RIM BlackBerry PlayBook: Unfinished, Unusable 260
snydeq points out this InfoWorld review of the BlackBerry PlayBook, "an 'unfinished, unusable' tablet from RIM. 'At the core of it all, the design of the PlayBook as a BlackBerry-dependent device was simply a boneheaded decision by executives who hoped a hit product might entice more BlackBerry sales,' Gruman writes. 'Why RIM chose to ship the PlayBook in such a state is unfathomable. The iPad 2 and Xoom have been out for weeks, so there's no heading them off at the pass. Instead, the PlayBook debuted with all eyes on it — but instead of a world-class performer, we got the homeless guy who plays air guitar in front of the mall.'"
I love how he still gives it a "5.4" (Score:4, Insightful)
I read the first few paragraphs, and he says he would rather use no tablet at all than this thing -- and it still gets 5.4 from him. Score inflation much?
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He's probably afraid of all the hate mail he's gonna get. "You're an Apple fanboy!"
Re:I love how he still gives it a "5.4" (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah but it reads like a review of a dead prostitute, actually just half the body, (where the iPad is the luxury escort service).
It's like: I can't describe the disgust that washed over me as the severed pelvis fell out of the bloody shipping container, then a detached half a face, and one breast. Maggots had already eaten most of the vulva and the stench of a decaying rodent, along with a sappy green bile oozed from the vagina like some hideous sore.
I'd give it a 5.4.
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The only drawback is the complete lack of apps. You can't do anything with it. Which is why a person would rather use no tablet, because there is nothing to do with it anyway. That is what gives it a beta feel, but it does have potential i
Not Dead on Arrival (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not Dead on Arrival (Score:5, Informative)
It's DOA because you can't use email, calendars or contacts unless you attach it to your Blackberry phone, which AT&T has already blocked via AppWorld.
That was a boneheaded move by RIM, and unless they correct that feature then I can't see the Playbook doing very well.
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Please, Apple went the exact opposite direction: people were clamoring to let them tether their (wifi) iPad to their iPhone when the iPad first came out and they refused because they wanted the iPad to stand on its own.
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What?
Interfacing with your blackberry might be a good or a bad thing depending on whether you are aiming at Blackberry users only or not, but why on Earth are you and the reviewer, not only excusing AT&T, but excusing your own poor choice of carrier?
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I'm not excusing AT&T in the slightest. I'm a VZW customer and have been for over a decade.
I'm not even a Blackberry user (Though I used to be, and I do occasionally miss the superior email handling and BBM) -- It's just that creating a device that relies on tethering, which most providers charge extra for, if they allow it at all, to do *what people will probably do most* is ridiculous.
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for 90% of Americans you have verizon or AT&T, sprint is only useful inside of city limits.
Some cities have better verizon coverage, others have better AT&T coverage.
outside of cities all coverage quickly drops to voice calls only.(I know one parking spot that my signal goes from 3G to edge depending on how which way the wind is blowing.
there is a pretty stark difference in coverage depending on who is doing the coverage but in the end they are both horrible.
Re:Not Dead on Arrival (Score:4, Insightful)
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> What I don't understand is why RIM would launch a tablet or any
> mobile device without a calendar, contacts, or an email client.
Maybe they hired a bunch of ex-Palm [wikimedia.org] people...
Re:Not Dead on Arrival (Score:5, Insightful)
Classic case of hubris and " love to hate " syndrome. It has got a good CPU , Support Flash , QNX run on Dalvik VM so there is always a plan B of supporting Android Apps. I think for version 1 this is a decent device and i have used the pre released unit. Multitasking is good enough and by any count it is better than Xoom. In a world filled with Android and Apple Fan boys its hard to measure anything on a standalone basis.
No, it's a classic case of an Apple competitor rushing out a half-finished tablet in a desperate bid to get into the game. Nobody would be giving Apple this much slack if the iPad had the same deficiencies. And why should we judge the RIM PlayBook on a standalone basis when there is a tablet out there that has set the standard against which to measure? It only makes sense to claim the PlayBook shouldn't be compared to another tablet when you know it would it won't fare very well.
John Gruber nailed it with this Daring Fireball (http://daringfireball.net/) post from yesterday--
"I don’t understand why so many reviewers bend over backwards to grade these things on a curve. If the iPad 2 had the problems and deficiencies the Xoom and PlayBook have, these same reviewers would (rightly) trash it, and declare (again, rightly) that Apple had finally lost its Midas touch. These aren’t “beta” tablets. They’re bad tablets. It’s that simple. It’s true that their hardware seems closer to iPad-caliber than their software, but improving software is the hardest part of making products like these. By the time RIM releases “a serious software update or three” the entire market will have changed. The truth is, Motorola, Samsung, and now RIM have released would-be iPad competitors that pale compared to the iPad. Just say it.
The mass market doesn’t buy, and doesn’t want to buy, products based on what they might become months from now if these companies somehow dramatically improve the software. They buy products for what they are today, out of the box. Motorola and RIM and Samsung are Apple’s industry peers. These are the big leagues, this is The Show. They’re charging customers real money to buy these things. They should be judged by the same standards."
Re:Not Dead on Arrival (Score:5, Insightful)
"I don’t understand why so many reviewers bend over backwards to grade these things on a curve. If the iPad 2 had the problems and deficiencies the Xoom and PlayBook have, these same reviewers would (rightly) trash it, and declare (again, rightly) that Apple had finally lost its Midas touch. These aren’t “beta” tablets. (...)"
This is a lie. People were all over the first iPad despite all the deficiencies, claiming they were not needed (Some of those being implemented in the second iPad). I haven't touched this RIM tablet (and I won't, I think tablets are pointless for me), but the reviewers' bias for Apple is obvious no matter the state of the market.
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Besides the camera and lock switch boondoggle can you list what theses deficiences are in the original iPad. I do remember it being able to check email, read calendar, contacts, appstore, and a browser. That covers about 95% of what people want in a tablet.
In RIMs case I can understand the calendar ommision but email? Really?
Re:Not Dead on Arrival (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a lie. People were all over the first iPad despite all the deficiencies, claiming they were not needed (Some of those being implemented in the second iPad). I haven't touched this RIM tablet (and I won't, I think tablets are pointless for me), but the reviewers' bias for Apple is obvious no matter the state of the market.
Perhaps it did enough. It had apps, a calendar, email, contacts, a great web browser, great battery life, a great screen, weighed half of the lightest notebooks, and felt pretty darn fast even without a dual core processor. Built in apps did multitask, third party ones didn't, and push notifications filled party of the gap. But probably the most important thing in all of that is that it had a calendar. And email. And contacts. And you didn't need a tethered iPhone to pull that off. Yes, clearly a year ago, you could ship a product without multitasking and a camera. But today you cannot ship a product without email.
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"I don’t understand why so many reviewers bend over backwards to grade these things on a curve. If the iPad 2 had the problems and deficiencies the Xoom and PlayBook have, these same reviewers would (rightly) trash it, and declare (again, rightly) that Apple had finally lost its Midas touch. These aren’t “beta” tablets. (...)"
This is a lie. People were all over the first iPad despite all the deficiencies, claiming they were not needed (Some of those being implemented in the second iPad). I haven't touched this RIM tablet (and I won't, I think tablets are pointless for me), but the reviewers' bias for Apple is obvious no matter the state of the market.
He said iPad 2, not iPad. This is 2011. People aren't comparing the PlayBook against a product they'd have to own a time machine to buy... compared to the competition today, the PlayBook appears to be a bad device. It's arguable about whether one would want to buy an iPad 1 (if they still made them) or a PlayBook due to the PlayBook's incomplete software, but that's not relevant to the market today.
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Well, even so, the email and calendaring features of my iPad 1 beat the socks off the what RIM has to offer. S
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The original iPad sold in very large numbers, so quite a few people weren't all that bothered by its deficiencies. However, the iPad, at that point, had no competitor. It defined the market, although it left obvious opportunities for improvement.
Currently, the iPad 2 is out, which rectifies some (not all) of the iPad's deficiencies, and there are some Android tablets available. Those set a standard that a new tablet will be judged on. There is a market definition, although still young and tentative,
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Why would anyone buy this for the apps when nobody can write apps for it without being filthy rich and signing away their firstborn? If your phone's only good for Android apps you might as well run them natively.
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Classic case of hubris and " love to hate " syndrome . It has got a good CPU , Support Flash , QNX run on Dalvik VM so there is always a plan B of supporting . Android Apps . I think for version 1 this is a decent device and i have used the pre released unit . Multitasking is good enough and by any count it is better than Xoom .
So it has a good CPU, reasonable support of Flash in the browser... and a future plan to support some Android apps that are pre-screened by RIM, if the developer recompiles them and submits them. And I can't imagine that will be pleasant [jamiemurai.com]. The hardware sounds good, the development process sounds atrocious, and there is a decided lack of support for email, calendars and contacts. I'm not claiming my iPad is the best device that will ever exist OMG Apple rules... I'm just saying I want my contacts, calendars a
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so what the ipad doesn't do flash? have you ever actually used full flash on the xoom? I have and let me say it isn't pretty, works horrible, you can watch the battery meter shrink, but you can play flash videos.
Adobe is only working on making flash video's play smoothly. if you use a complex flash application or game you can watch the performance hit in real time.
The playbook will be treated the same as the xoom. a second class flash citizen with out full access to the full flash API.
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When you are late to a tech game you need to offer something extra, something the market share holders dont have already...this tablet..wow, BB missed a golden opportunity. All they needed to do was cr
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Classic case of hubris and " love to hate " syndrome . It has got a good CPU , Support Flash , QNX run on Dalvik VM so there is always a plan B of supporting . Android Apps . I think for version 1 this is a decent device and i have used the pre released unit . Multitasking is good enough and by any count it is better than Xoom . in a world filled with Android and Apple Fan boys its hard to measure anything on a standalone basis .
The problem with supporting Android APIs is if BlackBerry does that, what is the point of using their native APIs again? It reminds me of OS/2 supporting Windows apps. Yes it seemed like a great idea at the time but in the end it meant less native apps which certainly didn't help matters in the long term.
Of course their Android layer might stink on ice. I haven't looked at it's implementation but it's not hard to envisage how it might have limitations, e.g. faking out hardware, poor performance, lack of
And they botched the launch, too. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not enough product shipped to stores (we got 3 64GB models, just enough to satisfy preorders on launch day), they didn't hype the fact that we'd be opening an hour early on launch day for those who wanted to pick up one, they didn't get a demo model out so people could play with it to entice more preorders, didn't get a demo out to stores so staff could learn a bit and show people fun stuff about it, or useful stuff about it, and accessories didn't reach the store for the most part until the day after launch or later. Three mediocre cases, that's all there was available for people to chose from. Seriously one of the worst product launches I've seen pretty much ever.
Re:And they botched the launch, too. (Score:4, Funny)
Not enough product shipped to stores (we got 3 64GB models, just enough to satisfy preorders on launch day), they didn't hype the fact that we'd be opening an hour early on launch day for those who wanted to pick up one, they didn't get a demo model out so people could play with it to entice more preorders, didn't get a demo out to stores so staff could learn a bit and show people fun stuff about it, or useful stuff about it, and accessories didn't reach the store for the most part until the day after launch or later. Three mediocre cases, that's all there was available for people to chose from. Seriously one of the worst product launches I've seen pretty much ever.
The food here is terrible...and in such small portions!
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Okay so the launch went bad, but point out where the iPad in anyway even contends with the playbook, the playbook will sell itself from being a much better product.
SOFTWARE.
As an aside though, I'll compare hardware too.
The Apple A5 *is* a Dual Core 1Ghz Cortex A9 CPU, so equal there.
The iPad 2's GPU is *two* PowerVR SGX 543s, so more than double the performance there.
The iPad's screen is higher resolution.
The two have roughly equal battery life.
So basically, the iPad beats or equals the Playbook on every spec except for RAM.
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Funnily enough it even beats the Xbox 360 in specs. This really shows that software can make a whole world of difference.
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I'm not sure where you're getting that a dual core 1Ghz ARM beats a 3 core 3.2Ghz PPC, or that even the iPad 2's PVR SGX 543s beat the Xenos GPU. But certainly both of them have as much RAM as the XBox 360.
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The hardware is OK. The issue is the software. I don't have a BlackBerry phone, and don't plan to get one, so I need a full experience without linkage to a phone. It seems there are a lot a missing/unimplemented features, and a lot of badly done ones.
This is the case for all tablets, including the iPad, but Apple seems to have both fewer features missing, and to be better at doing the really important ones, and doing them right. Too bad they do their best to neuter the connectivity/interoperability features
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Okay so the launch went bad, but point out where the iPad in anyway even contends with the playbook, the playbook will sell itself from being a much better product. The stats are there.
I can't tell if you're serious, or trying to be funny. In case you're actually serious, this isn't a baseball game or a boxing match. "Stat for stat" doesn't mean crap to the average consumer standing there at Best Buy looking at the two (and I seriously don't think you could correctly guess what does matter).
Hell, I'm geeky enough that I should care about the stats, and even I wasn't going to sift through your laundry list.
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Then the average user can learn to read stats, I'm a nerd to and when someone ask for my opinion I tell them to look at the stats and then they can tell what to buy.
That might work when buying a lawn mower, but it's a horrible approach when buying anything that runs software I can do little to change. Looking only at stats one ends up buying a point-and-shoot camera with more megapixels than my DSLR, and thinks it takes better pictures than that DSLR.
By what your saying the average user should buy what there told to buy, that is the wrong idea altogether.
No, what I'm saying is that users don't care diddly about nerdy stat sheets. What they do care about is the user experience, specs be damned. And the Playbook, from the sounds of it, has a less desirable UX than its compet
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I am also curious why he even bothers comparing the first generation iPad. My 2011 device is better specced than your previous 2009 model!?
While hardware may matter, i feel it is the user experience that matters more. If I get a better user experience out of black box A, than block box B then I don't care what is inside.
they sure do (Score:3)
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Well iPhones won't get a chance where I work (Score:2)
See, the iPhone has this curious problem, if it has the wrong password for mail or the likes it doesn't ask for the correct one, it spams the server till it locks out the account. Throw in no support for ActiveSync and well that leaves Blackberry and Android
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I read the title differently... (Score:3, Funny)
A better title would be:
RIP BlackBerry PlayBook: Unfinished, Unusable
Maybe (Score:2)
We may do well to remember that the iPhone was the second iTunes branded phone. Apple's first phone was the Motorola ROKR [wikipedia.org].
That the ROKR was pants doesn't seem to have hurt Apple's later success with the iPhone. That the first edition of the Playbook is pants doesn't necessarily mean that the product line is dead in the water.
Now, one can certainly make the argument that given Blackberry's reputation, further generations are unlikely to be significantly better. But that's really a different argument.
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The ROKR was a Motorola phone, with access to iTunes. Not an Apple Phone.
The Playbook is a full-on RIM tablet. Releasing it with unfinished software is a very risky move. They might not survive the negative reviews, may not be able to fix it fast enough... I understand RIM (and Motorola) wanting to get their feet wet and damn the torpedoes, but with a much better finished (and, arguably, designed) eeePad, and HP's WebOS thingy, and others, just around the corner, RIM and Moto may end up looking like prematu
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You make a fair point. This will hopefully be a lesson learnt for RIM and hopefully they think about what the next generation needs to be about and release something worthy of contention.
They have to realize they are now in a market where consumer preference is almost a bigger factor than enterprise preference, so they need to appeal to the former while still ensuring the right checkboxes are filled for the latter.
I wonder how much trying to tie their consumer offerings to their enterprise services us hurti
AT&T seems to be the problem? (Score:2)
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He did bypass the AT&T problem, so he is better than what you describe. Try going to page 2.
But yeah: There is an insane amount of confirmation bias added on top of several geniune concerns.
I am starting to think of hardware reviews are like pick-ups, without a good opener, the product is destined to crash'n'burn in reviews, and nobody does openers better than Apple.
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Even without the AT&T block, the fact that this tablet needs the bridge is ridiculous.
There are Tegra 2 tablets with fully functional WiFi for far less (ViewSonic 10" G-Tablet is $300)
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ViewSonic 10" G-Tablet is $300
Who actually makes it, though? Viewsonic has been pushing a lot of rebranded garbage lately...
Does POP/IMAP work or not? (Score:2)
Which is it? On the first page the author writes,
You can't connect to POP, IMAP, or Exchange servers directly from the tablet, as you can from an iOS or Android device -- you must have a BlackBerry tethered via Bluetooth using the BlackBerry Bridge application
But then on page 3 he writes,
But if you don't use BlackBerry tethering, then you have no security, as you must use standard IMAP and POP connections to your email.
Which is it? And why can't you use standard security for your your standard IMAP and POP connections (i.e., SSL)?
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Also appears to contain typical RIM.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I admit I haven't tracked Blackberry much, but I remember many of us at worked had smartphones that implemented general standards (e.g. becoming a usb mass storage for getting files on and off via usb cable). Meanwhile, the blackberry users were still forced to use weird, proprietary programs to get at the device because RIM wouldn't implement standards. Once upon a time, this was typical, just like Palm's Hotsync, but those days should be long behind us except that RIM props it up.
Then I read in a review that the playbook does the same BS, requiring proprietary, RIM-only software that only works with Windows and OSX. Most of the world has this figured out, don't see why RIM is still going this route.
Then I see they decided to tie email/calendaring etc to a blackberry handset with *no* option to do it without it. Further complicating things, it looks like AT&T forbade it on their stuff.
Even with new shiny UI elements, they are in many ways stuck in their annoying ways. Of course, it's probably no coincidence they are annoying as hell *and* are so popular in the 'enterprise' space.
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I admit I haven't tracked Blackberry much, but I remember many of us at worked had smartphones that implemented general standards (e.g. becoming a usb mass storage for getting files on and off via usb cable)
Derp. My Curve and Bold both used mass storage just fine.
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Then I read in a review that the playbook does the same BS, requiring proprietary, RIM-only software that only works with Windows and OSX. Most of the world has this figured out, don't see why RIM is still going this route.
You mean like iTunes?
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When was this? Their devices have acted as USB mass storage for several years now.
Indeed. And yet apple products STILL won't show up as USB mass storage devices...
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For the iPhone take a look at 'Good' from 'Good Technologies'. The company I work for uses it, though while not perfect it does allow you to keep your contacts and calendars separate from the company ones.
I should mention the company I work for is a large multinational - the sort of company RIM should be worried about defecting.
As John Gruber said (Score:3)
As John Gruber, of Daring Fireball, said [daringfireball.net]:
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So yeah, my Xoom market crashes on occasion and I have to reopen it, but I also have a bunch of widgets all over my home screen. And while my instability will eventually be fixed, the iPad will never have widgets.
Woah! that's two big assumptions! You have no guarantee that your Xoom will be fixed (still waiting for SVG support and, more importantly, internet proxy support for my Android phone), nor can you know that iOS will never have widgets - if there is enough demand Apple may well add them (as they did with multitasking).
Hell, I wouldn't even bet against Apple relenting on Flash if it started losing them sales - but it doesn't sound as if people are bowled over by Flash on the few Android systems that now supp
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As an aside, despite my Android lo
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As for the widgets, well, never is a long time and anything can happen, but it seems highly unlikely.
Consider all of the major features in the iPhone/iPad that were actively denied or disparaged by Apple, only to pop up out of nowhere at the next press conference.
- 3G
- SDK for native applications
- Enterprise integration
- GPS
- Multitasking
- Cut and paste
- Probably several I'm forgetting (and never mind all of their about-faces on individual apps like Google Voice)
Not hard to imagine widgets being next on th
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Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see Jobs or his successor waving a Flash-enabled iPhone on stage this summer, extolling it as an unprecedented advance in magical different-thinkery.
Oh, no no no NO - please, in the name of all that is holy - NO.
I agree with Antimatter3009... Flash needs to die in a fire. After being beaten to a pulp and subjected to a thousand paper cuts. After being forced to watch ten thousand dancing gerbils.
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> Point being, if you assume the iPad and the Xoom (or Playbook)
> are the same except that one has some problems then his point is
> valid, but if you see them as different products with their own ups
> and downs then he doesn't make so much sense.
See, the thing is though that the Xoom and Tab and Playbook and such aren't being marketed and sold as their own unique and different products, with their own unique and different ups and downs. Just look at any given Slashdot article in which both iOS
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But honestly, it still has 32gb of space built in, so the sd card expandability is (or, more accurately, will be) a nice bonus, not a requirement. They're certainly taking their sweet time with it, though.
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On the other hand, there are those who can't review a tablet without gushing over the iPad in every other paragraph. Now the iPad is obviously a very good device, but I suspect these reviewers as using it as a *benchmark*, as if the only viable path for other tablet developers is to clone the iPad as closely as possible.
The Playbook is obviously a different product concept from the iPad. That does not automatically make it a bad one, although I suspect the concept was motivated by the classic high tech bus
Older email clients supported. (Score:2)
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It does however support Pegasus email client.
Yes, now THERE'S a feature I hear people clamoring for!
It's 2011, not 1994.
I must object... as a homeless guy... (Score:3, Funny)
As a homeless guy who plays Air Guitar in front of the mall, I am insulted... I am MUCH better than RIMs Playbook
(currently using my homeless iPad to post on Slashdot)
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As a homeless guy who plays Air Guitar in front of the mall, I am insulted... I am MUCH better than RIMs Playbook
I've seen this guy, and he's right - he IS much better than RIM's Playbook!
Design by management (Score:2)
Never a good idea. Only those completely incompetent do it.
Folks, It's Galen Gruman... (Score:2)
It should be kept in mind that this review is from an author given to overstated [infoworld.com] screeds [pcworld.com] -- so take with a grain (or a saltshaker) of salt. This is an author who knows how to write things that will be reposted.
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So, which part is he wrong or lieing about? The article seemed to present facts, such as the PlayBook requires a BlackBerry to be tethered to it for basic email functionality.
Is he wrong? Is he lieing?
He said AT&T won't allow you to install the Bridge tethering software, so then if you're an AT&T customer, you can't get the tethering functionality without violating the terms of your contract.
Is he wrong? Is he lieing?
I get so tired of people making ad hominem attacks against article authors, instead
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I'll get this started by pointing out one seeming flaw or inconsistency in the article itself.
On page one, the author states,
Other than using a Webmail client, a PlayBook without a BlackBerry is unable to communicate. You can't connect to POP, IMAP, or Exchange servers directly from the tablet, as you can from an iOS or Android device -- you must have a BlackBerry tethered via Bluetooth using the BlackBerry Bridge application.
On page 3, in the security section, he then contradicts himself:
If you're tethered to a BlackBerry, you can rest assured that your communications are secured. But if you don't use BlackBerry tethering, then you have no security, as you must use standard IMAP and POP connections to your email.
Those two statements cannot both be true. I think what the author was trying to say probably, is that you can't use the normal BlackBerry "secure" email, contacts, and calendars, unless tethered (which is still a reasonable flaw to point out), which would be required for any business servers you want to connect to. But, t
Kind of Ridiculous Review (Score:2)
From the article:
If your BlackBerry is on the AT&T network, you can't install Bridge -- AT&T won't allow it. As luck would have it, my BlackBerry Torch uses the AT&T network, so AT&T blocked me from installing Bridge, which meant I could not get my Exchange or IMAP email, work with my calendar, or look up contacts.
The Blackberry Bridge being blocked on AT&T is very ridiculous, but writing this review without Blackberry Bridge
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The Blackberry Bridge being blocked on AT&T is very ridiculous, but writing this review without Blackberry Bridge is even more ridiculous. This kind of like saying: "I couldn't get iTunes to install on my Linux machine, so this iPad thing is pretty worthless. Every time I turned it on, it told me to connect to iTunes for setup."
I guess the difference is that there probably never be an iTunes for Linux whereas there is supposed to be a Bridge for AT&T. Your argument might have been more analogous had Apple released the iPad without iTunes for Windows or OS X.
While this wasn't originally advertised as such, having a Blackberry phone (with Bridge) is in absolute requirement of the Playbook. I don't think that's a great decision for RIM, but that's besides the point. Don't try to write a review without the required equipment.
So the reviewer should buy a BB on another network just to test it out? And did you read the part where the reviewer bypassed the lockout so that he could (and did) test out the functionality?
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The Blackberry Bridge being blocked on AT&T is very ridiculous, but writing this review without Blackberry Bridge is even more ridiculous.
Obviously you failed to read the rest of the review, wherein the reviewer DID install Blackberry Bridge.
What are they thinking? (Score:2)
How do half-finished products with shitty user experiences like this make it out the door, especially when they are competing with, so far, VASTLY more polished iOS devices that offer a better experience & usability for (often) the same or less money?
The issues with some of the first generation Android phones turned me off for awhile. The phone - one of the T-Mobile offerings - crashed twice while I used it and the factory installed apps would die without warning. The touchscreen was slow to respond if
Didn't Palm try this a couple years back? (Score:2)
For a vendor who's already losing market share to require a new device of theirs to be tethered to another specific product they sell.... just seems like a brain fart on the part of the vendor - especially when we've seen this exact move fail spectacularly in the recent.
I see some people trying to contort their counter-arguments into an Apple insult, but come on. A valid comparison would be if Apple required you to carry an AppleTV around in your pocket in order to connect your iPad to the internet. iPads a
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Part of the Blackberry experience has been being honed since before blackberries were phones at all. The other part is a me-to tack-on. It isn't too hard to tell which is which...
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There are, as of now, only 3 BB models with touchscreens. Two of those don't have the mouse or clickwheel. Those two can't use apps developed to rely on the mouse (or clickwheel) that was, up until those models were released, present on every BB.
The mouse is there for compatibility with apps which rely on it; I rarely use it on my Torch. It is useful sometimes on poorly-designed websites, like Slashdot, to navigate the pointer to the tooooooo-small link you want to click but can't quite manage to pick out w
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Really.
I've got my Curve 8520. Emails are absolutely flawless - talking to my gmail.com account while sending emails using my business domain (which is actually using google). Talks to my google calendar well too.
Over the years, I've had to support a number of folks using various BBs to talk to various email servers.
Setup was always kind of a pain. Varied a little bit from one version of the software to another... From one carrier to another... But their wizard was always a little cumbersome. And if you didn't do it right you'd get spammed with synchronization messages. And sometimes you'd wind up with a second email address somehow.
These days I'm just supporting co-workers on an Exchange server. Getting them
Re:phones also suck (Score:5, Informative)
BES Express is a free product. From an administrator's point of view it's somewhat limited in functionality compared to BES, but from the user's perspective the all the synchronisation and directory integration works as expected.
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Both for email and music, it sucks rocks compared to the iPhone.
I'm not an Apple apologist, but the iPhone is much better for music and everyone but RIM devotees can see that
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No one is debating that they could make a killing if they ported their email software to android...
The BlackBerry phones themselves are just a little lackluster.
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The Infoworld article seems biased to me - I own one and it works brilliantly with my Blackberry phone, does what I need it to and will only get better over time. The phones DO suck but the tablet is based on a new OS that is leaps and bounds better than the phones. Word is the phones are supposed to start rolling out based on the new OS in the future.
That's kind of the best summary of the problem I've seen, even though you intended to compliment the device. So it would work better for me if I got a blackberry so I could tether and get the contacts, calendars, emails displayed (unless the phone battery went, in which case the content would disappear based on the reviews I've read, only to come back later). So I can have that today... but I have to swap out for a phone that "sucks".
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... and those among us who chose to buy an iPhone or Android-based phone because of better interface, more open ecosystem (yes, even an iPhone has a more open ecosystem than Blackberry), or any other of the myriad of reasons? Try turning your Blackberry phone off and tell me how useful the Playbook is, and whether you feel you were better off spending $600 on the Playbook, or $450 on a 13" laptop with an HSDPA card.