This article is more than 1 year old

The Reg's review of 2014: Naked JLaw selfies, Uber and monkey madness

Put it on a stick and 'cheesie'

Things, Glassholes and Julian Assange

The internet wanted it so much in 2013 it was wishing it to happen. In 2014 it did happen. Sort of. What? Smart watches, from Apple and Microsoft.

Only the most diehard of fanbois could love what was Cook-ed up with the Apple Watch, which was nothing like the mock ups or hype had suggested it would be: a wristable in a variety of styles and finishes, it will be controlled from a small dial and features a large screen for sending and receiving messages, making calls, recording fitness data, with Siri loaded for voice search.

But it relies on the latest iPhone to get online and to send and receive data. In other words: the Apple Watch is an iPhone accessory. Also it has crap battery life - one day’s charge, Cook admitted under some journo pressing. All that for $349 - plus the cost of that iPhone.

Apple Watch

An expensive add-on to your expensive iPhone

Disappointment, too, for Redmond fans waiting to smote fanbois: at least the Apple Watch looked good. Microsoft’s Band will only attract other computer and outdoors types, happy hiking up Mount Rainer or yomping across a muddy Mitcham Common.

More wrap-around specs than Rolex, Microsoft’s black band also collects your workout data while being able to tell the time and is reckoned to have 48-hours battery life. Like the Apple Watch, Band needs a phone to get online but unlike the Apple Watch it connects to phones other than the one from its maker - so it works with iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices.

Unperturbed the fate of Glass, Google released Android Wear - a version of Android smart watches and fitness trackers but the company’s vision was bigger.

Hoping to put cars on the internet of things, Google also officially came out with its idea for the driverless car. Google has been working on this since 2010 but it was in 2014 when the firm revealed electric automobiles lacking a steering wheel, accelerator or brake pedal and featuring instead a screen showing the passengers’ chosen route. Google said it’s building a fleet of 100 prototypes.

Pressure to realize IoT came as the engine for most recent paradigm shift - tablets - seemed to be running out steam those in IT searched for new growth. Tablet sales in 2014 slowed substantially - 7.2 per cent versus 52.5 per cent in 2013.

Tablets reached saturation point: those who’d already bought a tablet weren’t about to buy a second. Smartphones were the thing - taking over the role of the touchy device - while there was a return of the laptop form factor: Chromebook shipments jumped 67 per cent with people flirting once more with PCs.

Julian Assange's sofa-surfing odyssey

Blonde Wikileaker Julian Assange played ringmaster to a bizarre media circus in August, when he told the world’s press his two-years’ sofa surfing at the Ecuadorian embassy in London was coming to an end. According to Assange, he’d be leaving the embassy “soon” but declined to say when. He’s been there dodging extradition to Sweden to face questions over two cases of sexual assault.

After two years in the Embassy, Sky News reckoned he was suffering problems that included “a heart condition, a chronic lung complain, bad eye sight and high blood pressure.” Assange reckoned he wouldn’t be leaving the embassy for these reasons. As November rolled into town a court in Sweden rejected his appeal to have the detention order set aside and with Christmas on the horizon Assange, it transpired, wouldn’t be leaving the embassy for any reason.

Assange

Soon to appear in cast-bronze statue form

In the meantime, those not among the Ecuadorian embassy staff in London may get to see Assange in statue form: Italian sculptor Davide Dormino started crowd-funding a work called Anything to Say, comprised of statues of Assange and fellow leakers Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning standing on chairs.

The work is “not a simple homage to individuals but to the importance of freedom of speech,” according to the Kickstarter campaign. Organisers need £100,000 to cast the trio in brass with the project receiving Saint Assange’s blessing.

Through a Google Glass darkly

A year of ballooning growth and profits in Google’s core business almost distracted our attention from Glass, Google’s Android-powered eye ware.

I say “almost”.

Mountain View’s wearable tech project struggled in the wider world. Glassholes retained their status as social outcasts, sticking out like a sore thumb in a crowd, prompting physical abuse and threats from fellow humans, and earning the ire of film studios, cinema chains and officials.

Developers, the canaries in the coal mine, starting abandoning Glass but the tongues really started to wag tongues when uber Hole Sergy Brin was snapped at a Silicon-Valley red-carpet event minus his Android googles - the first time in two years he’d not flaunted a pair.

Now, it seems, Texas Instruments is even giving up on Glass. Step up Intel, desperate for growth in mobile computing, and now reported as the chipmaker for Google’s next generation of Glass.

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like