The REAL JUICE behind leaked BlackBerry OS: Android apps to slip in without protection

If you're going to write about BlackBerry at least try and get somewhere near the facts

The fact is that all apps that run on BlackBerry run in a "sandbox" environment.

The base OS is therefore protected from the machinations of naughty Android apks.

So you get all the benefits of the most secure and bullet proof smartphone OS, plus lots of native BlackBerry apps, plus pretty well the full catalogue of Android apps. All of these apps running in a sandbox with protected API's.

And there will continue to be a healthy developer community writing native apps for BlackBerry because it's an excellent architecture.

Obviously if you're not carefully what you download you can be subject to the same malware and viruses that afflict other devices. But at least you can be sure your personal and corporate data is protected (you can't download apk's to the protected corporate section of the phone).

What really pisses me off is the lazy journalism and schadenfreude surrounding BlackBerry. Journalists who can't be bothered to properly research BlackBerry perhaps because they're scared to death they might have to write something positive. So much easier to go with the flow than write something original.

Android apps are kept moated from your secured work partition

Corporate security shouldn't be an issue. BB10 lets companies split a device into work and personal partitions, with a very strong fence between them. From what I hear, Android apps are only run in the personal partition of the device, and thus won't have access to sensitive corporate data.

BlackBerry's security reputation is one of their most cherished remaining assets; they have the motivation, the technology, and the corporate structure to not screw it up.

O/S2 and the Gates Monopoly

O/S2 is a very bad comparison. O/S2 didn't have a chance in the market place because MS aka Bill Gates was running a proven (as in court of law) illegal monopoly which effectively barred O/S2 from the marketplace. Same as what happened with DR-DOS, and other O/S type software as well as networking software, office apps and browsers. It would have been very interesting had there been fair competition as there were far superior products available but Gates used his monopoly to ensure they never could reach the market.

MS was developing O/S2 with IBM as a replacement for Windows except that MS wanted O/S2 to fail so as not to challenge its monopoly. O/S2 was a side issue for Gates as he kept MS focused, quietly, on Windows knowing full-well that he would not allow O/S2 to compete and his monoply not be threatened by a far superior product -- and O/S2, despite all Gates hard work to the contrary, was a far superior product to Windows.