Astonishing account of the BB story...
...I agree, hats off to G&M - and what it does actually is putting everybody in its rightful place, eg I never thought much of Balsillie but now it's clear that despite being an abrasive arrogant @ss he was the one who had true business vision eg SMS 2.0 being an all-available BBM with RIM at its center.
After reading this article I'm also more forgiving about Lazaridis - though his slow, awkward execution and stupid calls (eg PlayBook) definitely made things already cracking worse, contributed to the current near-collapse.
That being sad I'm actually more hopeful that they will be able to raise the necessary capital and go private and re-emerge as a small, niche but very inventive player who's also bullish about defending its patent turf (see iOS7 and its new GUI features, straight out of BB10, WebOS and somewhat Android's playbook.)
We need competition, for sure.