The 15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007 - Chaiyo Version

The 15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007
Sumber:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140583-page,1-c,techindustrytrends/art
icle.html

#15. Box Unpopuli: Amazon Unbox

Karena gak pernah make. Y audah.
Lagian di indonesia lemot en alat semacam perekam video/TV gitu gak laku
di Indonesia. Jadinya. Gak masuk hitungan.

Yes, entertainment on demand is the new black. But Amazon's video
delivery service left us mostly blue. The interface is cluttered and
ugly--lacking both the simplicity and sophistication of the Apple iTunes
Store or NetFlix's Watch Instantly. The selection is weird, and
searching is cumbersome. For example, you can rent ($3.99) or buy
($14.99) a digital copy of Ocean's 13, but a search for "Ocean's 11"
turns up an ancient concert video from the old prog-rock group Yes. You
can send Unbox movies to your TiVo, but you have to wait for them to
fully download before you can watch them--or 2 to 4 hours for a
standard-length movie over a cable modem connection. Not exactly what
we'd call 'on demand'.

When Unbox debuted in late 2006, we were willing to cut it some slack.
After all, we're talking about Amazon, the guys who put the e in
e-commerce. We thought by now they'd have figured out how on-demand
video is supposed to work. We were wrong.

#14. Screwed up to the Max: Municipal WiMax
Baru di developed di Aceh.
Tp kl dilihat dari kemampuannya, bakal sukses digelar di Indonesia,
karena jangkauannya yg luas, dan infrastruktur kabel di indonesia yg
sangat jelek. Salahkan T****m karena mahalnya dan KKN nya.

It sounded like a great idea: big cities would offer wide-area wireless
Internet access as part of their infrastructure, the same as roads,
traffic lights, and sewers. A cheap, fast Net connection anywhere within
city limits, 24/7. What's not to love?Then public and private WiMax
ventures started dropping like flies. Sprint and Clearwire called off
their plans to build a nationwide WiMax network, after Sprint CEO Gary
"bet the company on WiMax" Forsee got canned last October. Earlier this
year EarthLink bailed on its offer to foot the bill for a Wi-Fi network
in San Francisco. Similar city-funded projects have bought the farm in
Chicago; Milwaukee; and Anchorage, Alaska. Even Silicon Valley--arguably
the most Net-centric community this side of Mars--has had a hard time
getting its WiMax plans off the ground. The big reason? Cost. Unwiring
the whole valley would cost an estimated $200 million, or $133K a square
mile. SV geeks can always park their cars near the Googleplex in
Mountain View, whose wireless network covers 12 square miles. As for the
rest of us, well, we can hope and pray that the search titans win the
FCC auction for the 700-MHz wireless spectrum next January, and then
decide to open their network to the worl d. Does Google have to do
everything?

#13. Web 2 Woe: Social Networks

Di Indonesia yg laku cm friendster. Dan hanya friendster yg akan
bertahan. Yg laen, numpang lewat doank.

Memo to Badoo, Bebo, Catster, Dogster, Facebook, Faceparty, Flickr,
Flixster, Hi5, Hyves, Imbee, Imeem, MySpace, Mixi, Pizco, Pownce,
Takkle, Twitter, Virb, Vox, Xanga, Xing, Zoomr ... and the 3,245,687
other social networks clamoring for our limited attention spans: We got
it. Making connections between friends is cool. Sharing photos and
videos, even cooler. But it's all so... 2006. Haven't you got anything
new to show us?Here's a safe bet: Two years from now, 90 percent of
these networks will be gone and their founders will be back working at
Starbucks. I'll have a double mocha frappucino, please.

#12. Just Another Oxymoron: Internet Security
Di Indonesia, yg di khawatirkan cm virus buatan lokal. Bull shit ama
virus luar. Gak ada yg takut. Virus lokal yg bikin keder, karena
antivirus yg beredar buatan luar semua.. Jadi gak ada yg bs ngilangin
virus lokal.

In 2007, the words "Internet security" joined the ever-growing list of
self-canceling phrases, alongside "business intelligence,"
"Congressional ethics," and "Microsoft Works." This year, bot herders
proved they could harness enough zombie PCs to take down an entire
country's infrastructure for a month. Estonia eventually recovered, but
our notion of Net invulnerability hasn't.

According to McAfee's Virtual Criminology Report, some 120 governments
are actively engaged in Web espionage and cyber assaults. Meanwhile,
private criminals used the Storm worm to created a botnet for hire
containing millions of zombies--enough to take down a major network. And
while the FBI's Operation Bot Roast nailed a handful of domestic bot
herders, that leaves several thousand more to go, most of them living
beyond the Feds' reach. Three-quarters of cyber attacks in 2007
originated outside the U.S., according to Symantec's most recent
Internet Security Threat Report.

As with global warming, there's plenty of blame to go around--for
everybody from developers of insecure software to home users who
blithely log on without inoculating their PCs. Let's hope they get more
of a clue in 2008.

#11. Singing an Old Familiar Zune: Microsoft Zune Microsoft's Zune
Microsoft ??? Pasti mahal. Dijamin gak laku dan gak dilirik. Ngedenger
nya aja pasti sinonim dgn mahal & berbayar premium. No way... MP4
Player, buatan cina yg 300-400 rebu per 2 GB, yg masih laku. Tahun 2008,
dipastikan yg ukuran 4 GB yg dari cina/taiwan yg jd primadona di pasar
MP4 Player.

Microsoft got a chance to do things right with its "iPod Killer" in
2007. And Zune 2.0 was certainly an improvement--offering 80GB of
storage instead of 30GB, wireless syncing, improved touch controls, and
a choice of Nano-like 8GB players in a variety of bright colors
(Pepto-Bismol pink, anyone?). But Microsoft failed to lose the Zune's
proprietary DRM scheme or remove all its restrictions on wireless music
sharing (you can share songs with other nearby Zune users, but they can
only listen to them three times before the songs go poof).

We're not the only ones disappointed in the Zune. According to the NPD
Group, Microsoft still lags behind Sandisk and Creative Labs in market
share for portable media players. And for every Zune Microsoft sells,
Apple sells 30 iPods. Remember: You can't kill an iPod if you can't get
close to it.

#10. Is Anyone Listening?: Wireless Carriers
Wireless... Gak laku di Indonesia. Lewat 3G/HSDPA, mahal banget. Lewat
wifi, cm ada di mall en bayar. Dial up lelet. Semua nya sucks... Tahun
2008, wireless masih hopeless...

Today's cell phone hardware is wildly innovative--and we don't mean just
the Apple iPhone. Other companies--LG, Samsung, HTC, and Nokia--have all
come out with handsets that are really more like hip pocket computers.

But innovative wireless service providers? Few and far between. Voice
call quality still sucks, high-speed data networks are still scarce, and
the companies still want too big a chunk of our wallets ($2.50 for a
20-second ring tone--exsqueeze me?). Worse, the inability to easily
switch U.S. carriers but keep your phone is grating.

#9. Sorry, We Already Gave: Office 2007
Microsoft's Office Pro 2007
No comment. Masih sangat tidak di rekomendasikan. Sangat setuju deh,
buat apa migrasi ke office 2007.

Many of us spent a decade learning how to use Microsoft Office. So now
that we finally have it all down, Microsoft changes almost everything
about the interface in 2007, and not for the better. Instead of
simple-if-prosaic toolbars, Office 2007 serves up a jumble of confusing
icons known as the 'Ribbon.'

Longtime PC World contributor Robert Luhn, now editor in chief of
DrBicuspid.com, says the new version was a stumble backwards. "Scrambled
interface, incompatibility with old macros, but hey, I do get in-context
spell checking," he says. "Is that worth the $239 upgrade? Me thinks
not."

Overall, we liked the added support for XML and online collaboration
tools when we reviewed Office 2007 late last year. But Ribbon schmibbon.
We'll take the classic menus, please--even if we have to spend $30 for
an add-in program to get them back.

#8. Needs To Change Its Spots: Apple "Leopard" OS 10.5
Apple, gak laku di Indonesia. Coret dari daftar. Iphone yg paling saya
suka tahun ini. Semua handphone lain terlihat kaya barang usang....

Maybe we just got spoiled by the iPod and iPhone, but the glow came off
Steve Job's halo after this feline fleabag debuted. Within days of its
release last October, Mac users reported dozens of problems with the new
OS, some more serious than others.

Among the many: Wireless connections that slowly petered away,
administrative logins that mysteriously disappeared, and a disturbing
tendency to nuke data when moving it between two drives if the
connection is interrupted.

Worse, a security bug that was fixed in OS 10.4 in March 2006 resurfaced
in Leopard, according to Symantec. The Apple Mail vulnerability allows
malicious attachments to execute code. German security researchers
discovered that Leopard came with its firewall turned off, leaving users
vulnerable to attack. Adding insult to injury, some upgraders even
reported a Windows-like Blue Screen of Death when upgrading from
previous Mac OSs.

In mid-November, Apple released an update to Leopard that fixed some of
the bugs, including the firewall glitch. Repairing Apple's reputation,
however, may take slightly longer.

#7. Cannot be Completed as Dialed: Voice Over IP
Disini gak berkembang. Wong orang indonesia males bgt...

Here's a recipe for disaster: Have the market leader in your industry
sued by three of the biggest telecom companies on the planet. Have
second-tier players go belly up overnight, leaving thousands of business
customers without any phone service. Add in a healthy dose of security
vulnerabilities, and bake at 450 degrees until crispy.

Any way you slice it, 2007 was a crappy year for VoIP. Vonage spent most
of the year fighting off patent infringement suits from Verizon, Sprint
Nextel, and AT&T. (It has tentatively settled with all three, but not
before agreeing to fork out payments of $39 million to $120 million
apiece.) SunRocket simply disappeared last summer, leaving thousands of
customers in the lurch.

#6. Un-Neutral: The Broadband Industry
Broadband...
Mudah2an skrg tambah murah. Secara gue pake speedy skrg..

Remember those halycon days when you paid $40 to $60 a month for
"unlimited" broadband service and it actually was unlimited? Kiss those
days goodbye. In 2007 we learned that some of the largest ISPs in the
country--Comcast, Cox, Qwest, Cablevision, and Charter among
them--throttle or otherwise interfere with BitTorrent traffic on the
sly. Comcast denied it at first, then admitted to "traffic shaping" to
discourage bandwidth-sucking peer-to-peer users. Now it's being sued by
angry customers. Suddenly the whole Net Neutrality argument doesn't seem
like such a bad idea.

Meanwhile, all the major telecom providers who blithely handed their
bitstreams over to the NSA without a subpoena are now demanding
retroactive immunity for the deed. Whose bits are they, anyway?

#5. The Great, The Bad, The Ugly: Apple iPhone
Iphone,is da best. Thank god, iphone telah jatuh ke bumi..
Semua HP yg laen terlihat usang... Sialnya, itu jg termasuk hp gue :(

Yes, we know. Sliced bread only wishes it were as great as the iPhone.
And aside from minor flaws like a tiny touch keyboard and lack of Flash
support, the phone itself is pretty terrific. But AT&T's broadband
service? Definitely second-rate. And if you want to switch to a more
reliable or faster carrier, you have to take your chances with the
hackers.

The $600 price tag--which soon dropped by $200 and then was followed by
a $100 quasi-rebate--didn't help. "I think the biggest debacle of 2007
is the iPhone pricing bait and switch," says Peggy Watt, a PC World
contributing editor and professor of journalism at Western Washington
University. "People do expect tech prices to drop, but not as quickly as
the iPhone did. Apple's response was pretty lame, too; a partial credit
that couldn't be used for a lot of popular items (such as iTunes)."

Worse, those who did try to open their iPhones to other carriers or
third-party applications found themselves owners of $600 iBricks when
Apple tweaked the firmware to lock them out.

Memo to Apple: It's time to treat iPhones for what they really
are--pocket computers with phone functions built in--and open them up
the world. Just a thought.

#4. In a Sorry State: Yahoo
Say goodbye buat yahoo, kecuali YM & emailnya yg gue pake. Untuk 2 hal
tsb, makasih berat. Yg lainnya... Maap2 aja deh..

We can't say we really expected much out of Yahoo in 2007. Giving CEO
Terry Semel the boot was probably a good thing--especially after his
$230 million compensation package came to light. Installing the original
Yahoo, Jerry Yang, as head honcho also seems like a smooth move, even if
the company seems permanently stuck in the number two position behind
Google.

Yet there's one area where Yahoo can lay claim to being number one:
creating political prisoners. At least three times over the past five
years, information supplied by Yahoo to the Bejiing government has led
to the incarceration of Chinese dissidents.

This year, Yahoo executives admitted they'd lied to Congress when they
claimed not to know why the Chinese demanded their subscriber data. Yang
and general counsel Michael Callahan were forced to deliver a humbling
public apology in front of a Congressional committee. Shortly
thereafter, the company settled a suit brought by two of the dissidents'
families.

Not so smooth.

#3. The Anti-Social Network: Facebook Beacon
Facebook... Gak laku di indonesia. Coret dari daftar...

We have to give props to Facebook for stealing the social networking
spotlight from MySpace this year. But once it got up on stage, Facebook
laid an egg. For example, opening up the Facebook platform to
third-party developers was inspired. Now, six months later, those
viral-to-the-point-of-influenza Facebook apps are mostly just
irritating. (For the 27th time: No, I do not want to spam everyone in my
network with another movie quiz, thank you. Now go away.)

The introduction of Facebook's Beacon advertising program was more than
disappointing--it was disturbing. Suddenly, anything you purchased on
Amazon, Overstock, Fandango or three dozen other sites would be
broadcast to your Facebook friends. Worse, even when you were logged
out, Facebook still gathered the information, though the company says it
didn't use the data.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized and offered subscribers easier ways to
opt out of Beacon, but the damage was already done, says Richard
Laermer, principal at RLM PR in New York and author of Punk Marketing.

"The idea behind Beacon is fascinating, but the fact that it was being
done for subscribers by someone else was less than cool," he says. "It's
like me fishing in your trash can for your store receipts (you haven't
spotted me yet?) and then telling other people what you've bought. Not
illegal, but oh so creepy."

How much damage has Beacon done to Facebook's rep? "Their PR value just
went down about 40 percent," he adds.

#2. What Is It Good For: The High-Def Format War
HD war ? Masih belum laku di indonesia.
Satu syarat spy bs laku : HARUS BISA DIBAJAK AMA ORANG INDONESIA....

February 2007: Sony declares its Blu-ray the winner of the hi-def format
wars.

April 2007: Toshiba announces its HD DVD player is the first to sell
more than 100,000 units.

July 2007: Blockbuster Video says it will carry only Blu-ray discs in
more than 1400 of its retail outlets.

August 2007: Paramount and DreamWorks announce exclusive support for the
HD DVD format.

September 2007: God help us, a third HD format has emerged: HD VMD
(Versatile Multilayer Disc).

Enough already.

Did we learn nothing from VHS vs. Betamax, CD-R vs. CD-RW, DVD-A vs.
SACD, and so on down the line? At least the warring DVD camps worked
out a compromise in the mid-90s that allowed everyone to profit from the
new movie format (though it took them a while). Not so in HD land, where
a take-no-prisoners attitude on both sides has left consumers cold. It
will be a snowy day in Video Hell before we'll put our money down on
either format.

#1. No Wow, No How: Windows Vista
YUHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Gue setuju banget...
Say o to vista..
Lbh nyebelin..
Lbh bikin capek...
Lbh bikin bankrut
En bikin elo minum obat sakit kepala yg banyak...

Hidup windows XP...

Five years in the making and this is the best Microsoft could do?

It's not that Vista is awful. The integrated security and parental
controls are nice, and the Aero interface is as whizzy as it gets.
Searching and wireless networking are much faster and easier than under
XP.

It's just that Vista isn't all that good. Many of the innovations the
operating system was supposed to bring--like more efficient file and
communications systems--got tossed overboard as Microsoft struggled to
get the OS out the door, some three years after it was first promised.
Despite its hefty hardware requirements, Vista is slower than XP.

When it debuted last January, incompatibilities were rampant--in part
because hardware and software makers didn't feel any urgency to revamp
their products to work with the new OS. The user account controls that
were supposed to make users feel safer just made them feel irritated.
And at $399 ($299 upgrade) for Windows Ultimate, we couldn't help
feeling more than a little gouged.

No wonder so many users are clinging to XP like shipwrecked sailors to a
life raft, while others who made the upgrade are switching back. And
when the fastest Vista notebook PC World has ever tested is an Apple
MacBook Pro, there's something deeply wrong with the universe.

We have no doubt Vista will come to dominate the PC landscape, if only
because it will become increasingly hard to buy a new machine that
doesn't have it pre-installed. And that's disappointing in its own
right.

PC World contributing editor Dan Tynan used to be disappointed, now he
tries to be bemused.

Thanks buat Dan atas tulisannya..
Sorry, di copy paste tanpa permisi..