RIA Developer's Journal

Apple Tablet . G-Phone . Social networking. MVC 

KEVIN HOFFMAN
Editor-in-Chief, iPhone Developer's Journal

Kevin Hoffman, editor-in-chief of SYS-CON's iPhone Developer's Journal is coauthor of Professional .NET Framework (Wrox Press) and co-author with Robert Foster of Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Development Unleashed.

Here are my predictions, in no particular order:

1. Apple will release a Tablet that runs a variant of Leopard. When people touch it, they will spontaneously combust with joy.

2. Google's Halo will burst and finally people will stop worshipping them. That won't decrease their stranglehold on search and online ads, however. Their open phone platform will have only niche-sized popularity.

3. Visual Studio 2008 / .NET Framework 3.5 will remain highly underrated until late 2008 when people finally figure out that they're sitting on a gold mine of new technology.

4. Social networking bubble will burst. Hopefully this will thin the herd and get rid of the annoying Web 2.0 detritus clogging the way for the real innovators.

5. MVC. MVC. MVC. This is where web development belongs. Ruby/Rails will gain in popularity, as will every other MVC framework for web development, especially the one being hinted at by Microsoft. The number of available framework choices for developers to build high-end web applications will be larger than ever before.

6. Vista's service pack will go over like a lead brick.

See next pages for predictions from:  Ian Thain, Sybase; Yakov Fain, Farata Systems.

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