RIM: BlackBerry 10 is fine, delays are down to chip ship slip RIM has strenuously denied that hiccups in development are delaying the launch of phones based on its new OS, citing chip deliveries as the problem. In an explicit statement RIM's CEO Mike Lazaridis says the Boy Genius Report blog, reporting problems with the upcoming BlackBerry 10* OS, is "inaccurate and uninformed". He then …
"As long as there's a flagship device which doesn't support the flagship service, RIM doesn't look as good as it could." - that's putting it mildly. RIM looks rotten to the core.
For a company that built their reputation on seamless, reliable enterprise standard emailing and IM to not offer a native email client on their flagship product is beyond belief, and shows a level of bad planning, incompetence and idiocy that can probably only be fixed by bankruptcy.
But any secure email client would have been better than none. QNX is fairly close to Android - they could have bought Good and ported that in the time it's taken them to sort out this cluster fuck.
Hell I would have thought a BB OS emulator running in an encrypted container could have been written and deployed for QNX by now.
I sincerely hope some idiots have been fired for this screw up. Preferably the senior mgt - not the hapless pm's, ba's and code monkeys. Although you have to wonder what holding them back.
Why do RIM have this 4g obsession? Businesses don't give a stuff 3G is plenty good enough for most uses. 4g is much more use in a dongle. Especially one that's probably going to be power hungry until v3 or v4.
Their other core market is rioting teens can you see them caring much either.
RIM are fucking clueless as far as I can tell.
I've been pretty satisfied using a BES connected Blackberry for years now, so I've never needed to install the Blackberry Desktop software, but about 6 months ago I tried to install it to transfer settings when I got an upgraded handset. Every time I try to use it, it grabs 100% of one CPU core and locks up. A search on the web indicates that this is a very common problem, but nobody has a reliable solution. I installed the software on another desktop and it worked OK, so there's some sort of a conflict, but the Blackberry software doesn't give any indication, it just locks up.
Then a couple of weeks ago, I got a call from someone who has a BIS connected Blackberry, who needs to use Desktop Manager to sync contacts and Calendar. But the Sync fails with a complex error message. After tip-toeing around this thing for a couple of hours (I didn't want to break the guys e-mail setup), I found a post that explains that a contact that has an address in the e-mail2 field, but a blank e-mail1 field will cause contact sync to fail. Sure enough, we find and fix a contact with exactly that problem, and the synchronization goes a bit further. More searching turns up an explanation of how to modify a .ini file to turn on verbose logging, and then scrolling to the end of the 11MB log file (about 40K per contact), deleted the last contact listed in the log file, and now sync completes OK.
Seriously - instead of saying "Can't synchronize John Q Smith - corrupt e-mail address", it says "Sync failed". It knows which contact it was working on when it encountered a problem. It knows why it couldn't synchronize that contact. It just refuses to tell the end-user that information until they edit a hidden setting file in a hidden directory.
That's a pet peeve of mine. Actually more than that, seeing that I am involved in sw dev. Some of the developers I worked with continuously make me think where the common sense went in this world.
On the other hand, management is pushing for unrealistic timelines and the dev does not have time to properly write error handling (even at it's most basic level of putting up a relevant message) and uses a catch all like "Sync failed".
"inaccurate and uninformed" would be a reflection of poor communications by RIM. When you don't communicate to the level required the other party will always fill in the blanks and usualy more than not, it will be the worst case. Maybe if RIM had various blogs, keeping people in the loop, it will help avoid this and also gain more respect. Though the fact the tablet still dosn't have a email client but you can get angry birds does somewhat raise many questions that will never realy get answeard, apart from bloggers and the like making educated guess's, sometimes there more right than any official release, sometime not.
If I was in charge of RIM, I'd keep people informed, probably look at getting a load of dev's onboard with free tablets that seem to of overstocked recently ahead of the new OS launch on the devices. Even pay a few to port there app's for day one launch, best marketing could do atm is get some app's that cover the essentials.
I would then look at a small box that would in all effect be BES in a box, running QNX, ARM/low-power CPU, internal storage, probably flash/HD mix, maybe just flash with external HD optional via USB. This would then be sold to end users enaberling them to effectivly have a reliable email server setup that can push out to there mobile or home devices, initialy just the BB devices and adding apple and windows and android. Create the home server option, alot of peole are privacy biased so a home setup suits them. Now apart from making money from the box's you can also offer a cloud based backup as a subscription option. You can also make money on anti spam services, again charging a subscrition and even if rebadged package you can make money of it still, end user just wants box that does what it says on the tin, they don't need to know the details as long as it works. Either way would open up a new market capatalising on the brand and in a way that can compliment and eventualy replace the current setup and indeed the overhead costs beyond the new cloud backup options. Would also make nice income from the box's of those that don't subscribe to the extra's.
But they need dev's and as it stands with the comlexity that is the BB dev kit they need to start paying some to get there app's out or it will be a situation of finaly having a great OS on a phone that has no applications and is left in the dust much like symbian has been.
Why not have a BB connect client for some of these internet enabled TV's, so many opertunities that have not been touched upon. Just kinda sad, but they only have themselfs to blame.
Either way its bad business planning on RIM's part. If you can't even get a half-baked email and messaging client as a stop-gap on what's supposedly your main product until something better can be finished, something's obviously wrong with the way the company's doing things.
And blaming unspecified hardware companies seems to be a good excuse.
4G on a Blackberry? why on earth would they bother?
The screen is too small for power user browsing, email is fine with 3G. 4G will just reduce battery life and compromise reception until 4G coverage is widespread. We don't have 3G everywhere yet, so 2G and 3G is crucial. 4G should not compromise 3G and 2G.
"In an explicit statement RIM's CEO Mike Lazaridis says the Boy Genius Report blog, reporting problems with the upcoming BlackBerry 10* OS, is "inaccurate and uninformed". He then reiterates that delays to the launch of handsets using Blackberry 10 are caused by RIM's decision to wait for a dual-core processor with integrated LTE (4G), rather than any problems getting the software working."
The CEO better make sure there are no major bugs when they finally do release it. Talk about egg on face if that occurs. Sitting on software for six months when it should be checked, checked, checked until release day. I have a feeling that when release day comes around that there will be users encountering bugs; some just plain stupid and others rather big.
If the OS is ready it should be released now. Even if they have to realease a 0.5 version of their current top if the range hardware. RIM are sinking too fast to wait any longer.
The only hardware reason that makes sense is if the OS needs a monster spec to run.
Either way there must be a software issue.
What mentalist given RIM's current dire straits would create an artificial critical path to launching their new OS?
The fact that mail is still not on the playbook also suggests a software problem.
I smell corporate BS.
RIM shouldn't have much of an issue using those "wonderful social media platforms" (R) to show us some prototype/development unit action.
Oh wait, we're talking about Retards In Motion, the same company who sells £400 flagship phones that do essentially the same as the £80 model does, with the aggravation of not releasing software upgrades (and when they do they make the thing worse).
I' ve only had one Blackberry. The Curve 8310. The experience was so awful, it sent me running to WebOS. Then I moved on from AT&T to Sprint and Android and finally made the jump to the iPhone 4S. RIM will never win me back as a Smartphone customer. They sure as heck didn't attract my attention with a tablet (playbook) that didn't even have e-mail or chat clients, and made the assumption that people that bought them had Blackberry's to tether with. The didn't sell very many. RIM is so irrelevant now that waiting for dual core and LTE won't be enough to make anyone want them any more. Business users are moving on.
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