The Complete History of RIM

museumpeace writes "I enjoyed reading Alex Frankel's thorough Tech. Review article on the luck, persistence and shrewdness that took RIM's proprietary mobile e-mail technology from presumed small niche product to the must-have blackberry that so many use today. Although the technology at the heart of the product was developed in 1989, it took years of further development, the lucky break of GPRS supplanting Mobitex, and the business smarts to jump on their first-mover advantage and the daring to partner with giant Nokia who could have swallowed RIM. Its a great example of how to succeed by carefully making a defacto standard out of a good proprietary technology."

Comments

Too bad...

[Kevin Burtch]

It's too bad they have such an unbalanced feel, and such a PITA keyboard.
Yes, I have one for work (for several months now), and I absolutely hate it.

The user interface needs a lot of work.

The balance is very top-heavy, making it very awkward to type on and hold at the same time. For a comparison, the way you hold a Sidekick/HipTop is extremely comfortable due to the overhang beside the keyboard and the c/g near the center of the keyboard - they're a breeze to type on very quickly and you can perform any function without altering the way you're holding the device.

Using the scroll-wheel requires you to shift the way you're holding it 100% from the typing position, unlike the Sidekick/HipTop. You have to go from balancing it on your fingertips (to type with your thumbs) to holding it in your right hand with your fingers on the left and your thumb on the right.

They don't come with manuals of any kind, not even downloadable! No, I don't consider the intro pamphlet a manual. I am constantly asking the extremely experienced blackberry users at work "what's this for" and "how do you do this" and half of the time they can't even answer my questions!

Overall, I consider the blackberry to be a royal PITA.
It sucks that they have a lock on the technology and are so closed-minded about the user-experience, as I would love to see either the T-Mobile Sidekick/Danger HipTop or the Nokia 9x00 Communicator series support the encrypted protocols so I can dump this awkward POS.

If anyone of any importance at RIM is reading this: Please license the tech for a reasonable cost to companies who make similar devices so the human interface can be improved on. You'll get money from each device sold as well as 100% of the back-end servers/services with none of the handheld development costs! ("win/win/win")