away, you can expect to see much more of that in 2015.
The IT Nerd On Radio: I did several radio appearances this year which is a huge departure for me. But that likely had something to do with the fact that the traffic to my blog has almost doubled year over year which gives me a much higher profile. That’s something that I think may continue next year.
Speaking of traffic, here’s the top five most popular stories of the year based on my statistics:
Review: Asus Transformer Pad TF103C (Model K010)
Review: RingCredible For iOS Version 2.3
How To Fix “The Disc Can’t Be Burned, Because The Device Failed To Calibrate The Laser Power Level For This Media” Error On Your Mac
Review: Rogers NextBox 3.0
Review: Canon PIXMA MG7120 All-In-One Printer
Some things really jump out at me. First, a lot of people came to my blog looking for a review on the Asus Transformer Pad, Rogers NextBox 3.0, RingCredible, and the Canon all-in-one printer. Clearly those products are top of mind with my readers. Plus I also note that Apple MacBook Pro users still appear to have problems with their DVD-RW drives. Another thing to note is that some of these posts are a year or two old, so it clearly means that my posts have long term relevance.
Another thing that I noted from looking at my stats is that people from 185 countries visited my blog in 2014. Most visitors came from The United States, but Canada & U.K. were not far behind. That’s amazing to me.
Here’s to 2015 as for better or worse, the tech world is really going to get very interesting. And I will be here to comment on it.
Happy New year!
