Substance aside, this is an excellent example of how people will give themselves partial credit even for unequivocally wrong predictions. The temptation to double down on your original hunch can be irresistible.
Right -- all the predictions that mention specific percentages, or include specific dates, are wrong. The ones which are actually correct are the vague ones ("A new internet community-hangout will appear", "Someone will make a lot of money by hosting open-source web applications"). This is why fortune tellers don't mention dates.
The whole point, which Steve himself covers eloquently in his original post, is not to score the predictions but to talk about the ideas. And if you look at intent behind each prediction, some of those "partially-correct" ones are actually completely wrong.
I mean look at these lines on the prediction about the mobile market being at least five years out: "But the carriers don't know what the hell they're doing, and the content and distribution models aren't worked out yet, and won't be for a long time. A lot of players need to get their collective acts together for the mobile market to take off, and it just hasn't been happening. [...] Don't get me wrong: it will happen someday. But I think it's not going to be any time soon. Betcha!" Then Apple told the carriers what they were doing, and figured out "content and distribution models", and this all happened within three years, and the reason it happened so quickly is because Apple didn't rely on any of the large set of third parties and vested interests which Yegge thought someone was going to have to motivate in order to make progress.
That prediction was apparently 60% correct. It's doublethink.
