One of the joys of technology is that it is constantly changing- and 2015 was a very busy year.
Its highlights have included a series of mega-launches, including the well-received Windows 10, the curved Galaxy S6 smartphone, the Apple Watch and a Tesla car with doors that opened upwards.
Meanwhile, amongst the lowlights were hack attacks of the Ashley Madison infidelity service, the toymaker Vtech and the US government’s Office of Personnel Management.
Apple was sued by two Americans who claimed that the latest version of its mobile operating system was so large that iPhones and iPads had less spare space for users’ own data than had been advertised – a particular problem, they said, for bottom-of-the-range devices.
As a result, the plaintiffs alleged, device owners had to subscribe to the firm’s fee-based iCloud storage system.
Apple sought to have the case dismissed, but it is still rattling around the US legal system with the most recent papers filed by both sides in November.
Samsung raised more than a few eyebrows when documentation for its smart TVs warned owners that they might transmit “personal or other sensitive information” spoken in front of them to a unnamed “third party”.
Unsurprisingly, many found the idea of the TVs spying on their private conversations more than a little unnerving.
The firm attempted to allay concerns by making it clear that it was only referring to speech captured by its TV remotes, and not its screens, and that the third-party in question was the voice recognition tech provider Nuance.
But those efforts were somewhat undone when it was later revealed that the voice uploads were being transmitted in an unencrypted form, potentially making it easier for hackers to listen in.
American Airlines’ efforts to make its cockpits “paperless” briefly backfired when the app providing its pilots with maps and other flight information refused to work.
Dozens of the firm’s jets were grounded until the developers of FliteDeck came up with a fix. It wasn’t the only software fault to cause problems for the industry.
In both June and July, United had to ground flights because of other IT setbacks, and then in August a fault with the Federal Aviation Administration’s systems caused hundreds more planes to take off late.
Facebook was criticised by a UK-based child protection charity after its moderators refused to remove a video showing a crying baby being repeatedly dunked in a bucket of water.
There were suggestions that the footage showed a form of “baby yoga”. But the charity said the child was terrified and sobbing, and that the actions amounted to child abuse.
The case highlighted a clash of cultures between the social network, which wants to allow its users to post and comment about potentially distressing content, and those who think it has a responsibility to censor extreme examples.
As the European nights darkened, a Estonian start-up brought news that it had been able to use LED light bulbs to transmit data at speeds of one gigabits per second.
It wasn’t the first time we’d reported about Li-fi – we first discussed the concept of transmitting data via the light shone from bulbs back in 2011.
But what made this significant was that the tech firm had got it working in a normal office, where it provided both light and internet access to staff.
In time, engineers believe they can boost speeds up to 224Gbps.