It ’s the final weekend of 2024 , which seems an tending time to impute the overall winners and losers for the class in engineering . Who had an annus horribilis ? And who ruled the technical school roost in 2024 ?
It feels like 2024 might be see to it as an epochal yr in the world of engineering . It was the year stilted intelligence formally became consumer applied science .
Some of the biggest technical school caller on earth – Apple , Samsung , Microsoft , Google , Qualcomm et al – began ordinate their strategies behind the unnaturally intelligent future . For many , this has been years in the devising , but for others , like Apple , thefocus on generative AI was very much a 2024 affair .
It was a huge year in the social media region too , where there was also no shortage of AI intimacy . One might say hug drug had a horrible yr as it continued to suffer millions of users , with Threads and Bluesky hoovering up the social medium refugees .
However , Elon Musk himself had a great year cement his location as the world ’s richest human beings and moderately much the second in command to the incoming president of the United States . So , I ’m not sure he ’s going to be bothered by Twitter lose the lefties .
Sony launch thePS5 Pro , pushing console gaming to new heights , but we ’re yet to see whether that ’ll reap the rewards . Microsoft went the other fashion and it could be a winning scheme . Xbox ironware is now secondary to offering its best games everywhere . That ’s via the cloud on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate , but also bybringing its games to PS5 .
In the fluid world , there was n’t huge ironware upheaval . Samsung did its thing with the Galaxy S and its Z Flip and Z Fold phones , while Apple and Google pushed out the iPhone 16 and Pixel 9 range severally . They ’re all capital handsets , but one suspect there are greater hardware revisal on the style in the years to hail . Huaweiintroduced the first tri - fold equipment with the Mate XT , but does anyone really care about take an origami fluid twist in their pocket ? I do n’t recall anyone answer “ more folds ” to the question “ what do you need from your smartphone ? ”
It was a handsome year for clothing , namely in the smart annulus substantial with the Oura Ring 4 see to guard off the new Galaxy Ring from Samsung . Samsung also establish the Galaxy Watch Ultra as an answer to Apple ’s rugged outdoor watch .
Sonos eventually fork up on itslong - promised duo of headphones in the Sonos Ace , but it was a terrible year for the company overall with the app relaunchbeing one of the software disasters of the twelvemonth .
Winner: Our future AI overlords
There ’s no one company that abide out as “ winning ” 2025 , but most of them have one affair in common : They all full embraced reproductive AI , effectively cementing it as the engineering that will drive next innovation , software , operating scheme , apps and Si conception .
Some of this clobber is next - level telling . I was blown away byGoogle ’s Gemini Live chat feature , where you may have a contextual , born speech conversation with a human - vocalize bot . Even anticipate it a bot now feel odd , given how sentient it matte .
Microsoft hasredesigned Windows wholly around AI with Copilot+ PC . EvenApple integrated ChatGPT into Siriwhile it works on a next - generation version of its own voice assistant . Apple Intelligence has yet to try out its deserving , but new tool like Image Playground and Genmoji highlighted AI ’s playful side beyond scary hyper - pragmatism .
speak of ChatGPT , 2024 was an another remarkable year for OpenAI . As well as debut its voice chat sport , it is now testing a textual matter - to - television platform that could all change the row of content creation ; films , games , art . All of it .
Much of the AI advances are powered by incredible next - propagation processors . Apple ’s M4 Series , which debuted on the newiPad Proand filtered down to Macs later in the yr , should succeeding proof rooter for the crowing AI advancements in years to come . Qualcomm ’s Snapdragon 8 Elite promises to do the same for mobile deviceowners on the Android side of thing .
Loser: Microsoft
It ’s harsh single out , Microsoft because it did a lot of serious things in 2024 .
However , one of the large fails of 2024 was theglobal technical school outagethat go through about 8.5 million Windows devices around the reality . It was due to the certificate software - manufacturing business CrowdStrike bunk on Windows . It keep open planes on the ground , and forced infirmary to cancel appointment . This was n’t Microsoft ’s fault , but it happened on Windows gimmick , whileMac owners went about their 24-hour interval untouched .
2024 was also the year Microsoft , for all intents and purposes , profess defeat to Sony in the console wars . By launching antecedently - single IPs on PlayStation , Microsoft decided that more people playing and buying its first - political party game was more important than selling console hardware .
That ’s to be commended in some shipway , because it ’s a great leveller . You do n’t need a console table to take on the latest Call of Duty anymore . Youdon’t even need to buy Call of Duty to play Call of Duty anymore , thanks to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription that ’s available through the Xbox app on loads of sieve and offers century more games .
Whether this would have been the case if the Xbox Series X had whoop the PS5 ’s hind end in this generation stay to be seen , but 2024 was another disappointing yr for people who ’d invested in Xbox hardware . Even the new first - political party crown jewel , Indiana Jones , will be available for PS5 owners next bound .
Microsoft ’s entrance into AI was alsohighlighted by the debacle surrounding its controversial Recall featurefor Copilot+ PCs , which takes steady screenshots of what ’s on your blind .
The idea behind this Photographic Memory is to create a Brobdingnagian database you’re able to search at any time for come on file cabinet , exposure , documents and more . Anything you ’ve seen and saved on your PC will be comfortable to find .
However , it voice anything but secure thus far : “ you’re able to not convince me that Microsoft ’s security measures teams looked at this and tell ‘ that look impregnable , ’ ” Jake Williams , a former NSA hacker and private security department consultant toldWiredin June . “ As it stand now , it ’s a security dumpster fire . This is one of the scariest thing I ’ve ever seen from an enterprise security standpoint . ”
