Posey's Tips & Tricks
My 2024 Tech Predictions Revisited: How Did I Do?
Before I tell you with at least 30 percent certainty what is coming in 2025, let's look at my previous predictions to see if i was close to the mark.
Every year, I like to use an early Posey's Tips and Tricks column of the year to make technology predictions for the upcoming year. I also like to write a separate column to take a look back at the predictions that I made the previous year to see how I did. My track record seems to vary widely from one year to the next. Some years nearly all of my predictions have come true, while at other times I have gotten next to nothing right. So with that said, let's take a look back at last year's predictions.
1. Microsoft Gets More Aggressive with Digital Identities
My first prediction was that Microsoft would take steps to make it more difficult to be anonymous online. At the time when I wrote that prediction, I had seen Microsoft taking steps to make it more difficult to use Windows 11 without linking the OS to a Microsoft account, and wondered if Microsoft might have plans to go further by creating some sort of universal digital identity.
As it turns out, this prediction was on track. Microsoft has introduced Entra Verified ID as a means of establishing a decentralized, verified identity that can be as a means of verifying a user's identity regardless of what they are doing online (purchasing concert tickets, booking a hotel room, etc.). You can read more about Entra Verified ID here.
2. Microsoft Creates a Successor to Windows 11
My second prediction was that at some point in 2024, Microsoft would release (or at least announce) Windows 12. Back in the spring, it seemed as though this prediction would come to pass. A flurry of articles appeared on the Web outlining what we might expect from Microsoft's next desktop operating system. However, this prediction never ultimately materialized. My best guess is that Microsoft paused the Windows 12 announcement so that it could focus on incorporating a higher degree of AI integration. I look for Windows 12 to be announced sometime around the Windows 10 end of support date.
3. Vendors Create Third-Party Microsoft 365 Copilots
At the time when I wrote this prediction, Microsoft had created a tremendous amount of hype surrounding Microsoft 365 Copilot. As the release date approached however, Microsoft announced that Copilot would have a sky-high price tag and that Copilot would only be available to organizations that purchased at least 300 licenses.
Thankfully, the 300 seat minimum was eventually done away with. Before that happened though, I wrote that I expected to see third party vendors creating their own Copilot alternatives. This prediction was spot on. There are now dozens of Copilot alternatives available for purchase from third party vendors.
4. New Surface Devices Put a Huge Emphasis on GPU
My fourth prediction was that given the surge in the popularity of AI, Microsoft would create a new generation of Surface devices containing the GPU resources needed for running AI workloads.
To see how I did with this prediction, look no further than the Microsoft Surface Copilot+ PCs. According to Microsoft, "Copilot+ PCs are a different class of Windows 11 PCs that are powered by a turbocharged neural processing unit (NPU) that can perform more than 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS)."
5. Facial Recognition Based Guest Accounts
My longshot prediction for 2024 was that Microsoft may make it so that guests can access a Windows PC by using facial recognition. At the time, I was thinking that because Windows Hello had supported facial recognition for years and Microsoft was beginning to incorporate facial recognition into OneDrive, the company might take things a step further. I wasn't quite sure what this would look like, but I imagined someone being able to use Windows in a kiosk mode if they agreed to have their biometric data stored on the machine.
We didn't exactly see that happen, but Microsoft did introduce facial recognition for Teams. The idea is that meeting participants can register their voices and faces, making it easier for Teams to identify them in a meeting. While this is not exactly facial authentication for guests, it seems that guests can register their faces for identification in Teams meetings using IntelliFrame. I will give myself half credit for this one.
How Did I Do?
I make these predictions purely for fun, so I try not to get hung up on how accurate or inaccurate they might have been. But for anyone who is keeping score, I got three and a half out of five predictions for a success rate of 70 percent.
About the Author
Brien Posey is a 22-time Microsoft MVP with decades of IT experience. As a freelance writer, Posey has written thousands of articles and contributed to several dozen books on a wide variety of IT topics. Prior to going freelance, Posey was a CIO for a national chain of hospitals and health care facilities. He has also served as a network administrator for some of the country's largest insurance companies and for the Department of Defense at Fort Knox. In addition to his continued work in IT, Posey has spent the last several years actively training as a commercial scientist-astronaut candidate in preparation to fly on a mission to study polar mesospheric clouds from space. You can follow his spaceflight training on his Web site.