My how time flies. We opened ten years ago today. Some days, it feels like it was only yesterday. Other days, feels like 20 years ago.
When we opened, Mel Lastman was mayor of Toronto, Jean Chretien was PM, Mike Harris was Premier, and George Bush was the newly-elected President of the US. We have survived 9/11, SARS, the Great Recession, and other countless obstacles.
Back in May 2001, the fastest Mac you could buy was a single G4 733 Mhz. The biggest hard drive you could get was 75GB. The first consumer DVD burner, the Pioneer A03, would ship in June for $1499. HiDef video was more a concept than a reality, and Digital SLRs (with 2 megapixels) were just starting to enter the mainstream.
Today, the fastest Mac is a 12-core 2.93 Ghz Xeon processor. You can get a 3TB drive, which is 3000GB. A Blu-Ray burner is now $199. HiDef cameras can be bought for under $500, and film is virtually extinct as we shoot with 24mp cameras.
So where will we be in 2021? I have no idea. I think storage will continue to expand, but also shrink in size, so that those quaint things we call hard drives will be supplanted by some USB-key or card-like object that will store many many TBs of information. USB and Firewire will be gone, replaced by whatever replaces Thunderbolt. Computer processors will probably be re-invented with speeds and capabilities that will astound us. Everything will get thinner and lighter. All lighting will be some refined version of LED. Video formats - how about 8K? Or 8K 3D? Or even better - 8K 4D!
The next 10 years will shock, amaze and confuse us just like the last 10 have. My desk will still be a mess; I'll still be meaning to get to that thing I've been meaning to get to for 3 years; and I'll still be cursing whatever supplier/courier/manufacturer ticked me off that morning.
Finally, thanks to our loyal customers who've been coming to us year after year.
