The Dying Technologies of 2016

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to
die.
Ecclesiastes 3:1

For many technologies, the time to die will be 2016.

That doesnt mean there wont be people still using the deceased technologies. After all, at least one
company is still using an Apple IIe for accounting.
But these dying technologies are so far gone theyre not going to matter to most users and
companies. For example, while Windows XP is still used by a handful of businesses and by 11% of
users, according to NetMarketShares count, no one thinks of XP except as a slowly dying, zombie
operating system. And, considering how insecure Windows XP is these days, many of those XP PCs
probably really are malware zombies.
So whats going to the chopping block in 2016?

Well, a lot of once-popular gadgets are on their way out. Remember when digital music players were
all the rage? All thats really left of that is Apples iPod. The iPod has been declining for a while now.
Some people hoped that Apple Music could relaunch the iPod, but thats not happening. The future of
music in your pocket belongs to smartphones.
Speaking of smartphones, I dont see BlackBerry staying alive for another year. The latest model,
the BlackBerry Priv, hasnt found much love. It was fun for a while, BlackBerry, but you can stop
thrashing now. Its time to lie quietly in your grave.

I wonder too just how long Microsoft will pour money down the Windows Phone rathole? I mean, the
company wrote off its entire smartphone investment in Nokia in July 2015. NetMarketShare has the
Windows Phone OS with a lousy 3.4% of the mobile market. This is a dead operating system walking.
Still, Windows Phone is doing better than landline phones. These once universal gadgets still have a
minute presence, but every year that goes by, fewer people I know use one. The bottom line is
everyone uses a mobile phone, so who wants to spend money on an additional phone that cant go in
your pocket? Only grandpa and grandma, and even theyre getting the clue.
Thinking of antique technologies, vinyl has made a comeback but CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Ray? Theyre
all marching to the media graveyard. Today, we stream everything we can. I still buy and own CD and
DVD players, but Im an old guy. Also, call me a Luddite, but I like having my music, videos and books
in my hand, not in some distant cloud. There arent many of us left. Fewer and fewer PCs and laptops
come with a CD/DVD player.
We used to use CD/DVD drives to install software too. I rarely do that anymore. Thats not just
because we download almost all our software today. Its also because stand-alone PC software is on
its way out. Accounting, office suites, customer-relationship management you name it, we do it on
the cloud now.
Thus, its no surprise that PCs continue on their way out the door. PC sales continue to decline. IDC
has announced that 2015 PC shipments declined by 10.3% year-over-year from 2014. They still sell in
the hundreds of million, so they arent going to be disappearing from our offices soon, but by 2020 it
will be a different story.
I grew up with much of this technology. I will still be using a lot of it in 2020, but I doubt the rest of you
will have PCs, DVD players and stand-alone software programs. The writing is on the wall for many of
these technologies, and that writing is an obituary.

Write and answer the following questions:

1. What is technology? (Look it up)
2. What is the article about? (Main idea)
3. What does the author mean when he says whats going on the chopping block in 2016?
4. What is basically the only digital music player still being used?
5. Where is the future of music, according to the article?
6. Which smartphone is on the way out?
7. The Windows Phone only claimed what percent of the market?
8. In your own words, what is a landline phone?
9. What three items are marching to the media graveyard?
10.
Why arent people using CD/DVD combinations to install software as much as they
did in the past? What has taken its place?
Bonus: