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Samsung heard the rumor about Apple's watch and quickly came up with its own version, despite the fact that Apple didn't have an iWatch at all.
Starting our fourth decade: Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously online for 30 years
What didn't happen in 2013
December 29, 2013
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2013, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2013, The Post-Standard
I hate it every New Year's when columnists insist on telling us all the stuff that mattered over the past year.
What do they think we are, Rip Van Winkle? We already know what happened. And we'd probably like to forget a whole lot of it.
I think New Year's columns should tell us what we missed. Stuff that would have messed up our lives except for accidental common sense. Maybe stuff that could have been true, even if it wasn't.
Get my drift?
And so here's my list of The Most Important Things That Never Happened in 2013.
1. An Apple watch. This would be like an iPhone on your wrist. Everybody thought Apple was coming out with its "iWatch" in the spring. Or in the summer. Or, ahem, in the fall. Or winter. Or -- are there any other seasons? This just plain didn't happen.
Thank you, Apple! Guess what? Nobody wears wristwatches any more!
(Spoiler alert: Samsung heard the rumor about Apple's watch and quickly came up with its own version. It was totally bad. Maybe Apple was just trying to make Samsung look stupid.)
2. A flood of Surface tablets. They're Microsoft's entry in Webster's definition of "dumb, foolish; without rhyme or reason." Nobody bought any. At least nobody who's willing to admit it. Microsoft lost $9.5 billion, and we were spared a slew of iPad wannabees.
3. A rash of 3D printers at your local Big Lots store. 3D printers make stuff that's 3D. Cool, right? Wrong! Listen, everybody! 3D printers make stuff out of ugly plastic, all the same horrible color. Who wants this junk? Thank you, Big Lots, for making our lives better.
4. Google Minus. Google was kind to us and spared the introduction of "Google-" (that's a minus character -- you might remember it from old report cards). It was going to be the opposite of the Facebook clone called "Google+". Everything you don't like, everyone you can't stand, all the photos you hoped someone had deleted, would be plastered on your own "Google-" page.
Google got swamped and its servers choked after it realized most of us can't stand just about everything these days. Especially all the stuff that Facebook-consuming 14-year-olds like.
5. Orchestra-syncing. The New York Philharmonic's management looked at tapes of Obama's second inauguration and found out that Yo-yo Ma and his buddies were cello-syncing, piano-syncing and clarinet-syncing their outdoor performance, and decided to have the entire orchestra do that for every concert in 2013.
Fortunately for us, they also discovered they would have to pay the musicians double -- once for recording the concert and then again for orchestra-syncing it. Thank you for keeping us sync-free, New York Philharmonic!