2019 predictions in review
A look back at the past year. Jason Snell reports
The best part about making predictions as a member of the press is that almost nobody has a long memory. You predict the future, but by the time the evidence against you has collected, everyone’s moved on to reading your new predictions for the next big thing. It’s quite a racket, or at least, it will be until someone invents Nostalgia.
Not me, though. Every year around this time I make a combination of predictions and wishes for the next 12 months. But before I do that, I have to take stock
and look back at the year just gone by – and how my predictions and hopes for 2019 fare in the cold light of a December morning.
iPhone pricing, iPad advances
The big news a year ago was that Apple had announced it was going to miss its forecast for iPhone sales during the Christmas quarter. So we went into 2019 knowing that Apple was going to have to find a way to turn around its iPhone business. My hope at the time was pinned largely on Apple changing its pricing strategy for the iPhone, and that’s largely what happened.
By making the iPhone XR’s successor the ‘mainstream’ iPhone – the iPhone 11 – and dropping
its price, Apple changed the perceived starting price of buying into the iPhone ecosystem. It helped. While we didn’t get a new iPhone SE based on the iPhone 8 as I hoped in 2018, it sounds like that may happen early on in 2020.
Surprisingly, I didn’t have a lot on my agenda for actual iPhone hardware features. But there was this: “The one area where Apple needs to keep pushing iPhone hardware design is, of course, the camera.” And that’s exactly what Apple did, with great success.
My iOS 13 wish list items were a mixed bag, but I got some of what I was hoping for: external storage support and improvements to shortcuts among them. Keep in mind that one of the big narratives of the autumn of 2018 was that the new iPad Pro provided laptop power,
but that it couldn’t take full advantage of it because of the limitations of iOS 12. While iOS 13 has made some strides on that front, there’s still a lot still missing – and I guess those will go on my list for iOS 14.
I did recommend that Apple offer some value on low-end iPads, and we got that. In 2019 we got a bunch of new iPad models, many of which support the Smart Keyboard amd Apple Pencil. Unfortunately, I didn’t get my wish for a larger iOS device, beyond the 12.9in iPad Pro. And as 2019 draws to a close, I’m more doubtful than ever that Apple will ever move iOS beyond phones and tablets.
But that’s December, isn’t it? The days grow short and it’s time to let some of your dreams wither and die. It’s okay – there are new dreams where those came from. Dreams prepped and ready for 2020. I’ll see you back here next year to judge how they fared.