Biggest tech trends in 2024: Like the year before it, the biggest stories and tech innovations in 2024 will likely revolve around artificial intelligence. But that won’t be the end of it. Sandwiched in-between the latest large language model updates will be trends that will change everything from how we
measure our health and perceive our world to how we compute and consume content.
Here’s what I’ll be watching in 2024.
AI everything
Okay, let’s get this out of the way. There will be a lot of AI in 2024. A LOT. A TON. Got it?
Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI will continue to lead the Generative AI charge but they’ll be
joined by newcomers like Samsung with its Galaxy AI, Amazon with its more powerful Alexa,
and whatever Apple is secretly working on and that should get a splashy launch at WWDC
2024.
Biggest tech trends: Apple has a lot invested in Siri, so don’t expect them to pull a ‘Bing’ and replace their digital assistant brand with ‘Apple AI’ (although that does have a nice ring to it). There will be no
half-measures here, though. I think 2024 will mark the beginning of Apple’s big,
consumer-facing AI bet and, if they’re doing it smart, it will tie into not only the best iPhone,
best iPad, and best Mac, but its fastest-growing sector: services. Who knows, perhaps a
subscription to Apple One will give you access to Siri Max, Apple’s more powerful and
versatile AI. Apple will also blend AI into its creative tools like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro.
We’ll all be using ‘AI phones’, which will be a lot like the phones you have now but with the
added ability of reality manipulation. biggest tech trends
In the computing space, many consumers will get their first taste of an AI PC and, to be
honest, be underwhelmed. It’s not enough to simply have an ultra-smart assistant on your
Windows 11 (or Windows 12) PC, you have to know what to do with it. While consumers will
struggle to find the value in CoPilot, businesses will quickly discover the highs and lows of
AI-generated work. biggest tech trends
biggest tech trends in 2024: Along with the rapid pace of AI development across apps, desktop interfaces, devices, computers, and more, I think we’ll see our first glimpses of AGI or Artificial General
Intelligence. This is AI that appears to use human-like reasoning to solve problems. It thinks
like our squishy brains do. I don’t know if it will be a new GPT-Mind, Gemini-Overlord, or
something else. I do think that whoever is ready to show it off will first purposely trick us into
believing we’re engaged with a sentient human. When that happens, we’ve entered
uncharted territory.
Put a ring on it: Biggest tech trends
The big trend in wearables will be smart rings. The best smartwatches and bands aren’t
going anywhere, but we’ll come out of CES 2024 having seen a whole bunch of new
screen-free, finger-ready health, wellness, and fitness-measuring devices.
There will be more functionality and a lot more fashion. Along with smarter rings will come
health-friendly earbuds that track your heart rate, blood pressure, and anxiety, I think there’s
a lot you can tell by sticking a finger…er…earbud in your ear canal. Again, the over-arching
trend in 2024 is low-profile technology that does, for instance, the same thing as your now
unbanned Apple Watch Series 9, Google Pixel Watch 2, or even the smartphone in your
pocket (though you’ll still need that to check your stats). biggest tech trends
There’s also a decent chance that smart fabric will take another run at the wearable brass
ring in 2024. Smaller and smarter sensors that don’t feel like wires, metal, or physical
buttons might make a smart shirt that can track your vitals more practical. At the very least,
2024 should net us some decent smart socks.
The other area of smart wearable growth will be in smart glasses. We already have a nice
collection of Alexa and Meta-enabled smart lenses. Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses are
pushing the boundaries of on-face intelligence with the possibilities of the glasses using their
onboard vision and AI to identify the world around you and even make suggestions. biggest tech trends
That trend, for all its privacy implications, will continue in 2024. The smart glasses we’re
deeming to wear will get even smarter and, I bet, cheaper. More people will be wearing them
and you won’t even notice until your friends seem a lot smarter than normal.
The rockstar wearable: Vision Pro – biggest tech trends
Appel’s Vision Pro, expected to launch sometime in February of 2024 is the polar opposite of
low-impact, low-friction wearables. They’re goggles you wear on your face to either mix your
reality with a computer-generated one or for full immersion in a VR world. The optics and
silicon inside these nearly $4,000 headsets are Apple-level impressive.
2024 will mark the first time consumers outside of a very small set of journalists (I’m lucky
enough to be among them) will try out Vision Pro in Apple stores around the country. It’ll be a
make-or-break moment for Apple’s big bet. I think people will be bowled over but few will
buy. Apple may be using the Vision Pro as a come-on for a far more affordable headset that
could arrive mid-year 2024 or early 2025. That will be the Vision Pro (Vision Pro Lite?) most
people buy. biggest tech trends
What I can’t quite determine is what kind of impact Apple’s Spatial Computing strategy will
have on the computing world at large. I don’t see it changing habits in 2024 but it should get
people thinking. 2025 should be interesting.
Folding and unfolding – biggest tech trends
I fully expect the foldable phone and device industry to maintain course in 2024. Samsung,
Motorola, and Google are committed to the folding form factor. Samsung will roll out a
Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6, both of which will be thinner and lighter than their
predecessors but that will offer little in the way of major innovation. Google will do the same,
while Motorola shows the industry how to price foldables affordably.
I don’t see Apple entering the foldable fray this coming year. There is a small chance that
Apple will unveil something like ‘FoldKit’ at WWDC 2024 to help Apple developers prepare
for a folding iPhone before the end of the year 2024 (very unlikely) or for the early part of
2025 in the form of a folding iPad mini
Because folding phones are all based on flexible OLED screens, we might see some more
creative uses of that display technology in 2024. Imagine a mashup of wearable technology
and a wraparound wrist screen (or even on one of those smart rings I mentioned above).
We’ve seen glimpses of something like this before but it’s never been thin or practical.
Maybe that changes this year. biggest tech trends
Social media reckoning – biggest tech trends
The golden age of social media is a speck in our rearview mirrors, but I don’t think the age of
social media is over. As I write this, Instagram’s Threads vaulted to the number one app
spot. Now, this has a lot to do with them opening up the service to Europe, but that act
reignited interest and has reinvigorated the platform that just a few months ago some wrote
off for dead.
Still, we’re no longer able to view social media unless it’s through the prism of free speech.
That’s something that, for better or worse, Elon Musk and his X platform have foisted into the
actual public square. Threads has not solved the problem of how to allow free speech and
ensure that it’s not harm speech. It tends to lean hard into stopping a lot of speech. Over at
X, anything goes and it’s not a fun place to be.
2024 may be the year that regulation forces everyone to truly contend with the issue in a
lasting way. I don’t, by the way, mean US regulation. Here, where I live, we seem incapable
of creating legislation that has any real impact. All the tech regulation is coming from the EU
and because tech companies operate globally, they have to start by following those edicts
and then, for expediency, apply them to their global markets. You do understand why your
iPhone now has a USB-C port, right? biggest tech trends
We’ll see more of the same in 2024 and that could mean a very different, and maybe safer, if
not a little more boring, social media experience.
biggest tech trends – As for who the players will be: Threads will ascend; X may hang on, but just barely; TikTok will continue its Teflon-like run against possible bans; Facebook will be less relevant than
ever; and everyone will still be using Instagram. Tons of other small social media companies
will rise and fall, but I will be shocked if any of them stick
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