RIM Drops Playbook Price By 66% 302
YokimaSun writes "Following on from the news that RIM's partner was pulling the plug on its BlackBerry phones, RIM announced it was discontinuing the 16GB version of its playbook, PC Gaming News are reporting that the PlayBook is being discounted down by as much as 66% which is adding to the demise of RIM's attempt at the tablet market. Can anything stop the all conquering iPad?"
Biased much? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Biased much? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep.
Can anything stop the all conquering iPad?
And yes.
Around half of the tablet users are now on Android, according to a recent study brought out by the Online Publisher’s Association or OPA. To be exact, 51% of them have the Google-branded device, 52% are on iOS tablets, while 8% are on those with other platforms, such as Blackberry OS.
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To be exact, 51% of them have the Google-branded device, 52% are on iOS tablets, while 8% are on those with other platforms, such as Blackberry OS.
Did someone put a Google sticker on their iPad or did they install iOS on an Android tablet?
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In breaking news, it is no longer illegal to have both an iPad and an Android tablet.
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What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
Read the comment I replied to... He didn't understand why the percentages didn't add up to a nice 100%. Obviously, because you aren't limited to owning just one of the options.
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How about figures based on sales numbers not some study of a couple thousand people where the selection criteria and error margin is left out.
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So 51+52+8 = 111, it was a multiple choice study and 11% has more than one tablet? That sounds way too high for me.
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Re:Biased much? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know business degrees don't usually require you to know how to count, but it's the first time I've seen marketshare stats touted around that add up to 111%.
As much as I'd like that to be the case (competition is good), I'd have issue trusting numbers with such flaws. Either it's quoted out of context or the people who did it flunk stats 101.
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I think it's a pretty safe bet that no way would 1 in 10 tablet owners have both.
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It would be based on units sold, not on number of people who own tablets.
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market penetration is nothing without profit.
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What, you never heard the one about "we're losing money on every unit but we'll make it back in volume"? :)
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"To be exact, 51% of them have the Google-branded device, 52% are on iOS tablets, while 8% are on those with other platforms, such as Blackberry OS."
To be exact... no. 28% of the 51% are Kindle Fires, and they are not "Google-branded" devices, they're Amazon-branded devices. In fact, they're not even specifically sold as Android tablets, even though they run a forked version of 2.3.
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Or, you have studies like this.
http://gigaom.com/apple/android-tablets-ipads-still-see-wide-gap-in-mobile-web-use/ [gigaom.com]
Which say the complete opposite thing. Now granted, this study does exclude nook and fire, but apple sold 55 million ipads through 2011, and around 13 million the first quarter, so nearly 70 million total.. I think we'd know if the nook and fire had sold enough to really balance that lead shown in _this_ study out.
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Not all of them. The thing is MS is not competing in that space though. The bad ones are sub $200, and the cheapest "surface" is going to be $399ish.
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The bad ones are sub $200, and the cheapest "surface" is going to be $399ish.
More like $599, if the recent links are correct.
Which is to say, exactly the same as iPad 32Gb (for Surface, 32Gb is the minimum you can get). Definitely not competing against budget tablets.
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So any reason to buy this discounted RIM tablet? I don't really see the need when I have a desktop, a laptop, and an internet-capable phone. The tablet seems pointless.
Re:Biased much? (Score:5, Informative)
The RIM tablet doesn't really add anything over and above other 7" tablets that might run Android. Kindle Fire and Nook Color devices can be had for less. All of those really need work with third party firmware to be made legitimately worthwhile.
I own a whole bunch of tablets, including a (work-provided) ipad2 and several options from first-tier Android OEMs. In general, the best use I've found for them is consumption of ebooks, webcomics and product manuals. My favorite device is an 8.9" Samsung Galaxy, which has the 1280x800 screen resolution of a larger Android tablet but weighs about 2/3rds what the 1" larger ipad2 does. That's a lovely combination of form factor and usability.
I guess I could get away with doing the same things on my phone as I do with my tablets, but a 4.3" screen really doesn't have the same level of utility as a 7" or larger one.
And regarding your question, I'm sufficiently annoyed by all the drawbacks to iOS that I would never consider purchasing an Apple device for myself. Data sandboxing and format limitations drive me insane.
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I have my Galaxy Tab hooked up to an iCade running MAME. I dig it! One of these days I'm gonna see if I can find an HDMI cable for the Tab so I can play the games on the big screen.
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Exactly. Who still comes to Slashdot for "honest debate"? This is trollsville, from the articles on down. I come here to fuck around, I go elsewhere to learn something.
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This is slashdot, not a courtroom. Who gives a shit.
Actually, part of the fun of Slashdot is identifying other posters on their assumptions, lies, debating tricks, misdirection, ad hominem attacks, use of correlation as a sign of causation, failure to use a car analogy and so on. If you have the right attitude it's even fun (if a bit painful) when other people do it to you. Look at this and you learn a fair bit. For example, a repeat post of the same material which has already been discredited is actually modded much higher than the original. Why the hel
Re:Biased much? (Score:4, Insightful)
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There are already lots of Windows tablets out there. It seems that a lot of people believe Surface will succeed because it's a better fit for corporate needs than the iPad is. Well, the current crop of Windows 7 tablets (some of which are very nice) are a better fit for corporate needs than either the iPad or the Surface yet nobody is buying them. I do agree that the Android tablets have been pretty dismal, but I think that's
Re:Biased much? (Score:5, Funny)
Take a fucking guess.
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Except for all the people returning the Surface RT because they mistook it for the later-coming Surface Pro.
Not sure if Fire returns after Christmas have been deducted from the Android numbers though.
Re:Biased much? (Score:5, Informative)
Nope ... it's just the editor trolling for comments, for the story itself isn't that interesting. This has been happening a lot since Malda left. Apple has become a rather polarizing issue on slashdot so any article with even the slightest mention of Apple tends to draw a lot of people out of the woodwork to throw feces at each other. It must be great for ad revenue, but as a long time reader, I'm quite bored with it and find myself skipping over a lot Apple related discussion even though I'm an iOS dev.
These days I find myself more at Ars than I do here which is a shame since I used value the discussions here in such high regard. Oh well.
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Dude, stop kidding yourself. Slashdot has always been a laughing stock, and Rob Malda, et al. never took it particularly seriously, despite any protestations they may have had to the contrary.
It's like 4chan, but without the funny.
warranty in case of bankruptcy? (Score:3)
not that I'm highlty interested in a playbook - but does RIM have a contingency plan for insolvency and still outstanding product warranties?
Re:warranty in case of bankruptcy? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it will all be nullified by the bankruptcy proceedings.
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Because their phones are clunky and offer nothing you can't get elsewhere. BES is not really a selling point these days.
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Some tech guy once said "It's better to cannibalize our own sales then let someone else do it." or something to that end.
Re:warranty in case of bankruptcy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there are a few reasons why RIM didn't catch up.
Part of it was complacency. Upper management believed for far too long that RIM was unbeatable, and by the time they actually changed course it was too late.
Part of it was a lack of talent. RIM tried to make an all touch screen phone early on (the Storm came out in 2008) and it was terrible. By the Storm 2 it was obvious that the development team at RIM couldn't handle a keypad-less world, and that BB's OS couldn't keep up with the iPhone.
Part of it was poor choices. RIM worked to change OSes to fix that fact that the old BB OS didn't handle touch very well, but they made the mistake of biting on the iPad hype and they put out a tablet with the new OS before a smartphone with the new OS. The tablet failed miserably, which lost all momentum for RIM's new platform.
Part of it was a lack of vision. RIM has had some good ideas, they just lack the vision to take them that extra step. They had the first great communication platform with BBM, but they didn't think to make it seamless with texting like Apple did iMessage. They basically had the popular Kindle Fire before Amazon did, but they didn't think to try and take the "cheaper than iPad market" until it was too late.
And finally part of it was the market they catered to. Business users are often not a fan of rapid change, especially if that means the IT department has to redo how executives get their email every year. RIM ignored the consumer market for too long- when the iPhone started getting tons of fun apps you got the sense that RIM was happy its phone wasn't a "toy." By the time Apple's "toy" had added in some business functionality to encompass RIM's target market, RIM had nothing fun to offer consumers and fight Apple on their own turf. By the time they had their fun "toy" device (the Playbook, its in the name) they had to rush it out so quickly that it completely didn't fit their core market (it didn't even have email). Hence today's news.
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Yup, we're finding that our IT ticket system's mobile client only works on BB's with keyboards. The touch screen ones don't let you toggle stuff on the system. 'course, this ticket system only has a web front end and it's heavy Flash interface. Kinda sucks balls.
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Actually the BES is their strong point. Rim should transition to enterprise mobile management and set up their .bes to monitor/control all platforms' mobile devices.
'Course, MS is hoping to get their foot in the door, mobile wi, by leveraging their enterprise management tie ins.
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I believe they're sitting on a large body of cash and in no danger of going under any time soon.
It is a public company... no reason to "believe" or guess...
1.77 Billion [yahoo.com] and falling.
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Classic innovator's dilemma + lack of willingness to take risk to compete. aka classic big corporation fear of risk = competitors jump in quickly and take over. RIM hasn't been competing in almost 7-10 years, even beyond android they were never competitive in comparison to phones such as motorola's line of Iden 7&8 series phones and the Nokia's before that. All they ever had was the checkbox of "enterprise friendly". which is now expected of all companies and no longer a selling point for RIM.
As a simil
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They are using the "larger market" to sell more smartphones. The problem is that most of that market is outside of the US, and thus completely ignored by the US-centric press during their weekly rounds of RIM-bashing.
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No they aren't. In their own statements their global sales are in a slump. If the were selling more phones their head of global sales wouldn't have resigned in May because of... poor sales.
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Up through about mid 2010 their total userbase was still growing, but slowly. With a few exceptions like Dec 2011, they've been losing users even in the face of a growing market. Basically, even people who own and like BlackBerry find the competition more compelling. Because the vast majority of the cost is the carrier data fees they can't compete on price. Of cours if they were willing to move down market to the prepay carriers and go back to their strong suit: email and texting they could be a dominan
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RIM's sales are actually dropping now, not just a smaller piece of a larger market. they are now burning cash
RIM was good for email, that's it. app world sucked.
MS Exchange email is much better on my iphone and droid. i usually get the full email and not a fragment. i can read large emails in the NYC subway.
and my iphone has apps. yesterday my wife was worried that the kid's heart was beating too fast. no worry, there is an app for that. i measured his pulse and it was OK
oh, and most iphone apps work outsid
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Smartphones are part tool, part fashion accessory. RIM's phones completely fail at the fashion accessory part today. They're simply not the "it" device anymore. That sent sales in the consumer space into the tank.
On the other hand, the phones are also clunky when it comes to serious app use. They're really good as *phones*, but a lot of people don't actually make many phone calls on their smartphones and instead use them as small computers.
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They also fail at being a useful tool as well. Almost no one thinks BES is a selling point these days, their Exchange support sucks, their touchscreen phones are terrible and even their hardware meyboard phones have lately been sub-par. They have no really compelling product and the Crackberry dinosaurs are an ever shrinking group.
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Probably because they sat on that large body of cash for years and years, failed to invest it in improving their product, and hardly improved the OS between 2006 and 2010 (largely just bug fixes and better screens (color, then higher resolution) as they came down in price), meanwhile Apple and Google were dumping hundreds of millions of dollars in to their produ
Re:warranty in case of bankruptcy? (Score:5, Interesting)
It amazes me how much trouble companies go through in order to avoid using free software. Just amazing. Apple did it but they locked it up by going with only BSD stuff. HP and RIM both avoided Android hoping that Android didn't matter as much as having "a tablet" did. (Hello? How long have you guys been working in the technology industries? Software is ALWAYS more important than the hardware.) Nokia did it too. They wanted to create their own thing... what? Twice? Three times? Now, still trying to avoid Android, they went with Microsoft?
This sort of denial is a kind of poison which should be used to kill CEOs of these companies. They should all be smarter than that.
Only one company has historically ever gotten away with the tactic of creating their own software/hardware ecosystem. That company is Apple. But in exchange for their success in this, they have to accept their limited corner while the bustling world of business goes on all around them.
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The irony is that they went full standard Linux, rather than Google's almost completely independent source base. Maemo, MeeGo, Meltemi, all had far more in common with common Linux distributions than Android.
Going Android basically makes you dependent on Google, and no one really wants that. Nokia, for what it's worth, effectively got taken over from the inside.
It's possible (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone can beat the iPad. It will need to be substantially better (nicer UI, better hardware, longer battery life, etc...) at the same, or lower price.
Another problem is Ecosystem - Apple has a fantastic selection of movies, music, apps, etc... The closest competitor in that area is Amazon, which is probably why the Fire is the only tablet gaining significant market share against the iPad.
Re:It's possible (Score:5, Insightful)
Lose the fixation on price.
Seriously, it's dangerous. The entire PC industry has spent twenty years concentrating on "Cheaper! Cheaper! Cheaper!", look where it's got us. About the only company in the computer industry that's really making good money is the one that doesn't repeat "Cheaper!" like some sort of mantra. Most of the others are making spectacularly low profits considering their turnover.
Re:It's possible (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's possible (Score:5, Funny)
Free prostate exams?
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*golf clap*
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This applies double to airline tickets. Consumers are the ones pushing for Cheaper! Cheaper! Cheaper! and look where that's got them.
From where I sit it's gotten them a lot. Sure, I no longer get white glove service but I'll gladly give that up for the cost savings I enjoy. My flight costs have gone down from $400 or more per flight which opens a lot more business opportunities for me.
Re:It's possible (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire PC industry has spent twenty years concentrating on "Cheaper! Cheaper! Cheaper!", look where it's got us.
It took the price of a desktop PC from about $3600 to about $500 (in 2010 dollars) over that period, all while massively improving the technology. Yeah, that's a real loss.
See, here's the thing: What's a loss for the PC industry in terms of higher margins is a win for every industry and consumer that uses PCs for anything. That competitive pressure would cause the price to go down isn't a flaw, it's capitalism doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing.
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Sure, until it drives those OEMs out of business or forces them to sell their PC divisions because they can't make any money and 10s if not 100s of thousands of people get laid off in the process.
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And yet there are still TONS of companies making PCs. Go figure.
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Yeah because they've moved most of their PC building to China and laid off people domestically just to keep a hold of their meager margins.
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And yet the company that makes the most money selling its PCs (ie Apple), still has computer production outsourced to Asia. If they moved their PC production back to the USA, they would not go bankrupt.
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Yeah because the Apple counter example to "cheaper, cheaper, cheaper" doesn't have any of their devices built in China. Not a one!
Re:It's possible (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really. There are tons of companies assembling pre-made parts into computers, but the actual construction of the things that go into a PC has slimmed right down to just a few large-scale manufacturers, with most of that happening in Asia.
The entire operation operates on razor thin margins that can only really work with high volume sales.
If you are a higher-level "manufacturer" like Dell, Toshiba, HP, Apple etc, then you are limited by what parts are available to you. Unless you have the purchasing power to make it worth while for a component maker to do something custom for you (like Apple) then having custom parts made for you is expensive and drives up costs to the end user - which is very tough in a race-to-the-bottom PC market. Subsequently, the PC you buy from Dell, HP, Toshiba or even Apple doesn't really differ all that much. The cases are different, but that's most of it. If you want ethernet, there's a small number of controllers for that, if you want audio, the same is true. If you want wireless, again you have a small selection of components.
If anything is going to create a monoculture in the computing industry it will be the relentless drive from consumers that says PCs must be cheaper cheaper cheaper!
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You people don't understand money at all, it's not about any specific price, it's about the spread between all costs and the sales price. That's all there is. If the components, elements, labour costs are falling, then the price of the final product is falling.
It's not like any of these companies are operating at a loss, they are making money, but they are exactly what happens in free market - there are many competitors, they are really improving the quality of the product and finding ways to sell it at a l
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It's NOT all about jobs, we do NOT want jobs, we want the final product.
You're generally right, but wrong about this point. We want the final product to be sure, but in order to afford to buy the final product we need jobs to earn the money to buy the final product, and right now what is scarce is not stuff but jobs. Hence the emphasis on jobs.
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Yeah, that's why I can buy a 1080p monitor for $200,
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It's not chanting it but it has everyone beat on price.
Windows 8 (Score:2)
One of the nice things about Metro is that to get all the features you'll need:
excellent quality and responsive touch screens with higher dpis
a very good built in trackpad
light weight
All of which are expensive. So Microsoft is on your side.
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That's not untrue. I for one would definitely have bought a playbook at their initial price, would it be only from being fond of Canada and afraid of monopolies.
The thing that stopped me at the time, other than the lack of email software (now solved I understand), sadly was their key feature: the very secure way they protect data transmissions led them to hardcode many things in the Playbook, with the result simple ad filtering was rendered impossible.
(no mangling in the background with the link to internet
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My personal advise ... don't.
I bought one for my wife for Christmas through a friend who could get me the $99 employee pricing. The browser crashes a lot, the interface she finds a little clunky in places, and there's really not all that much software for it.
Every time it locks up or otherwise pisses her off, I have to endure the withering glares from her.
Overall, she's somewhat underwhelmed with it. And, judging by their downward spi
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I agree. I think that's part of where the Android tablet market has failed to steal Apple's thunder. Android makers keep trying to compete on price, saying, "Hey, we make something kind of like an iPad, but it's $100 instead of $500!"
And sure, there's a market for that. There are business applications, and I'm sure there are a bunch of happy Kindle Fire owners. On the other hand, they achieved that low price point by skimping on the hardware and design. The $100 Android tablet isn't as powerful and do
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If you want to beat Apple, make a better product.
I don't think it's as simple as that.
Like it or not, the iPad has become the gold-standard tablet. Most of these clones appear to have been developed through a very simplistic process: put together a tick-list of every feature on the iPad, the product is ready to sell when 70-80% of those features are met.
The problem is, if you base your product around "75% of what the market leader can do", you'll always be 25% behind them. And when the market leader has the supply chain worked out so tight that your absol
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Yeah but that company has the i-factor, this mysterious elixir that makes people get addicted to your meaningless electronic toy products as if they were crack.
Not true.
Apple have learned - and really taken to heart - a few home truths about selling products that most of the rest of the computer industry has sadly missed. The fact of the matter is that people are emotional creatures, and do not buy products for purely logical reasons. (They may invent logical reasons in their own mind after the fact to justify a purchase, but they sure as hell don't base the purchasing decision on it!).
If you make a list of reasons people may buy a product - and attach a greater p
Only wish that it was android based. (Score:2)
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The issue is that once the playbook dies, so will the apps for it. Few will develop to it since it did not have a large enough market. Basically, unless you have a NEEDED app on it, OR unless Android/Linux is ported to it, there is no real incentive to buy one.
Nice hardware. Blackberry OS - not so much. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nice hardware. Blackberry OS - not so much. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares?
If the only way these things will sell is at firesale prices, then you can guarantee that there will be no long term supply, hence not worth the ongoing efforts of a developer. Just bury them in the desert next to the unused Atari cartridges and move on with your life.
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This is news for nerds, and nerds love to tinker with stuff. Where did you think you were?
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But your phone runs Android, and was able to be unlocked, have the bootloader replaced and use custom ROMs. RIMs security measures and efforts have been very strong to prevent jailbreaking and modding these devices. They have made certain that those who buy these devices are locked into their shrinking and smoldering ecosystem.
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The Kindle Fire was basically a rebranded PlayBook. That was about 8 months ago released for $199. To drop the prices to $169 now is to pay actually what the hard is really worth. The OS on here really doesn't have a value add, as the App selection and the future of it are all grim looking. Even at $169, I couldn't suggest this to anyone when a new Google branded tablet is nearing release next week at Google IO.
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Could somebody slap the /. editors in the head? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is reporting on an eBay sale (for the second time in what two, three days) "news" of any kind, much less for nerds?
Now that it's happened twice, I wonder if /. is hurting so bad that they must resort to advertising stuff their putting on eBay.
What's next, IBM is in trouble because you can find PCjrs on Craigslist for under $1.00?
C'mon guys, pull it together,
myke
To The Fainting Couches! (Score:4, Insightful)
Can anything stop the all conquering iPad?
Of course something can. Something eventually will.
If that something is a tablet, it'll need to be something that has measurably better hardware, a superior form factor, a superior operating system, and an easier media acquisition and management chain. "Easier" and "better" here mean "easier and better for regular users", not "easier and better for power users"; our days of supremacy in this regard are gone, folks. Failure to win on all of these points means you're starting with an inferior product against a superior product with a massive head start.
If that something is not a tablet, it'll need to be something that renders the tablet paradigm obsolete; whether that something is Google's glasses project or something entirely different remains to be seen.
If neither of the above happens, then we simply need to wait for the day when Apple loses its direction as a company and stops making devices that meet their current standards. Then it's open season.
Nice hardware, shame about the apps (Score:5, Informative)
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What companies have failed to do with tablets (Score:3)
The problem for RIM has come from MANY sources when it comes to tablets. The first, that apps written for one Blackberry device do not automatically work on all Blackberry devices is a huge issue, and that makes it very difficult for developers and even consumers, because you never know if the app you want to use will work on your particular device. Now, tablet sales are almost directly in relation to how well the PHONES are selling, so the fact that RIM is having problems with their phone sales will also cause people not to bother buying the tablet.
Palm/HP had the same problem, where a lack of good advertising, combined with a low consumer mindshare for the webOS phones meant that people were not running out to by a Touchpad until the price came down to the $200 range. The $200 and under range is where people are willing to spend the money on a tablet without being concerned about apps and such, while a $400+ price means people need to WANT one before they spend the money.
There is one other issue that the tablet market has, the price of a normal laptop. If you can get a fully functional laptop running Windows 7 for $400, then why buy a tablet for $500 or more that in general won't be as functional? Reading books would go to the Kindle, or long battery life would be the big reasons, but what if you are not sure that a given product will do what you want it to do? This is where advertising, but also the need to generate HYPE for a product is needed, but prices really do seem a bit inflated in the tablet market, and that is the problem. Companies that want to compete with Apple need to be willing and able to sell products at virtually zero profit for three to five years to get enough market presence to increase prices. Sell tablets for $200, or offer financing to get the price down that people need to spend, and people will buy.
Is the playbook hackable? (Score:2)
At $169, I'd buy one if I knew I could hack around with it. Try to install different OSes, repurpose it entirely as something else, like a coffee table screen that I can use to interface with the media pc, lights, and other things?
Anyone know?
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since the Playbook requires a Blackberry phone for network connectivity.
Where in the world are you getting this??
Re:Still not interested (Score:5, Informative)
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It still doesn't have native BES connectivity. If it did, it might have actually sold.
Unfortunately, RIM decided they'd rather use it as a sales vehicle for their phones.
That didn't turn out so well.
The end.
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And if you don't have WiFi available, it can tether over Bluetooth to any device that supports Bluetooth tethering.
The only thing you need a BlackBerry phone for is "bridge", which is a feature that makes certain apps and data on a BlackBerry phone available via the PlayBook's UI.
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It currently runs the BlackBerry "Tablet OS", which is basically QNX 6.6 with a different UI layer on top. Its has very good multitasking, and yes, you can SSH into it.
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So all those people buying iPads that don't have any other Apple equipment are really just blind Apple fanboys?
Yeah, that must be it. It couldn't possibly because it happens to be a good device or something...
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Of course not. All Apple sales are due entirely to marketing. All Apple customers are brainless zombies (with more money than techies) whose only concern is how cool they look; they associate the Apple logo with pennyfarthing bikes, handlebar mustaches, Gucci bags and Calvin Klein jeans. Most of them never even use their Apple swag; they just go around showing off the logo because that's all they care about.
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Yes it does. If you think only "fanbois" buy iPads you fail@business. It's like believing only zit-faced parent-basement-dwelling teens buy PCs.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, except for the newest iPad, a large portion of the sales were to people who had never bought a single Apple device before. Those are hardly fanbois.
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At some point I guess we will tire of trying to counter ignorant Apple haters, and get on with our lives, leaving you to your own stupidity.
Until then, expect counters.
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How often do you find a bluetooth capable printer in a business office (or a hotel for that matter)?
I'm not going even attempt to defend apple's f'd up printing requirements (and lack of official support for a client passthrough), but that seems like a pretty rare case.
I have one - and it rocks (Score:5, Informative)
I got a 16Gb the first time they were deeply discounted.
It was a little buggy at first, but the OS2.0 update completely fixed that.
It's blazing fast, multitasks, plays Flash, is a decent form factor, and gets incredible battery life. And now it runs Android apps to (I ported Androku over to it to run my Soundbridge - easy)
For as much as people seem to love throwing rocks at RIM, the Playbook is a great product.
DG