While it may not seem so, technology has considerably increased its grip on our lives this past year. While tech in our day to day lives may not have progressed at a visible rate, the sector made great strides in improving our future.

Here are some of the noteworthy highlights of technology in 2015:

1. Fruits from Apple

Apple came out with quite a few products this year. Some were newer generations of the existing series while others were completely new. The “fruits” from Apple were:

Apple Watch

If it’s one thing that apple is great at, it’s creating a buzz. And this piece of wearable technology generated quite of it. Beginning with rumours in 2011, the existence of a wearable product in design and development was confirmed by the corporation in 2013. Unveiled last year, the watch then finally rolled out this year. It was mostly received positively by the critics with some criticisms hanging around the straps. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc. stated that the sales transcended their expected sales.

New MacBook

Latest in the series of MacBook, this new laptop is almost a kilogram light than the previous ones. A persistent battery life of about 9 hours (with web browsing) and an amazing 12 inch retina display aren’t all that cover its exciting features. With a new redesigned keyboard that uses a “butterfly mechanism” resulting in less key travel and a USB-C port it has set a new benchmark for laptop manufacturers around the world.

Apple iPad Pro 

The biggest ever iPad from Apple challenging the Microsoft’s Surface devices came out this year. It is the only Apple device to come with a stylus, something that Steve Jobs really hated.

 

Along with releasing products, Apple also made some policy changes. The “seeds” from Apple this year were:

Swift goes public

An in-house programming language, Swift was made open source in June this year. This was a very bold public move from a very private organisation.

Ad-blocking on iOS

An update to iOS this year, made it possible to install ad-blocking software on their iPhones and iPad. Though it didn’t affect the sales of such products much, it was still quite shocking to the media and advertising industry.

2. Peeking into Microsoft

Another giant in the big arena of technology, Microsoft released two major products this year:

Windows 10

Windows operating system has the largest customer base in the world. Every Windows user waits for the new release of Windows and the two year wait of users was rewarded handsomely by the company. After coming out in July this year, Windows 7 and 8 users were thrilled to know that the new update would be free for them. One of its most notable feature was Cortana, a digital voice assistant which was previously on Windows 8.1 as well.

 

Microsoft Surface Book

Not exactly a laptop, the Surface Book is a 2 in 1 device with detachable keyboard. It is built with Magnesium and is quite strong. The design and touch were received positively while lacking USB-C ports was criticised.

3. Searching Google

With Satya Nadella acquiring a top position in Microsoft last year, another Indian, Sundar Pichai climbed the ranks of this great tech company and became the CEO of Google. Although it was a very big news for our subcontinent, it was not all that Google did this year. The major highlight from Google is:

Alphabet

The company went under a complete corporate restructuring and came out as Alphabet. The company currently has more than 26 subsidiaries some of which are Google Inc, Google Capital, Calico. Google Inc still is the umbrella corporation for all its internet related businesses. The reason to undergo this change was stated to make the company cleaner and accountable. abc.xyz is the new web address of the company with a letter explaining everything about Alphabet from Larry Paige.

 

4. Smartphones-The Six Wars

Mobile Phones have evolved from mere calling devices to multipurpose computers offering great power in the palm of our hands. The three major smartphone releases this year battling to be the best were: Google Nexus 6P, Apple iPhone 6S and Samsung S6.

Apple Iphone 6S

The “S” upgrade from Apple is usually an update in hardware, but 6S and 6s plus is much more than that. Apple added 3D touch and 4K video recording giving clarity and resolution of phone recorded video a completely new standard.

 

Google Nexus 6P

Google finally added the fingerprint sensor that Apple has been boasting of since the release of iPhone 5S. The phone has a great battery life and very good camera – something which Nexus series lacked. It is manufactured by Huawei changing from Motorola which released the last version.

Samsung S6

With 16 megapixel camera that is astonishingly fast and the life untangling wireless charging technology, Samsung has again gained its position as a quality manufacturer of Android phones. The ultra-thin metallic design of the phone shows the talents of design team at Samsung.

5. Behind the wheels

The automobile industry is one of the subsidiaries of technology being affected by the electronic industry, another child of technology. This year there were two major happenings in the industry that rocked and shocked people around the world:

Tesla’s Autopilot

Tesla released a semi-autonomous autopilot system for its cars this year which makes the car self-steer in some situations and parallel park automatically. Tesla is not the first company to venture into the field but what’s amazing is that this was achieved via a software update sent to its cars. So, basically, tesla gave its car the ability to think, well in minimalistic capacity, overnight.

Volkswagen Emission Scam 

One of the biggest scam in technology in 2015 was Volkwagen’s emission scam where it was found that more than 5 lakh vehicles in US had a software to cheat the test for emission standards. The scam tainted the company’s image to a great extent indicated by about 20% drop in share value on first day after unveiling the fact to public. They spent around 7.3 billion dollars to recover the cost of scandal. The CEO, Martin Winterkorn resigned as well.

 

6. From the rainforests of Amazon

Amazon Echo

One of the best gadgets of the world, Amazon Echo is a beautiful and stunning concoction from the designers at the large conglomerate. With a very unconventional relationship structure, it is a marriage between Bluetooth speaker and Digital voice assistant, Alexa while they both have affairs with various smart home devices such as Philip’s Hue Light to Samsung’s SmartThings. The device plays very well with other smart home device i.e. it integrates very easily with them. You can sync it with your phone and Alexa will take care of the reading and music. It’s no wonder that that the echo of its praises are being sung all across the world.

Amazon Dash Buttons

When amazon rolled these out, people thought that they were being pranked. And why wouldn’t they, it was the 31^st of March. Users thought that it the company was playing an early April fool’s Day trick on them. But it wasn’t so. These are actual products. All one needs to do is configure the button to a specific product and quantity. They are connected with the amazon app. Pressing the button will order the products from Amazon.

7. Science and Tech

Reusable Rockets

Blue Origin, a company owned by Jeff Bezos CEO of Amazon made a revolutionary advancement in the field of rocket science by developing a rocket, The New Shepherd, which went 62 miles above Earth and landed back on ground. It’s a very significant achievement as rockets cost millions of dollars and they usually end up at the bottom of an ocean after serving their purpose. This remarkable development will save millions of dollars.

Breakthrough Energy Coalition

Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Mukesh Ambani and other high profile figures came together this year to create the above mentioned organisation to take a stand on climate change. The organisations aims to provide assistance to governments with matters of renewable energy such as wind and solar energy. They plan to make contributions in amount of 20 billion dollars to the cause.

8. People in Tech

The return of Jack Dorsey

Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. The world of tech saw the return of Steve Jobs to Apple in the previous century and it saw something similar in this one. After almost 7 years Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter returned to Twitter after being pushed out. He officially joined this year in October as the CEO.

End of Ellen Pao’s War

Ellen Pao is very well known for filing gender discrimination suit against Kleiner Perkins, her former employer in 2012. The result of the lawsuit came out this March which was not in her favour. After being the interim CEO of Reddit in 2013, she had to step down even from that position this year after a user revolt against firing a popular employee of link sharing site.

Feature Image Credits: responseit.ca