2016 tech predictions: I want my flying car and better iPhone battery life, please

Peter Foley/Bloomberg

The Terrafugia Transition "flying car" sits on display at the New York International Auto Show in New York, U.S., on Thursday, April 5, 2012.

I like to start each new year with great hopes that the "technology of the future" (whatever that is) will change my life for the better.

For the most part, technology does make our lives better, little by little, each year.

What am I looking forward to this year? A few things.

The Unbundle

Bundled television services have been the norm for decades, and while the public might be tiring of it, TV providers still seem to be determined to force-feed us hundreds of channels.

I'm hopeful because companies like SlingTV and makers of streaming boxes like those from Roku, Amazon and Apple seem to want to bring us unbundled channels.

I'll take myself as an example. I have a 300-channel package, and I really only watch content on, at most, 50 of those channels.

I want to be able to pick and choose which channels I pay for without having a few hundred others included.

There has been progress on the unbundling front.

HBO and Showtime have begun rolling a small snowball downhill by allowing à la carte subscriptions for their programming.

ESPN has also slightly "unbundled" by allowing its programming to be included through the SlingTV service.

But even I can see that SlingTV is a bundle. The basic package from SlingTV is 23 channels for $20 per month. I really only care about 12 of those 23 channels.

It's much closer to what I want in a TV service, but if I were a subscriber, I would still be paying for channels I don't watch.

For 2016, I'd like to see a company like Apple offer up true à la carte channel selection. Word on the street is that its new Apple TV box was supposed to launch with a streaming service, but an agreement could not be reached in time.

I'm hoping Apple can pull a rabbit out of its hat and let customers pick and choose what they want to watch.

Better battery life

We have seen great advances in smartphones in the last 10 years.

Just look at the difference between the original iPhone introduced in 2007 and the iPhone 6S, which went on sale in September 2015.

In the newest iPhones, the screen is better, the CPU is faster and storage has greatly expanded, but battery life seems stagnant.

I realize that the batteries today are much better than batteries of 2007, but in the simplest terms, you still have to charge your phone daily.

The original iPhone had a 1,400 millIamp-hour battery. The iPhone 6S battery has 1,715 mAh of power.

The iPhone 6S Plus has a much bigger battery, but it's a much bigger phone.

I want 2016 to bring batteries that last upwards of a week.

I want my flying car

Well, if we can't have flying cars just yet, I'll settle for more models that can do the driving for us.

Plenty of current models can park themselves. I think that's pretty slick, but I can't see it being too useful. I parallel park my car maybe once every few months, and I'm pretty good at it.

Apple is rumored to be working on a car with self-driving capabilities.

Google is actively testing several self-driving cars in California and, more recently, Austin. I've seen reports and photos of Google's self-driving cars on the streets of Austin.

My colleague Terry Box just road-tested a Tesla Model S that can drive itself. Tesla added the feature with an over-the-air software update.

Watching Terry let that Tesla drive him down the street was impressive, but he was driving with his hands hovering over the steering wheel for the inevitable time when the car gives up and the driver needs to take over.

We are still quite a ways from just getting in the car and reading the newspaper during your morning commute.

I guess I'll have to wait another year or two for my flying car.

Source: 2016 tech predictions: I want my flying car and better iPhone battery life, please