The Best and Worst of IT in 2024: Highlights, Scandals, Innovations

Five Most Popular Trends of 2024

Just like last year, let’s break everything down into similar blocks. We’ll start with IT and hi-tech trends in general.

1. AI

   Again, this one’s obvious. AI continues to develop by leaps and bounds. We constantly see new versions of chatbots, AI features built into phones, and lots of new AI assistants. All this greatly simplifies our daily lives, at least for those of us who aren’t too old school, and don’t try to resist progress.

2. Data

   Now that AI’s here, it’s become much easier to analyze large amounts of data. These days every strong company looks at its own data and thinks about what benefits it can reap from this data.

3. Regulations where they’re needed, or not

   New technologies require new regulations. For now, each individual political unit is considering how to protect users on its territory from the potential harm of such fast-evolving technologies.

   On the one hand, regulation is needed. But on the other hand, it's often cobbled together in quick and dirty fashion, and doesn’t always take a rational stance. For example, we got USB-C ports for iPhones thanks to regulatory bodies’ work. But today the European market is suffering because a large number of AI features that have long been available in the United States are being released with such huge delays here. If this continues, this technological gap will keep growing.

4. Searching for new hardware solutions

   Companies have been actively feeling out the market and investing in new hardware solutions. Current form factors aren't keeping up with technological progress. Everyone’s tired of the “mono-brick” telephone, of smart watches that go dead in a day, of huge computer boxes, etc. That's why “smart glasses” and “smart rings” are showing up in the pipeline, as well as mini PCs, and many other new form factors. These are just the first steps in this field. Expect more to come.

5. Cryptocurrency and meme coins

   You just can’t ignore the cryptocurrency market this year. It's broken all its historical maximum highs. ETFs for crypto currencies, which are being actively bought by various funds, as well as meme coins, which are not secured by anything, and which have absolutely no technologies behind them, are bringing people 10х or even 100х returns on their investment.

Top 5 Scandals of 2024

There were a lot fewer IT field scandals this year than the year before. But let’s take a look at a few of them.

1. 1. Many well-known specialists quit working at OpenAI

   OpenAI continues to be in stormy waters, despite its great financial figures this year. So many specialists quit the company in 2024 that it’s hard to name them all here. But we’ll try. These include Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and former chief scientist, Jan Leike, head of the Superalignment team, Mira Murati, CTO, Bob McGrew, chief research officer, Barret Zoph, Vice President of Research, John Schulman, co-founder of OpenAI, Lilian Weng, lead safety researcher, and Alec Radford, author of GPT-1 and GPT-2.

2. Banning TikTok in the USA

   TikTok has been forced to sell its business in America by the middle of January, 2025, or be blocked in the country. No matter how hard the Chinese giant tries to fight back, so far it hasn't succeeded. And the clock is ticking.

3. Google at the center of several different scandals

   Google was the focus of several different hearings this year. The company is facing a potential break-up of its business by the antitrust division, as well as an obligation to share the data that underpins its search results with other players. This could turn out to be a painful shift for Google, since it means separating the company into subdivisions, such as its advertising business, Google Chrome, search engine, Android, and other segments.

   Furthermore, the court blocked Google from paying rivals – including Apple – to be their default search engine. But that's not all. Over the course of the year, we've learned a lot of dirty secrets about how the company has cultivated mechanisms and culture for hiding potential evidence. The “Company of Good,” they called themselves?

4. Elon Musk and Brazil

   This might not be the most high-profile case, but its extremely indicative. X, the former Twitter, was blocked in Brazil for some time. Brazil demanded a number of penalties–a monetary fine, an official X representative office in the country, and a number of other, smaller requirements. Elon, “Self-Confident,” Musk tried to ignore the problem for some time, and denied these demands any way he could, but after an extremely short period of time, he turned around and agreed to all of Brazil’s demands. Why so easily?

5. Apple Intelligence and it launch in Europe

   Even though we got to see a lot of AI functions in the Apple ecosystem for the new operating system, their launch was overshadowed by a big scandal on the European market. Apple was only able to officially launch its functionality with great delay, and even then far from all its features, due to the actions of regulatory authorities.

Five Most Positive Events of 2024

Let’s shift from scandals to more positive news. Let’s take a look at what made us happy this past year.

1. A new quantum processor

   Google’s new quantum chip–Willow–is made up of more than 100 qubits. According to the company, Willow can reduce errors exponentially as it uses more qubits. Google has even stated that “quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes.” Does this prove that the multiverse exists? No answer was given.

2. AI video generation

   There are several cool pieces of news in the AI video generation field. First, Sora, from OpenAI, is available to anyone, and secondly, Google showed us Veo 2. It's something else. I think that we'll see a revolution in this regard in the next few years, and a lot of video content will be generated by such tools.

3. Bitcoin hits new record high

   Thanks to President-elect Donald Trump’s promises, Bitcoin went on a huge bull run starting in early November. It jumped in value from under $70,000 at the beginning of the month to over $105,000 by mid December.

4. Self-driving cars

   There was a lot of good news around self-driving cars in 2024, but also some sad news too. Unfortunately, GM closed its Cruise project due to high costs and constant regulations. On the good side, other market players reported their vehicles making a record number of self-driving trips. Elon “Make-Promises" Musk showed off his self-driving taxis and buses. Of course, all this will take many more years to implement, but I think the future is already close.

5. Apple caves in to alternative app stores and payment methods

   While this is only in Europe for now, the bell is already tolling for Apple. Now developers can earn more money, and can create their own alternative stores, which our friends from MacPaw have already done. This makes it easier for smaller market players to develop and grow. I won’t tire of repeating that competition is always beneficial to the end user, and that’s you and me.

Five Saddest IT Events of 2024

Besides positive news, there’s always some negative news too. Here’s a little bit of went wrong in IT.

1. Intel is close to collapsing

   Unfortunately, Intel–a company we all know–is close to collapse. The company’s share price has gone down more than 50% since the beginning of the year, from $50 to $19. Now the company is trying to rise up from the bottom, but it has little chance of doing so. It’s very likely Intel will be bought by other market players in 2025.

2. CrowdStrike errors

   Flaws in an update caused blue screens of death on Microsoft operating systems around the world on July 19, 2024. Tens, if not hundreds of airports couldn’t continue their work. This was caused by an update to Channel File 291, which CrowdStrike says triggered a logic error and caused the operating system to crash.

3. Continued layoffs in IT

   The good thing is that there were less layoffs this year than before, but there are still plenty of layoffs going around. Amazon, Google, Meta and many others continued their huge waves of layoffs this year.

4. Cyberattack on Varta

   There was a huge cyberattack on Varta – a battery maker – on February 12, 2024. This led to a proactive shutdown of five of the company’s plants. Furthermore, attempts at similar cyberattacks on other companies were a common theme throughout the year.

5. Nokia smartphones have ceased being produced

   A whole era has finished. HMD Global, which owned the rights to Nokia smartphones, has decided to end the brand for good. New Nokia telephones will completely stop being sold by 2026.

Five Most Interesting Releases and Announcements of 2024

1. ChatGPT Advanced Voicemode

   OpenAI presented their Advanced VoiceMode, and has already provided public access to the tool. In my opinion, it’s a revolution, albeit a smaller one. Right from your phone, on the run, you can talk with a mobile assistant about any topic. In response, you’ll get both a sensible answer, and the opportunity to hold a rather interactive discussion.

2. AI searches (Perplexity, Google, ChatGPT)

   Perplexity, Google, and OpenAI have all presented their vision of the future of Internet searches. So far they’ve only taken the first steps, but I’m sure that the future is in their hands, and the search market will never be the same as before. I’ve already been conducting searches and asking questions in ChatGPT more often than I do in Google.

3. Veo 2

   This year ChatGPT subscribers with paid subscriptions got to use Sora. Furthermore, Google showed us Veo 2. These two are both a revolution. We’re just steps away from the time when it will be impossible to tell the difference between AI-generated video and the real thing. Videos on YouTube will be hosted by AI-generated readers.

4. Copilot

   Sure, Copilot wasn’t released in this exact year, but Copilot became accessible to all for free in 2024. It’s also the year that Copilot keeps gaining greater and greater popularity from one day to the next. 

5. AI agents

   So far AI agents are just in the announcement and prototyping stage for 2025, but we can already see a future where we’re going to interact not only with the operating system on our device, but also with AI agents/helpers. This past year, several different companies announced upcoming releases of such agents that can interact with the operating system at a level equal to a human user.

Five “Mostest-Mostest” of 2024

This year’s “mostest-mostest” category is made up entirely of new hardware, since we somehow completely ignored hardware devices last year.

1. Most innovative device

   Meta showed off its internal project (not intended for the mass market for now): virtual reality glasses and controllers to go along with them. Based on feedback of those who’ve gotten to try the glasses, they’re revolutionary. The wristband controllers compute signals from people’s finger movements, thereby interacting with content. The glasses themselves don’t look that different from regular sunglasses that we’re all used to. We’ll be waiting for the time when these glasses become available to everyday users.

2. Top delight

   Mac Mini is truly the smallest, yet at the same time most powerful, computer that I’ve ever seen. It’s got a new M4 line processor, yet in size is not much bigger than an Apple TV. That said, it’s starting price is only $700. This is a truly ideal computer, even if the on/off switch is located in back, under the computer body. My applause.

3. Top disappointment

   Apple managed to distinguish itself in this category too. I haven't seen anything worse than their new camera button. Lots of phantom clicks, an inconvenient location, and I’ll just keep my mouth shut about how the camera can be opened from 4 different places. Why this was necessary is still not clear to me.

4. A niche product, but still interesting

   Kindle has updated its readers. For the first time in the series, Kindle Colorsoft has appeared with a color screen. In addition, the readers now offer wireless charging.

5. Top trash

   Humane Inc made and released the AI Pin this year. This pin clips on to your clothing, and can project an image onto your hand, receive voice requests and give answers, and is also equipped with a camera. The company raised huge investments, and had big names behind it, but the device turned out to be not just bad, but absolutely disfunctional. It gets hot, it's slow, it's inconvenient to use, it reboots on its own, and overall it's completely unusable in real life. Of course, the device was an absolute failure. Oh, it also requires a subscription. In a word–garbage.

Biggest Losses of 2024

Here are some of the losses that made us want to write Press F and pay our respects this year.

1. Niklaus Wirth

   The creator of Pascal passed away this year. I started my own IT path a long time ago thanks to Pascal.

2. Stiver

   The founder of the Flibusta digital library project, an online resource that contains thousands of free Ukrainian-language books, passed away after a battle with cancer.

3. Kabosu

   Kabosu was a Shiba-Inu breed and the prototype of the Dogecoin meme coin. This Internet celebrity died at 18 years old.

IT Hero of 2024

I would call Ilya Sutskever the IT hero of the year. Despite all the stories and rumors floating around about him and OpenAI, and the departure (and return) of Sam Altman, Sutskever has already managed to raise $1 bln for his own startup. And that despite the fact that Sutskever’s company doesn’t even have a real product yet.

IT Villain of 2024

Just like the year before, Elon, “His Majesty,” Musk once again wins the villain of the year award in 2024. The story with Brazil showed us that he just says whatever he wants, without giving a damn. His over-the-top posts in Х provoke hate and laughter. Furthermore, his actions in the American electoral race, and the way he quickly inserted himself into politics just for his own personal benefit, was quite revolting to me, personally. Sure, he’s a superlative businessman, and he’s done and continues to make many new innovations, but for me personally he comes across as a frightening personality. 

IT Joke of the Year, 2024

The winner of this new column in our annual IT results of the year is Changpeng Zhao. The founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptomarket, was sentenced to jail in the United States in April 2024, then let free already 4 months into his jail term. This weak measure, not to mention that it happened in the United States, looks more like a fantasy than reality.

IT Surprise of the Year, 2024

Here’s another new column for this year’s article. One surprise for me personally was when the Hezbollah pagers blew up. What’s interesting is not the political subtext of this event, but rather the amazing agiotage that it created in the IT world. All of a sudden, in one moment, thousands of pagers just blew up. If we look at this fact abstractly, not just at whose hands they exploded in, it shows how vulnerable the modern technological world is. The pager story shows how dangerous the devices around us can be, and how serious of an influence they have on human life and our own interpersonal communication.

Five Forecasts for 2025

I can’t leave you without some forecasts for 2025.

1. Real AI agents enter the scene

   I think we’re closer than ever before to the time when real AI agents hit the scene. These agents will simplify our lives, and serve as personal assistants on our devices. Maybe we won’t see them right away in 2025, but very soon we are going to choose devices, operating systems, and companies based on their AI instruments.

2. Strong turbulence on the American IT market

   This turbulence will be related to two factors. First, to all the court cases and hearings around large market players, like Google. And secondly, to Elon, “I’m the boss now,” Musk, who’s made it high up the ranks of power. He’s clearly going to use his stature and position to push his competitors out of the way, and give himself the best place under the sun.

3. Changes in IT specialists’ tool box, and new expectations of these specialists

   We’re already seeing plenty of IT job postings that call for skills using various AI tools to increase productivity. We’re just at the very beginning of these new changes and expectations. From here on we can accept one of two possibilities – either we’re going to start using these AI tools and become more productive ourselves, or we’re going to find ourselves with a box to collect our belongings from the office and never come back.

4. Data is the new oil, and Data engineers will be the new DevOps

   Those who’ve read my articles before probably know that DevOps engineers were at the top of the food chain until recently. They were offered huge salaries, and were hunted by HR managers all over. Now Data Engineers are going to take up this role.

5. Europe’s technological lag vs. the United States will only strengthen

   It appears that European regulators aren’t going to let up their pressure on various IT companies in the new year. This means that many innovations are going to come to the European market either in modified form, or much later than they reach American users.

Wrapping up 2024

This year was truly a hard one, and the worst part of all is that it’s entirely unclear what’s coming our way in 2025. The stakes are higher than ever before, and so are the expectations. Much will be decided by how the new American president acts. Absolutely anything is possible. But for now, let’s relax and enjoy the holidays. And for any of you who read this to the end, put your likes and post your own comments about what was most important to you in 2024, and what you’re expecting to see in the new year.