An Experiment In BlackBerry Development

ballwall writes "We've all read the stories about how lucrative selling apps on the iPhone can be (or not), but what about other platforms? BlackBerry accounts for twice as many handsets shipped as Apple, according to Gartner, so I decided to find out. I wrote about my experiences developing my first BlackBerry application including sales, platform issues, and a bunch of other things I thought new mobile developers might want to know about."

Comments

Sure there are more blackberries

[nurb432]

But, there more are corporate users without the right to install anything...

Re:Sure there are more blackberries

[almeida]

I develop applications for BlackBerry and I've talked to RIM about what restrictions corporate users will see. According to RIM, only 40% of BlackBerry users are on BlackBerry Enterprise Networks (BES) and over 90% of BES installations use the default settings. The default BES settings do not impose any restrictions on the device.

Re:Sure there are more blackberries

[Anonymous Coward]

Might be modded offtopic, but, can you play any decent games on the BlackBerry?

Or is Windows Mobile or the Iphone better for that? Absolutely necessary for those long lines at the DMV

Re:Sure there are more blackberries

[E IS mC(Square)]

Tetris! And exactly for the reason you mentioned. Though I wish they had included an unlimited option. I am done with everything and now I am just trying to beat my best personal scores. Find it here - http://store.handmark.com/products/detail.php?id=660
BTW, it's the only software I have ever paid for - desktop or mobile. (does not mean I pirated all others - open/free is sufficient for my needs).

Re:Sure there are more blackberries

[Xtravar]

You almost hit the nail on the head. My company decided to go with iPhone development rather than Blackberry development for the simple reason that our target demographic enjoys iPhones for personal use and only carries Blackberries if their management requires/provides them. With that kind of a trend, and with users willing to use their personal devices for work, it makes much more sense to go the Apple route. It didn't really help that RIM's people were aggressive and obnoxious on a conference call with our president, though...

Re:Sure there are more blackberries

[ballwall]

Depends largely on the game, I think. As far as I know there's no graphic or 3d acceleration available on any of the BlackBerry devices.

Re:Sure there are more blackberries

[Anonymous Coward]

RIM are terrible unless you're part of the 'old boys network' - that together with the weight the legal department carries internally are their two biggest failings as a company.

There are some shining lights working there though.

Blackberry's problem

[areusche]

RIM needs to open the platform up. Nothing more nothing less.

Re:Blackberry's problem

[IANAAC]

RIM needs to open the platform up. Nothing more nothing less.

I thought Java was already quite open.

Doesn't mean it's easy. But it's open.

Re:Blackberry's problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you RFTA? RIM doesn't totally open up their API to 3rd party developers.

Re:Blackberry's problem

[Corporate T00l]

From the article, it seems like the platform already is pretty open:

• No talk about complexities having to buy an SDK
• No issues trying to become an "approved" developer
• No need for an approval committee to decide if your app is worthy for the device

The main complexities seem to have to do with the sheer diversity related to the multi-carrier and multi-hardware aspects of the BB platform (e.g. the author mentions 10 different ways of getting a network connection and shortcomings of the built-in SDK UI widgets).

Re:Blackberry's problem

[ushering05401]

Did you RFTA? RIM doesn't totally open up their API to 3rd party developers.

You are not communicating that right. The RIM specific API (ie: device specific functionality) is open to developers but different generations of functionality from these APIs are available only on certain devices.

If you want to access the entire market you have to stay plain vanilla and use straight java.

The author does a good job explaining it if anyone would care to RTFA.

Re:Blackberry's problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Just correcting you, i'm a BlackBerry developer so have some insight here. The number of users using pre4.0 is miniscule, v4 OS onwards offers everything you need. The vast majority of developers code using the 4.2.0 API. As more and more users migrate to the newer devices developers change the API they code against accordingly.

The requirements for AppWorld are 'BlackBerry® Device Software version 4.2 or higher' so this is what most developers code against as it's their primary sales channel.

Developers are free to code using the more recent API to get the added features and the JDE has PreProcessor definitions for this... The BlackBerry is an old platform, new devices appear and old ones stop being supported. You'd be crazy to still make sure your software works correctly on a 7230.

'If you want to access the entire market you have to stay plain vanilla and use straight java.' this is complete uninformed nonsense.

Re:Blackberry's problem

[secolactico]

The main complexities seem to have to do with the sheer diversity related to the multi-carrier and multi-hardware aspects of the BB platform (e.g. the author mentions 10 different ways of getting a network connection and shortcomings of the built-in SDK UI widgets).

And yet as a user that's what attract me the most to the blackberry platform. I wouldn't mind using an iphone, but where I live they require you to tether yourself to a specific provider. Blackberry, on the other hand, is supported by all of the local carriers in all or most of it's flavors (bis, bes, etc).

As it happens, my current provider (one I'm very happy with) is not the one that supports iphone, so I guess it's not for me.

Re:Blackberry's problem

[mmclean]

The author does a good job explaining it if anyone would care to RTFA.

You must be new here.

Re:Blackberry's problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm also a blackberry developer and would like to point out there there really isn't anyone who isn't on 4.6 or 4.7

As far as openness goes, the SDK is available for free as is a blackberry specific JDE and the simulators. A signing key only costs $20 and requires no background check or qualifications whatsoever

Re:Blackberry's problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Hogwash. I work for a large corporation and we have tens of thousands of devices that are (unfortunately) still 4.5.

Re:Blackberry's problem

[haagmm]

whats with the anonymous cowards who are bb devs?

I'm also a blackberry developer and would like to point out there there really isn't anyone who isn't on 4.6 or 4.7

anyway, that's not true at all. The number one selling smart phone in q1 2009 is the Blackberry Curve. Since the majority of those sales were driven by the Verizon bogo on the 8330,i don't really think 4.6 is a reasonable. 4.5, maybe, but 4.6 is still too new.

You forgot the most important thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Iphone users are fascinated by crappy, shiny things, so they are likely to buy any old app with good marketing.

On the other hand, blackberry users will soberly do a cost-benefit analysis before buying an app, so you're much less likely to sell.

Therefor iphone apps will make more sales.

(ok, mod me down already!)

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[Darkness404]

I think the thing is that there are a proportion of users for both platforms that are weary of giving out credit card information, either A) they can't get a credit card because they are too young (and there are large amount of iPhone/Blackberry users who are 16/17) or B) are afraid that their identity might be stolen. The iPhone has gift cards so you can bypass the credit card step, plus a lot of people already have iTunes accounts and gift cards are commonly given out for birthdays, etc.

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[mattack2]

Iphone users are fascinated by crappy, shiny things, so they are likely to buy any old app with good marketing.

On the other hand, blackberry users will soberly do a cost-benefit analysis before buying an app, so you're much less likely to sell.

Except for the fact that you didn't RTFA, where he *said* that marketing ended up being a very important part of the process.

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the fact that you didn't RTFA, where he *said* that marketing ended up being a very important part of the process.

Dude, the post was obviously a joke.

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[NicknamesAreStupid]

PT Barnum would have developed software for the iPhone. His customers would probably would have developed software for the Blackberry.

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[Concerned Onlooker]

On what do you base this? It sounds more like a jealous rant than anything else. iPhones work very, very well and have a terrific interface. I have purchased a few really great apps for it and the only marketing needed was me looking for something I needed on the App Store.

As for your blackberry users doing a "cost-benefit analysis before buying an app" I would say they'd better. The article mentions that most handheld apps that go on the Blackberry are around $30. The apps available for the iPhone are anywhere from 99 cents to a few dollars so it's inexpensive to try out a few of them. For instance, I have 2 ssh clients for less than half the price of a typical app that would run on a Blackberry. Add in the killer programmable calculator I got and it's all still below the price point of one Blackberry app.

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[vux984]

For instance, I have 2 ssh clients for less than half the price of a typical app that would run on a Blackberry.

Having to pay for even one ssh client is pretty absurd in the first place. Only in the apple ecosystem would anyone contemplate paying for an ssh client.

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[ToasterMonkey]

Having to pay for even one ssh client is pretty absurd in the first place. Only in the apple ecosystem would anyone contemplate paying for an ssh client.

Why, is a SSH client particularly easy to write? I demand a free SSH client now, who do I speak to?! Will you make a free SSH client for me? Snap to it, it's my right to have a free SSH client on platform ${FOOBAR}, why is everyone so lazy? Can I pay you in pocket lint, because I'm out of dollars.

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[unfasten]

I demand a free SSH client now

Alright, here you go: http://www.xk72.com/midpssh/

Oh, it's open source too (GPL). Here's the code: http://www.xk72.com/midpssh/v1.7.3/midpssh.zip

Oh, it's J2ME too, so it can run on any phone that has java.

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[vux984]

Why, is a SSH client particularly easy to write?

Not so much that its easy to write one, but that several free ones already exist for the platform.

I demand a free SSH client now, who do I speak to?

Speak to Apple.

Snap to it, it's my right to have a free SSH client on platform ${FOOBAR}

In this case ${FOOBAR} is BSD. Its not a new platform, and it already has numerous free and open sourced options for ssh clients.

Only Apple could give you a device with BSD Unix on it, and then block and make you pay extra money to run things like ssh, telnet, ftp, bash, perl, etc...

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[rmart]

I demand a free SSH client now, who do I speak to?

Speak to Apple.

Why? Does Apple develop all applications on the app store?

Only Apple could give you a device with BSD Unix on it, and then block and make you pay extra money to run things like ssh, telnet, ftp, bash, perl, etc...

You can run all of those for free, either buy getting a (possibly) free app from the app store, or jailbreaking your device (in the case of bash and perl etc).

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[vux984]

Why? Does Apple develop all applications on the app store?

No. Because apple is preventing you from using all the applications that are not in the app store.

You can run all of those for free, either buy getting a (possibly) free app from the app store, or jailbreaking your device (in the case of bash and perl etc).

So in other words you agree with me.

Apple has blocked you from running apps that are pretty much standard utilities on BSD platforms.

Sure you might be able to get some of that functionality in blessed form on the iphone, and it might even be free if you are lucky, and sure the blocks apple has erected aren't impervious, and it is possible to break past them, but my point stands.

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing to remember is that the prices on the iPhone are artificially low. A developer (I am one) just can't pay the bills on anything but a massive number of $1.99 sales.

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[MrCrassic]

Add in the fact that there is no decent SSH client for the Blackberry, and that makes your argument even more valid.

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[AlXtreme]

Having to pay for even one ssh client is pretty absurd in the first place. Only in the apple ecosystem would anyone contemplate paying for an ssh client.

Mods on crack? I can't see why the above post would be worthy of a troll mod. Between openssh and putty, I have free and Free ssh clients on every platform I use, including blackberry and symbian.

If you disagree, don't mod Troll. Simply reply. The moderation system isn't for determining right from wrong, it's for filtering out the crap. If the parent is wrong, point to a ssh client for the iphone that is free.

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[E IS mC(Square)]

You are right. Each And Every result I see when I google it must be pretty indecent.

Re:You forgot the most important thing...

[MrCrassic]

Well, the most popular one for the BB is midpSSH, which was mentioned here, and I've never found it to be anywhere near as good as, say, Terminal for iPhone...

Thank you

[Naurgrim]

Interesting read, ballwall, and I truly wish you luck with your efforts.

I'm not much of a programmer, but as a SysAdmin (*nix by preference, win* by necessity) I was struck by some parallels I've observed. I find blackberries to be painful. Making them work as a mobile email device tied to Exchange requires a shiat-ton of ugly third party software.

If a client bothers to ask, (and they don't), I tell them iPhone first, WinMobile second, blackberry distant third.

BES is, IMHO, a steaming pile - java, dot.net, 32-bit only. Feh. Recent iPhones handle active sync nicely and don't bitch about self-signed certs. WinMobile is a bit harder, but install your certs and you're done. blackberries (I refuse to capitalize) give me pain.

My clients pay $$ for BES CALs, the devices get stupid and need to be factory reset often and re-activated, costing my client more $$ for my time.

A colleague says "blackberries are great, they help me spot THOSE people". I tend to agree. I honestly cannot see the attraction when there are better solutions to talk to an Exchange server - previously mentioned iPhones, WinMobile or a laptop with RPC over HTTP(S) all work more simply and more reliably, and I tell my clients so. Nevertheless, I still hear "but I've got to have a blackberry"!

Re:Thank you

[InlawBiker]

Well, as we are all aware, nobody cares how hard the admin's job is. The Enterprise is BB's target market and they're dug in deep. Just the ability to sync with Exchange calendars, contacts and email is 99% of why Blackberry exists - because BES is great if you're a user. If you're an admin, your job is to support the business and the business wants Exchange sync. Sorry BES admins.

Blackberry has continued to innovate, their phones are really very easy to use. But the Business will gladly quit paying for BES server and the people to run it the instant something better comes along.

Re:Thank you

[gotpaint32]

Blackberries on BES offer enterprise features simply unheard of with Winmobile or iphone devices. Windows mobile only recently got the much needed security features such as remote device deactivation and wiping. Blackberries simply offer more for the enterprise such as a slew of custom encryption features, mds for intranet based apps, web proxy features so you can control user's network browsing, full featured logging (down to the phone calls you make) fully customizable IT and security policies, and I'm sure I'm missing a ton of other features that Blackberry offers that has not even been contemplated for Winmobile much less iphones. Maybe you should be offering your customers reasons to use Blackberries and not reasons to make your job easier. You never know, they may think that one of those features you don't care too much about is pretty nifty...

Re:Thank you

[growse]

If you run an infrastructure with clients who frequently need factory resets and re-activations, either you've just stumbled across a huge batch of faulty devices, or you're doing it wrong.

Lets not allow an incompetent sysadmin get in the way of trashing a platform that works great for millions though. Right?

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

BES is, IMHO, a steaming pile - java, dot.net,

Ok, BES does use many technologies. The new BES 5 even requires activeX plugins for some web-based admin tools.

32-bit only. Feh.

Ummm, not true. BES has supported 64-bit windows and 64-bit databases for quite a long time.

Recent iPhones handle active sync nicely and don't bitch about self-signed certs.

Ummm, that's called a security flaw by most competent admins. Frankly, if you can't afford $12.99/year (with coupon code) to get a godaddy signed certificate, maybe security isn't what you're looking for. Is it possible to install your own certificate authority on iphone (or is it that apple doesn't let you)? You can install your own certificates on blackberry, and even manage them all centrally on the BES. You can even use S/MIME & PGP for additional email encryption.

My clients pay $$ for BES CALs, the devices get stupid and need to be factory reset often and re-activated, costing my client more $$ for my time.

Well, then you & your clients don't know how to administer a BES & blackberries. The devices are extremely solid, and almost never need a factory wipe. Of course, most problems will be resolved by a factory wipe & reactivating, but there is almost always a far easier & faster way to resolve the issue, but it seems you don't know that.

When something goes wrong with a windows pc, do you wipe your hard disk & reinstall every time? That will resolve the issue, but there is almost always a simpler, easier & faster solution.

Reactivating a blackberry user on a BES is REALLY HARD! How hard is it? On the BES 4 series, you run the BES console, find the user, right-click on the user, and set the activation password to whatever you like. Then, on the blackberry, go to options, advanced options, enterprise activation, enter your email address, enter the activation password you just set, and click activate. Wasn't that hard?

Frankly, if your clients can't activate a blackberry by themselves, then maybe they aren't smart enough to use email.

I honestly cannot see the attraction when there are better solutions to talk to an Exchange server

Better? How many other solutions have real push email? None (windows mobile comes close with their fake push). How many other mobile email solutions have remote lock, remote unlock, remote wipe, solid AES encryption, certification by many governments and other agencies?. Can you force your users to have a password? Can you force your users to always encrypt the blackberry contents? Does your iphone overwrite freed memory so that the contents can't be read by disassembling the device? Nope.

Do you need to restrict your user from browsing the web? Do you need to centrally track SMS, email & phone calls? All this is easy on the BES.

iPhones, WinMobile or a laptop with RPC over HTTP(S) all work more simply

Ok, that's true. The BES platform is complex, but that is because it does so much.

Look, BES isn't for everyone - there is a lot of complexity & a lot to learn. You may be better off with an outsourced BES provider (there are many). Or choose the Blackberry Professional Software (BPS), which is a simpler, easier to use BES-lite.

Re:Thank you

[TheRealSlimShady]

You know, bitching about self signed certs is actually a Good Thing. I'd rather my device/client told me that a cert is only self signed, then that gives me an indication of the level of trust (a self signed certificate just says "i'm ok, trust me").

Re:Thank you

[Naurgrim]

OK, fair enough to yours and all of the above replies. I'm replying to yours as it is the harshest, but no hard feelings.

I should have mentioned that I provide services to small and almost medium-sized businesses and orgs. If I was in an "enterprise" admin role my feelings would be different, and so would the needs and realities my clients face. Picture a law office with 8 users, a business with 20 users, an org with 40 users - that's my space. For this space, licensing and labor cost far more than hardware.

For this market segment, BES is not, IMHO, the way to go. Licensing and maintenance will bleed my customers dry. Exchange is the cheapest "groupware"-ish solution I can provide for them. For their mobile devices, the same logic applies - keep licensing and maintenance to a minimum. I appreciate that for "enterprise" the added security and logging of BES/blackberry are desirable. Where I live, selling a decent backup solution is a hard task.

And for those about to suggest it - yes, I have tried the open source route. Hate to say it - they want Office, they want Outlook, they want their calendars/contacts/tasks/etc. That means Exchange. Pains me a bit, but I get over it.

Yes, the web and email and other internet facing servers are on linux VPSs - not gonna put Exchange or Sharepoint on a public IP, but in the LAN I have to go win*. Don't like it, would prefer otherwise, hope to see the day...

Re:Thank you

[growse]

Ah, interesting, this makes more sense. Yes, I think I'd agree with you that the BB model works best with huge deployments and probably is less suitable to the small / medium size, mainly for cost reasons.

It tends to be the really big shops that (a) have the cash and (b) draw the attention of the regulators meaning they have to have devices and systems that follow the regulations. I believe, but am not authoritative on this, that the BB system is the only mobile email device that's certified for use under certain regulations. I work in financial services and know that there's a whole bunch of law that intersects with IT there.

But absolutely. If you've got a small shop, winmo is probably the best bang / buck from what I can see. Doesn't make BB a bad platform though, just makes it the wrong tool for that particular job.

Re:Thank you

[Naurgrim]

Thanks Growse,

I appreciate you considering my side. As mentioned, I really should have mentioned the specifics of what I do and what my clients need. I do understand that BES/blackberry give a ton of stuff that is good for large deployments and enterprise. That's not where I live.

Re:Thank you

[mysidia]

Your phone is not a PC, and doesn't have the same security issues as a PC. There's such a thing as just setting a password, and the fancy features are of questionable value, really.

The ease of developing rich custom apps for the iPhone saves time, energy, and money. Which makes the platform compelling, even for enterprises, due to the number of apps available.

The lack of a good development platform for the BB is one of the reasons there are so few apps for it compared to the iPhone.

The wiping/deactivation features on the BB platform are indeed scary, they introduce a new wildcard, a potential unreliability: a BB being wiped at a bad time, intentionally or accidentally.

Imagine if for whatever reason you need to place a 911 call.. and just before you hit send, someone in IT accidentally clicks "wipe your BB", which turns it into a brick (they meant to wipe someone else's, but hey, accidents happen, someone gave the admin a slip of paper with the phone number to be wiped, and a digit was accidentally transposed on the paper).

Image if a script kiddie breaks into the BB server at 2:00am, when everyone's asleep, he can in a single act, wipe the BBs of all the IT admins and management, making them unable to communicate, receive the security alert pages, as the bad guy breaks into more servers, or for that matter, making them unable to open up the password vault on the BB and lookup the OOB management credentials for incident response (b/c it was all on their BBs, and no longer exists).

Imagine if the organization is a government entity or large corporation, the "attacker" is actually an insider, and the malicious wipe or application of a malicious IT policy is initiated during a public emergency, eg terrorist act.

Considering those possibilities, the BB features may actually be security risks in some scenarios: the "central management" is also a central point of compromise (if that point is compromised, then so are the integrity of the BBs and their essential function).

And the logging features are privacy risks, except, clearly for mobiles issued for work use only. But many employers now issue phones with the expectation workers use it as _their_ phone (for even private use), take it home, and are just about always available on it for email, etc, even when on vacation.

Re:Thank you

[Corporate T00l]

I worked for a small company that subscribed to an outsourced BES+Exchange hosting service on a per-user subscription basis.

I have to say, my experience as a user was fabulous. The syncing across calendar, mail, and contacts "just worked". Most sync tools have hidden reset options to clear you local version and restore from remote, clear the remote version and restore from local, or some kind of complex manual conflict reconcilation mechanism.

With BES, there are no such options, and you don't need them. The system just works. Nothing weird happened if I tried to erase a contact from my blackberry and my Outlook at the same time or added a calendar entry from one and then moved it on the other. Everything was push based, so changes got propagated out instantly, rather than on some kind of 1 hour poll interval. I could send out multi-person invites just using the blackberry, and other people would get them just as if I'd sent them from Outlook. In fact, the BB was often more reliable than Outlook since it dealt better with network flakiness/slowness.

But then, my company got acquired by a company that didn't use Exchange, had no BES, but had standardized on BB and iPhone. In this environment, things were radically different. Without the BES+Exchange combo, you need to use a 3rd party clunky app (possibly more than 1 depending on your setup) and you can forget about real-time anything. Everything is on at least 5 minute delay or worse (calendar and contacts are on like, 2 hour delay).

5 minute delay doesn't sound like much, but with the Exchange+BES combo, BB wielders got used to e-mailing each other as if it were IM and having a stream of 1 line conversations with each other. Now, we need to consider what we want to say and switch to SMS if we want to converse with faster turnaround (at the cost of having to cmprss r words to sub 160 chr bites).

Re:Thank you

[mysidia]

Reactivating a blackberry user on a BES is REALLY HARD! How hard is it? On the BES 4 series, you run the BES console, find the user, right-click on the user, and set the activation password to whatever you like. Then, on the blackberry, go to options, advanced options, enterprise activation, enter your email address, enter the activation password you just set, and click activate.

And then it doesn't activate, because your reception isn't strong enough, and you wind up having to go outside, or drive around, until you can find a place with a strong signal to leave it for 5 minutes. (For some reason the signal required to activate seems to be much much more than required to ever normally operate the unit.. must require transferring a lot of data in a short time period, or something)

The difficulty in activating it isn't the theoretical steps, it's actually a difficulty in getting the device to do what it's supposed to do, after you've executed all the proper steps.

Re:Thank you

[Naurgrim]

Ummm, not true. BES has supported 64-bit windows and 64-bit databases for quite a long time.

OK, I'll look into that.

Well, then you & your clients don't know how to administer a BES & blackberries. The devices are extremely solid, and almost never need a factory wipe. Of course, most problems will be resolved by a factory wipe & reactivating, but there is almost always a far easier & faster way to resolve the issue, but it seems you don't know that.

Well. since you are posting AC, I've no problem showing my claws on this response. If you are going to say I don't know what I'm doing, have the courage to state your slashdot ID, at the least.

When something goes wrong with a windows pc, do you wipe your hard disk & reinstall every time? That will resolve the issue, but there is almost always a simpler, easier & faster solution.

Seems to be the one of the most common solutions in "enterprise" situations.

Reactivating a blackberry user on a BES is REALLY HARD! How hard is it? On the BES 4 series, you run the BES console, find the user, right-click on the user, and set the activation password to whatever you like. Then, on the blackberry, go to options, advanced options, enterprise activation, enter your email address, enter the activation password you just set, and click activate. Wasn't that hard?

Not hard for me, but please see my above reply to Growse detailing the realities of what I do and where I live.

Frankly, if your clients can't activate a blackberry by themselves, then maybe they aren't smart enough to use email.

Recent case - end user bought a new blackberry on a whim. No idea what the monkeys at the verizon store did, no idea what the end user did prior to calling me. Had to walk the end user thru inserting the SIM card right side up over the phone. Given the above, first action = factory reset.

Yes, this end user is barely able to use email. Yes, the office manager at my client was concerned about my cost to get him working. So, keeping cost down for my customer = factory reset.

Better? How many other solutions have real push email? None (windows mobile comes close with their fake push). How many other mobile email solutions have remote lock, remote unlock, remote wipe, solid AES encryption, certification by many governments [blackberry.com] and other agencies?. Can you force your users to have a password? Can you force your users to always encrypt the blackberry contents? Does your iphone overwrite freed memory so that the contents can't be read by disassembling the device? Nope.

Do you need to restrict your user from browsing the web? Do you need to centrally track SMS, email & phone calls? All this is easy on the BES.

These do not apply to me or my customers. See my reply to Growse above before you flame me.

As previously mentioned, I should have included details of what I do and what my customers do and need. Bottom line for me and mine is that while BES/blackberry is fine for large deployments and has all sort of features for regulatory compliance, etc. in the SMB space, they are not, IMHO the best option.

Re:Thank you

[baldusi]

We simply don't use Exchange. We usually keep contacts in our Blackberries, share the contacts though the send to Messenger Contact. And for email we use straight IMAP. We simply don't see the need for Exchange. That and the fact that you can recieve messages with straight gprs signal.
And for any meaningful email you need a QWERTY keyboard.
The truth is that the 9000 series is king of unstable, but we haven't ever need a factory reset. And the enforcement of auto lockon and AES encryption with a routing of weekly backups has saved us from information leaks when a device is lost or stolen.

Re:Thank you

[Hurricane78]

The obvious error here, is that you have to use Exchange as the e-mail server (if you can still call that e-mail). ^^

Put some CourierIMAPS on there, if you can.

Re:Thank you

[BronsCon]

When your phone provides its operator access to your email and a host of applications with access to potentially every bit of confidential data about your company, setting a password is only step 1.

The ability to click a button and wipe everything off that device is a MUST, for the occasions when your phone, either forcefully or accidentally, becomes someone else's phone. The ability to encrypt the phone's contents so that the 'new user' must manually go through all of the data and copy it down by hand is quite nifty, as it gives you substantially more time to realize your phone is no longer in your possession and to report it and have it wiped BEFORE they're able to copy everything off of it!

Encryption and remote wipe are the niftiest features of ANY portable device with access to critical company resources.

Re:Thank you

[Hurricane78]

How in the world is Exchange, and the Windows environment you need for it, plus all clients *having* to be Windows (at least MS licensed, for money), cheap?

Re:Thank you

[BronsCon]

Verizon...

Sim card...

What's that smell?

Troll shit.

Re:Thank you

[BSDevil]

Making them work as a mobile email device tied to Exchange requires a shiat-ton of ugly third party software.

Or you need better support/training. Or you're just biased against the BES system. Yeah, it's got its quirks (like most pieces of software that size), but once you figure it out it's not especially difficult, and takes about a minute to create a new user and provision the device.

Also may have been that the guy that taught me how to do it used to do BES SV&V at RIM until he decided he didn't like living in Kitchener-Waterloo any more.

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

We simply don't use Exchange.

Incidentally, the Blackberry Enterprise Server is also available for Lotus Notes and Novell Groupwise.

We simply don't see the need for Exchange

When your company grows to a decent size, you will see the need (or another groupware solution).

The truth is that the 9000 series is king of unstable,

Really? The Bold (model 9000) is very solid. Are you on an early firmware? The storm (model 9530 on cdma, 9500 on gsm) is a little flaky.

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL, but I guess similar principles apply: When your company charges $2000 per day to someone for a lawyer's work, and pay that same lawyer $1000 per day in salary, multiplied by the number of lawyers, multiplied by at least a year of usability per license, then the cost of Windows software is relatively miniscule. Uptime, usability etc. matters incredibly much more. If that lawyer feels their laptop spends ten seconds too long starting up, they will get a new one, even if the last one is a five months old VAIO made of the diamond-compressed carbon shitbricks of monk raised lemurs. Ten minutes of annoyance a day adds up to a potentially bad client meeting, especially if the presentation you carefully crafted in a free presentation program doesn't open properly on their laptop.

True software costs in many settings would tend to be specialised software for the business you are running. We got an enterprise software package related to investment management installed, and the cost had a number of zeroes greater than the fingers on my hand (of course, I might be lack a few fingers, or I might not). The CEO who spends time assessing the cost/benefit of Windows vs alternatives on cost alone I would call pretty incompetent or with little to do.

I guess what I am saying is, for any but the lowest-cost, most genericised (or perhaps most incompetently-run and ignorant-of-efficiency) businesses, the cost of Windows licenses is a piss in an ocean.

Re:Thank you

[BKX]

While I half-agree with the rest of your post, your 911 point was non-sense. Federal law bars cellphone manufacturers from preventing 911 dialing in any way. That's why you can always dial 911 on any cellphone whether its activated or not, whether the screen's locked or not, no matter what. Remote bricking someone's phone with RIM's tools won't stop you from using 911.

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if for whatever reason you need to place a 911 call.. and just before you hit send, someone in IT accidentally clicks "wipe your BB", which turns it into a brick

Not really. After the wipe, all the data is gone from the phone (including the microSD card), but you end up with a bare phone that can make phone calls. It's similar to getting a new phone from your cellphone company.

And even with a locked, fully encrypted blackberry, you can make emergency phone calls to 911.

Re:Thank you

[Naurgrim]

Whatever - too much whiskey at this point to remember if it was verizon, AT&T, T-mobile, etc. They all suck, and the store monkeys make it worse.

Bottom line, the end use had the thingamajig in upside-fuckin-down. You weren't there.

After fixing this part, the factory reset and activation of the new device went fine.

Re:Thank you

[pasamio]

Reminds me of the week when we had all sorts of "issues" with our blackberry server. We had a tech who rebuilt our BES system three times in the week only to find out that after the week long blaming of us it was actually a problem on their end. First they claimed it wouldn't work in a whole heap of situations, claimed we didn't build the server right and then claimed that it wouldn't work properly in a virtual machine. This is after we'd had it running smoothly for a few months. Turns out they had a fault network card on one of their authentication servers that you need to talk to otherwise it locks you out of your device which randomly killed our BES servers. Yes, works great for millions. There are other issues with servers dying around the world and taking blackberry devices with them, the last organisation I was with almost always had one device that was being shipped to the manufacturer - perhaps you haven't had enough devices yourself or always received good batches?

Re:Thank you

[dark42]

iPhones have had remote wipe for a year now, since the 2.0 update.

Re:Thank you

[Degrees]

For what it is worth, when you do get to the twenty user level, you can sometimes get RIM (or your vendor) to thrown in a free BES license. And with Verizon at least, for an order of twenty BBs or larger, they throw in the BES CAL for free. Now, you still will still want to pay for (some sort of) support contract with RIM. And THAT is a yearly renewable charge. So my point is that at the larger quantities, it's not too expensive, and 'larger' may not be as big as you think.

We have a support contract with RIM, and their tech support has been the best I've ever used. I'm a GroupWise customer, so their support group doesn't have to be that large. But *every* time I have had to call, the support has been *excellent*.

Another option is Novell GroupWise. It runs on Linux now, and Novell throws in the GroupWise Mobile Server. GMS is really just the Nokia Intellisync Suite with some features removed. But - IT IS FREE (with active GroupWise maintenance). The Intellisync server handles (almost) every device known to mankind - except BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm Pre and Android. For the last three, Novell is working on an ActiveSync server, but I have no idea when it will ship. (And if IBM buys them, it may never). Anyway, if you have spare time you might give their eval a try.

Or just ask your comms vendor to work a deal for you with RIM. ;-)

Re:Thank you

[spazimodo]

I have not worked with BES 5, but it was certainly commonplace on 2.2, 3.6, and 4.0 to have to reset the devices on occasion because they would just stop syncing. I was present for numerous calls involving a help desk person, RIM support, and the carrier to try to get some traveling exec's blackberry working.

The BES is a steaming pile of shit layered upon several other steaming piles of shit. It hammers the crap out of mail servers. The install process involves magical incantations and occasionally modifying the AD schema (this one admittedly is the fault of MS and lazy admins who use domain admin accounts for their mail.) The upgrade process involves something called a "knife edge cutover" I think because slitting your wrists can seem like a practical alternative. There's no reason removing a user from the server and then adding him again should require mucking with the DB tables directly with osql, yet that was the recommended procedure for a while. Wireless activation was a total game of chance well into when activating a Activesync device took a couple minutes and then it never had to be looked at again.

RIM's architecture made sense in 1999 when you couldn't get Internet access via cell. At this point though its an anachronism. I can appreciate the security features and policy management, but there's zero reason that this huge extra infrastructure be required in the days of unlimited mobile Internet access. Why install a BES, an MDS, a bb router, only to send your traffic to RIMs network (which has suffered several outages recently) which then goes to the carriers and to the devices?

BIS pisses me off even more. Why provide an IMAP client when you can force people to provide their login credentials to their honest and trustworthy cell phone carrier? Not to mention that well into 2008 the idea of syncing e-mail (as opposed to POP3 download) was looked at as some sort of freak request. It's not like anyone would want to get their mail from both their phone AND their PC.

Re:Thank you

[CrankyFool]

It can actually be an issue. A wiped Blackberry will still place 911 calls. A Blackberry being wiped, however, will not. And the last time I had a Blackberry wiped from under me (I had a dispute with our Asset Management group; they won), it took about 60 minutes, due to security policies and scrubbing memory. During that time, the Blackberry was useless for any purpose, including placing 911 calls.

Re:Thank you

[mysidia]

Uh, if you provide your phone access to confidential information without authentication, then that's a security risk.

Any apps used on the device should perform their own authentications.

_Extremely_ sensitive materials should absolutely never be transmitted using e-mail.

Anything stored on the device is possibly in the hands of an attacker, if the phone itself is able to decrypt, encryption or not. Implication is the hax0r can install software on the phone to act as the user and perform automated data dumping.

If nothing else, they can use radio jamming or other techniques to block the wireless signal, or take the phone to an area with poor reception (so the "wipe" command can't be sent to the device)

Point a camera at the phone's display for a while, start at the oldest e-mail message, scroll through it, and hit N, etc, until they've enumerated the contents of every single email on the device

Encryption is only good if the device is completely locked, so the attacker cannot display sensitive info.

Re:Thank you

[BronsCon]

...setting a password is only step 1.

Reading Comprehension: You're Doing it Wrong.

Re:Thank you

[IceCreamGuy]

Blackberries on BES offer enterprise features simply unheard of with Winmobile or iphone devices.

Maybe unheard of to you. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123484.aspx I count well over 100 group policy settings that can be applied through Activesync to a Windows Mobile 6.1 device. Some of these actually do work on an iPhone as well, such as the password and phone lock policies.

Windows mobile only recently got the much needed security features such as remote device deactivation and wiping.

Windows Mobile + Exchange 2003/2007 have had this functionality since 2005 at the release of Exchange 2003 SP2 http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?familyid=535BEF85-3096-45F8-AA43-60F1F58B3C40&displaylang=en. It even works on an iPhone. I'd hardly call 2005 "recent" in the IT world.

Re:Thank you

[wzinc]

I'm pretty sure iPhones can do all of this... I own one.
- remote wipe - through exchange and MobileMe
- full data encryption
- proxies
- security policies, including what apps you can / can't have
- even throw-away phones do "logging," as in recent calls - I'm sure there's some way to save that list - worst case-scenario, look at the itemized bill. The iPhone does log time-usage for sure.

Although: MDS; I don't know what that is...

Also, the iPhone does not feature:
- a Perl trackball or that awful "are you sure?" on every menu option scroll / click wheel on the side
- the need for an intermediate push server
- a UI that makes WinMo look good

Re:Thank you

[gemada]

My experience as a sysadmin is the exact opposite of yours. Having rolled out over 30 BES implementations, they tend to work almost flawlessly and require no 3rd party software to work with Exchange, since that is the whole point of a BES. The BB, BES combo is robust and reliable. The CAL' s are cheap, certs are not required for security as on a WInMo or iPhone and BB's rarely need to get reset unlike the steaming pile that is WinMo. iPhones are nice for home users but activesync just doesn't have the functionality of BES (and activesync pounds away on a server like there is no tomorrow). Your post seems like complete FUD, or you don't know how to setup and manage BES/BB implementations, and has not been the experience of myself or any other BES admins i know. BB's "just work", unlike WinMo.

Re:Thank you

[RAMMS EIN]

``Making them work as a mobile email device tied to Exchange requires a shiat-ton of ugly third party software.''

Exchange is a shiat-ton of ugly proprietary software. It does not surprise me that any product would have trouble working with it. Especially if the product is from a different vendor.

Whatever else you can fault Blackberries for, subobtimal integration with Exchange is something you can thank Microsoft for. If they wouldn't hold Exchange's protocols under tight wraps, I'm sure RIM and many others would race to provide better integration with it. Of course, that would diminish Microsoft's competitive advantage, so it is unlikely to happen, barring government intervention.

Re:Thank you

[Anne Thwacks]

as a SysAdmin ... iPhone first, WinMobile second, blackberry distant third.

Well, as a user, business or otherwise, Winmobile over my dead body.

Seriously, I love my BB, while Winmobile crashed several times a day, usually using all my apps and data. That is "Goods not of merchandisable quality" in my estimation, and the H/W manufactuers did not even allow a paid upgrade when a new version of the OS came out.

I am not saying BB is perfect, but IPhone is not for me, and BB works. (I really wanted an upgrade of my Sony Ericsson P1i, with accelerometers, GPS and Android, but SE dont seem to care what customers want.)

Re:Thank you

[ToasterMonkey]

You know, bitching about self signed certs is actually a Good Thing. I'd rather my device/client told me that a cert is only self signed, then that gives me an indication of the level of trust (a self signed certificate just says "i'm ok, trust me").

Well, a signed cert just says someone else vouched for their identity. It has nothing to do with trusting the person presenting the certificate. I'm not just nitpicking, that's a really huge difference. There aren't really many "levels" of trust. There's "Hi, you look great *hug*", and there's "I hope Sxball694 is really a chick." What will the "are you sure" dialog accomplish? What would a certificate stating that its name really is Sxball694 mean? With cryptography, it's black and white. Do we have trusted keys or not. At some point in the chain, they had to be physically delivered, or you can't rule out an electronic form of attack. No maybes about it.

How many times have you ever clicked "no" to one of those untrusted cert dialogs anyway? Not a changed cert, but a brand new one from a new connection. If you don't have a strictly enforced trusted cert only policy, then how would you know when a MitM suppressed one and offered a "good enough" looking untrusted one? Do you know in all cases where there SHOULD be a trusted cert? A gut instinct prompt provides no security.

Even signed certs can't always be trusted. The third party trust model only works when ownership is obvious, and you trust all your root CAs to verify that, along with identity. How is a CA supposed verify who owns some internal IP or private DNS record from a corporate intranet? Do you know what a CA trusts? You trust them implicitly so you damned well should! Phone books and public DNS records. That does not generally help one secure a connection to an exchange server. It doesn't matter that the real server has a corporate CA signed cert, unless the client expects and enforces it. How is implicitly accepting untrusted, first time certs any worse than implicitly accepting "trusted" certs for resources not necessarily owned? Little difference, not knowing someone's name vs. not knowing what their face should look like. What would you expect the owner of www.prepaydebit.com to be? Truth is, trusting a signed cert is not enough in that case. If you're not sure who should own it, and you have no reason to believe a CA would... better hope it hits a revocation list fast if little bad guys are operating it, but that's reactive security.

  I guess my point is that when making the first impression, an impersonator only needs to make the minimum effort. Also, things that are not well know are almost impossible to protect from impersonation.

Re:Thank you

[beelsebob]

Well, as we are all aware, nobody cares how hard the admin's job is. The Enterprise is BB's target market and they're dug in deep. Just the ability to sync with Exchange calendars, contacts and email is 99% of why Blackberry exists - because BES is great if you're a user. If you're an admin, your job is to support the business and the business wants Exchange sync.

Read what he said again. The blackberry requires a whole bunch of 3rd party software to do that in a vaguely okay way, all of which is limiting, and a pain in the ass. By contrast, the iPhone does exchange calendar, contact and email syncing straight out the box, with extra faffing about.

Re:Thank you

[beelsebob]

I'm sorry, are you kidding me? The blackberry requires all your corporate communications to go through their third party server. That's the big security hole you need to be worried about, right there.

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon...

Sim card...

Blackberry Storms have SIM cards.

Re:Thank you

[Octorian]

I've had a Bold 9000 since a couple weeks before it hit the US market. Sure, the early pre-release firmware (4.6.0.125, I think) was flaky. But every upgrade since has been pretty solid.

Re:Thank you

[Octorian]

BIS pisses me off even more. Why provide an IMAP client when you can force people to provide their login credentials to their honest and trustworthy cell phone carrier? Not to mention that well into 2008 the idea of syncing e-mail (as opposed to POP3 download) was looked at as some sort of freak request. It's not like anyone would want to get their mail from both their phone AND their PC.

Yeah, I wasn't too fond of that either. That's why I decided to go ahead and write my own IMAP/POP client (LogicMail) for the BlackBerry.

Of course now I'm stuck to the BlackBerry, since I do want to continue working on and supporting the app. But overall its been a pretty good experience, albeit way too much of a time sink.

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything stored on the device is possibly in the hands of an attacker, if the phone itself is able to decrypt, encryption or not. Implication is the hax0r can install software on the phone to act as the user and perform automated data dumping.

Fortunately, RIM has thought of that. With a Blackberry Enterprise Server, you can easily restrict what applications users can install. Or, you could allow them to install applications, but don't let the applications have access to the encrypted email store. Or, don't let applications make network connections to dump the data.

If nothing else, they can use radio jamming or other techniques to block the wireless signal, or take the phone to an area with poor reception (so the "wipe" command can't be sent to the device)

Fortunately, RIM has thought of that. With a Blackberry Enterprise Server, you can force the phone to check in periodically, and if it can't reach the server, wipe itself. You can force the user to enter their password periodically, not just after a period of idle time. You can require the use of RSA SecurID one-time-password tokens for additional security. RIM even has a remote smart card reader: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/ataglance/security/products/smartcardreader/

RIM isn't a bunch of fools, they do have some smart people working there. The Blackberry even has a process to clean freed memory as soon as possible, so if you try freezing the ram/flash to extract the data, you're not going to get much out of it.

Re:Thank you

[argStyopa]

Sounds like most of the 'features' you recommend are the reason most business users think that their admins are Nazis.

Google Maps? (a *far* better app than the shitty garbage installed by default on BBs) Sorry, no installs allowed.
Ebook reader for all those hours I spend in airports traveling for your goddamned company? Sorry, no installs allowed.
Opera, so I can make more business flight arrangements reasonably easily, instead of the crappy BB default browser?

As an email reader, it's the bomb. As a 'multifunction' device - entirely due to FASCIST IT departments - my BB is nearly worthless.

As I've seen more devices proliferate that will do the 'email synch' thing as well or better than BB, I'm delightedly looking forward to the expiry of my BB so I can hurl it in the trash.

(And by the way, I entirely understand that businesses don't necessarily want their staff filling the BB's with dodgy grey-market apps that end up locking the BB and causing the IT dept more hours supporting them. I get it. But the BES is *so* easy for lazy IT depts to totally lockdown without any consideration that there ARE useful external apps, THAT is what I object to. BES is like the electronic version of The Stanford Expiriment, where we get to see the 'Closet Commissar' lurking in the heart of every Dew-swilling IT manager.)

Re:Thank you

[iocat]

The blackberry has a hard keyboard (sorry Apple), and a consistent UI (sorry WM). The end. Call me when Apple ships a phone with a hard keyboard, or MS doesn't randomly change the function of the menu buttons from app to app (eg the button that is 'back' in most apps, turns into 'reply' when you get a text message...).

Re:Thank you

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

The ease of developing rich custom apps for the iPhone saves time, energy, and money. Which makes the platform compelling, even for enterprises, due to the number of apps available.

First step: buy a mac. Second step: pay 99-300. Third: Download the needed files.

Compare to blackberry: download a java library and your dev tool of choice. Or if you want blackberry-specific apps, register at blackberry and download their dev tools and libraries.

The lack of a good development platform for the BB is one of the reasons there are so few apps for it compared to the iPhone.

Have you done a count of java mobile applications lately, and that fact that any app compatible with java mobile will run on blackberry? This is before counting the blackberry-specific apps.

The wiping/deactivation features on the BB platform are indeed scary, they introduce a new wildcard, a potential unreliability: a BB being wiped at a bad time, intentionally or accidentally.

And a meteor might fall on my house too. Arguing against something because you don't see a use for it and your preferred platform doesn't support it is a bit specious, don't you think?

Imagine if for whatever reason you need to place a 911 call.. and just before you hit send, someone in IT accidentally clicks "wipe your BB", which turns it into a brick (they meant to wipe someone else's, but hey, accidents happen, someone gave the admin a slip of paper with the phone number to be wiped, and a digit was accidentally transposed on the paper).

Oh come on. You can do better than that. Imagine if you were calling a dying loved one, and just as you were about to hear their last words to you, some pimply-faced admin went on a power trip and wiped all of the corporate phones.

Image if a script kiddie breaks into the BB server at 2:00am, when everyone's asleep, he can in a single act, wipe the BBs of all the IT admins and management, making them unable to communicate, receive the security alert pages, as the bad guy breaks into more servers, or for that matter, making them unable to open up the password vault on the BB and lookup the OOB management credentials for incident response (b/c it was all on their BBs, and no longer exists). Imagine if the organization is a government entity or large corporation, the "attacker" is actually an insider, and the malicious wipe or application of a malicious IT policy is initiated during a public emergency, eg terrorist act. Considering those possibilities, the BB features may actually be security risks in some scenarios: the "central management" is also a central point of compromise (if that point is compromised, then so are the integrity of the BBs and their essential function).

We can keep making up improbable scenarios all day, this doesn't change the fact that from a security standpoint in an enterprise, this feature is invaluable.

And the logging features are privacy risks, except, clearly for mobiles issued for work use only. But many employers now issue phones with the expectation workers use it as _their_ phone (for even private use), take it home, and are just about always available on it for email, etc, even when on vacation.

Nice straw man. For tax and liability reasons, you'd be hard pressed to find ANY corporation that wants people to use their corporate phone for personal use -- in fact, I daresay it's a grave offense for any company large enough to have an HR department. They may want them to carry their corp blackberry 24/7, but that's a far cry from wanting them to use it in lieu of their personal phone. And for those same liability reasons, audit trails are critical in the enterprise.

Re:Thank you

[epiphani]

Eh, yeah. But it is encrypted at your site straight down to your device. The encryption keys are specific to your BES and your device, and RIM doesn't have any visibility into them. So it's far more secure than anything else out there.

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

The lack of a good development platform for the BB is one of the reasons there are so few apps for it compared to the iPhone.

You have no idea what you're talking about do you? Serious BlackBerry developers use Eclipse or Netbeans and create their own Ant tasks to automate testing on device and code-signing. The tools we use are the best there is.

The rest of your comments further illustrate your ignorance and mostly consist of naieve, poorly thought-out straw man arguments with very little insight.

Re:Thank you

[beelsebob]

Far more secure than talking directly with the exchange server, yes... wait... no, that's not right >..

Re:Thank you

[epiphani]

Anything stored on the device is possibly in the hands of an attacker, if the phone itself is able to decrypt, encryption or not. Implication is the hax0r can install software on the phone to act as the user and perform automated data dumping.

If nothing else, they can use radio jamming or other techniques to block the wireless signal, or take the phone to an area with poor reception (so the "wipe" command can't be sent to the device)

Long story short, you're wrong here, and the folks at RIM work very hard to make sure you're wrong. First, you cannot install unsigned applications. Second, you can lock the device with a password, in which case after 10 failed password attempts, the device wipes itself.

Encryption is only good if the device is completely locked, so the attacker cannot display sensitive info.

That is -exactly- what RIM prides itself on. Of course, as a BES admin, you can choose to allow no-password devices, but the entire point of blackberries is to allow you a fully secure extension of your office. And they employ a lot of smart people to do exactly that.

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

What on earth are you talking about? The only software BES needs to integrate with exchange is ... sql server, exchange, and BES. Nothing third party. You don't even need sql server if you have a small shop and want to use msde/sql server express.

Re:Thank you

[epiphani]

Far more secure than talking directly with the exchange server, yes... wait... no, that's not right >..

Over a mobile device? Yes.
Over the public internet? Yes.
Inside your own private network? No.

But what are we trying to achieve again?

Re:Thank you

[gravyface]

Licensing and maintenance will bleed my customers dry.

I serve the exact same demographic (Microsoft Small Business Server clients, 2-50 users) and completely disagree with you: BES is simple to setup* and requires zero maintenance. Licensing fees? Blackberry Professional Software comes with one free license; software is free, each additional license is $95; BPS also comes with one free support incident (although I've never needed it in my 12-15 BES/BPS setups).
Sure, you need a higher data plan if you plan on using BES, but that's the same for any device where you're going to be synching email, calendars, tasks, etc. wirelessly.

* When we first started setting BES/BPS up a few years ago, the Blackberry docs were convoluted and obtuse but I've since found (and re-written) my own setup guide; we can all bang out a BES install and sync 5 users in under 2 hours (including download time); takes one bounce of the server. Not exactly "painful".

Re:Thank you

[NormalVisual]

And as a LogicMail user on my new Curve 8900, I'd like to say thanks for providing the IMAP client that RIM couldn't seem to do properly.

Re:Thank you

[jlp2097]

Well, as we are all aware, nobody cares how hard the admin's job is. The Enterprise is BB's target market and they're dug in deep. Just the ability to sync with Exchange calendars, contacts and email is 99% of why Blackberry exists - because BES is great if you're a user. If you're an admin, your job is to support the business and the business wants Exchange sync.

Read what he said again. The blackberry requires a whole bunch of 3rd party software to do that in a vaguely okay way, all of which is limiting, and a pain in the ass. By contrast, the iPhone does exchange calendar, contact and email syncing straight out the box, with extra faffing about.

Just for the sake of completeness: and so do all Windows Mobile devices, without the need for any extra software, straight out of the box.

Re:Thank you

[222]

With all due respect, what the hell are you talking about? My BES rollout was one of the most painless deployments I've ever had. It took me the lesser part of an afternoon to get setup, and was so reliable I ended up using my test box for production. It's been running for well over a year and has required essentially no attention. It simply works.

I'd kill for all of my projects to be so smooth.

Re:Thank you

[0xdeadbeef]

The blackberry requires all your corporate communications to go through their third party server.

Don't forget the third party called your cell phone company and every freaking router on the Internet.

I bet all of the people going "ZOMG all my emails go through Canada!" use unencrypted IMAP on their iPhones knowing full well that AT&T snoops on email for the government.

Re:Thank you

[Poohsticks]

What third party software is required? Seriously. I want to know what you deem "required" in order to work "in a vaguely okay way". I've been a BES admin since version 1.0 (and we're going on ver 5.0 now). I've NEVER run any third party applications on the Blackberry server or device and have nearly 100% mailbox data replicated from the Exchange server to the device (we purposely limit which mailbox folders are replicated to the device).

I can understand if you don't like Blackberry servers or the devices. They're a bit of an acquired taste perhaps, but get your facts straight because you've obviously got NO idea what you're talking about.

Re:Thank you

[tzanger]

Actually I'm pretty sure that the iPhone push *is* all done through their own servers, albeit on the telco side. Apple is in the loop on push notification, which is awful.

Re:Thank you

[beelsebob]

Yes, but no project can be as smooth as no project at all -- the blackberry requires you to set up additional software, WiMo and iPhone do not, simple.

Re:Thank you

[beelsebob]

I've been a BES admin since version 1.0
Yes, that's right, there's no third party software, required to make exchange work on a blackberry. Oh wait, is BES made by microsoft? Oh look, no, it's not. Is it third party then? Oh look, yes, it is. Oh look, there seems to be a piece of third party software required to use exchange with a blackberry that isn't required for iPhone or WiMo.

Re:Thank you

[Minwee]

A Blackberry with a dead battery cannot place 911 calls either.

Do other manufacturers have some way around this nightmarish security hole?

Re:Thank you

[Poohsticks]

Oh I get it! You're considering the BES itself as the third party software. Well sure then, adding third-party software to the Exchange environment must seem foreign. But you get a hell of a lot of functionality that just doesn't exist on a pure Exchange/ActiveSync deployment. Including the ability to push applications to the devices, S/MIME functionality, true AES encryption throughout the whole device... you name it. Yes - BES is a bolt-on to Exchange, but it's a damned useful one in large organizations. I get it if it seems to complicated for your environment or your users, then stick with Exchange/ActiveSync. I've been running it for a long time and one thing stays the same - users are still stupid and training is still required. That goes for WinMo/iPhone and any other mobile email solution you're running too though.

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit!
I have twice installed the Blackberry Enterprise Server on my organization's Exchange server from scratch in under 1/2 day and had all handhelds syncing wirelessly with Exchange that same day. At the last place I worked Exchange wasn't running RPC over HTTP(S) and therefore the iPhone would NOT sync with exchange properly. Plus, when compared to the iPhone the Blackberry's capability as a phone (ignoring all of the other features of the two devices) is superior. This is based on the opinion of a brilliant friend of mine who has used both in a corporate environment and is someone who travels 75% of the time for his job.

Re:Thank you

[Aliencow]

Email Push, using Exchange, is done without the telco's help. It's not really push in reality, it's closer to a neverending HTTP query with some keepalives..

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

And read the response again... he's saying that as long as it's easy for USERS to be productive with BlackBerries, and this is very much the case, it doesn't matter if it's difficult for whoever is adminning BES.

As a user, I don't give a rip of the sysadmin has a hard job. The sysadmin's job is to make my job easier, not vice-versa. So I don't care if BES is harder to admin than iPhone is, I can be much more productive with a BlackBerry in my hand than an iPhone. At the end of the day, that's what counts.

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

...blackberries (I refuse to capitalize)...

Yay! Finally there is somebody willing to stand up to stupid capitalization schemes and case letters the way they should be! Stay strong, don't let the marketing drones win!

...I tell them iPhone...

D'oh!

Re:Thank you

[beelsebob]

I can be much more productive with a BlackBerry in my hand than an iPhone.
Can you? You haven't presented any evidence for that. All you've presented evidence for is that the blackberry is harder to admin, not that it's easier for end users.

Re:Thank you

[Zerth]

Less than half of IT depts lock it down.

blackberry has google maps, with streetview, and even Verizon lets you use it with GPS now, and Verizon is a freaking Nazi about GPS.

Ebook reader. Um, got tons. Even Comic/cbz readers. Given, I can't read Kindle books like the iphone, yet.

Opera mini works just fine on blackberries.

Re:Thank you

[Zerth]

The default SIM is only for use in countries with only GSM If you are using it in a Verizon area, it is CDMA.

Although, I've read people getting them to work on Tmobile SIMs by copying Bold service books.

Re:Thank you

[mysidia]

First, you cannot install unsigned applications.

No problem, get a certificate, sign the app.

Although I must say I was thinking more along the lines of finagle a JTAG connection to the device and hax0r the firmware, including the signature verification subroutines.

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

For small to medium sized business, we usually recommend that they go with a hosted exchange solution. Hell even GoDaddy does that now. Then the CALs and overall costs are way lower.

Re:Thank you

[BronsCon]

You don't need a JTAG for that, you can load whatever firmware you want by connecting it to Desktop Manager with the battery removed.

Of course, this overwrites anything that was in the onboard flash.

Oh, and if it's not signed with the correct cert, it'll fail to execute.

Oh, and if the challenge-response tests the radio and encryption systems (both hardware) do against the currently running firmware fail, you have no network or decryption abilities.

Chances are, if you've got the tech and skills to bypass these checks, you're already in the windoze box the BES is hosted on and don't need my blackberry anyway.

Re:Thank you

[mysidia]

Hey, I don't know what motives the person capable of bypassing all those measures might have. (Though the features do represent some improved security of the iPhone, that is, if you go out on a limb and foolishly allow sensitive corporate data to be accessed by BBs)

The BB hacker might work for the local government / they may be a mercenary hired by a competitor, or worse.

But if someone who figured out how to bypass the firmware protection, i'm sure they'd find a market for their services, and that market would be more lucrative if they kept the information closely guarded.

Finding a BB someone lost is a lot more innocuous than breaking into a server.

After all, servers are usually protected by firewalls, which deflect many possible ways of an outsider gaining remote access. They even log events, which can get the hacker caught readily and easily.

Activities on a disconnected BB, OTOH, are not easily traceable, however. Esp if the owner can't remember where they lost it, and when the hacker's done with it, the unit may be incinerated.

On the flip side, the BB's MDS proxy feature may actually be used to bypass said firewalls (after compromise of the BB), perform said compromise of servers, in a manner that renders firewall useless, and _then_ incinerate BB after attack done.

Re:Thank you

[webscathe]

I read it again but I still don't agree with him. I'm also a BES admin, and it's not that big a deal to set up a BES server... anyone w/ basic Windows experience can do so, tying it to Exchange isn't as easy as it could be, but there are much harder things out there. Once you have it set up, in my experience it's not "vaguely okay" and "a pain in the ass" it actually provides very good sync and user experience between Outlook and the BB.

Re:Thank you

[spazimodo]

Yes, thank you! LogicMail rocks.

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

The discussion was about why it doesn't matter if the sysadmin's job is harder, not about the fine points of why I find a blackberry more producive.

But, since you're concerned, here's why:

• I can type faster on a BlackBerry
• I can find contacts faster on a BlackBerry
• I can MMS on a BlackBerry (which Apple *finally* fixed
• I can copy/paste on a BlackBerry (again, *finally* fixed on iPhone).
• I can lock/unlock a BlackBerry faster
• I can easily make an appointment on my calendar and invite attendees and have it instantly synch with my Exchange/Outlook setup as well as manage the responses
• I can compose emails faster on a BlackBerry

Yes, this is all anecdotal, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that, as a USER, I am much more productive with a BlackBerry and I don't give a shit how hard the sysadmin's job is.

I'll even throw in an unecessary car analogy (after all, it's /.!): When you bought your last car, did you choose it based on whether it was the right car for YOU or did you pick it based on how easy it is for a mechanic to wrench under the hood? Hobby hot-rods not withstanding, you're going to pick a vehicle based on your needs as a user.

Total

[Anonymous Coward]

No total sales overall graph, only moving averages of dsales/dt?

Re:Total

[hedwards]

Well, that's easy, just integrate it and beg somebody to tell you what the constant is. Problem solved.

Re:Total

[ballwall]

Whoops, oversight on my part. Total sales stand at 2382 copies as of the data in the article (at an average net of $8.50 per sale I've made just over $20k). Thanks for pointing that out. I'd update the site but I'm afraid to break at the moment.

Re:Total

[Fluffeh]

Curious to find out if you think that 20k is a reasonable return on your investment programming it in the first place? Have you done some analysis on your hourly rate after you look at your time spent working and income returns?

Was it a case of "I want to make money" or "Hmmm, how does this thing work... Oh, money..."

Re:Total

[ballwall]

Much more on the "This will be fun... Oooh, money" side.

Well, and a lot of "#@$&* why is there no app to do podcasts on BlackBerry?". (Commuting sucks without podcasts, imo).

The interesting part is most of the costs are up front. I took two weeks off of work to write the initial version, and after that I've been tweaking it nights and one or two weekend days (two at first, maybe half of one now).

In hindsight I should have tracked my time better, but I'd estimate I spent just over 250 hours in code, and I probably spend about 6 hours a week doing support these days (much less earlier), so about 400-450 hours to this point. That works out to be somewhere between $45-50/hour.

But... the majority of the work is done at this point and I'm still bringing in an additional $1k/week with the ongoing sales, so the picture is getting continually better. It'll be interesting to see how long it keeps up. This slashdot article (and the waves it makes) will likely be the last bit of marketing hoorah I can get out of this app, so while I'm hopeful, I'm not optimistic. As I said in the article, marketing is really really important. (Well, until the App World gets some marketing of its own, I suppose).

Regardless of how it turns out, it was still a lot of fun. And my users seriously rock.

-Marcus

Re:Total

[baldusi]

Please do a follow up on what was the effect of the slashdot effect.

Re:Total

[ballwall]

A couple of people have asked for that via email.

I set up this forum post as a placeholder where I'll post an analysis this weekend (if you want to bookmark or subscribe to it). It's locked so you don't have to worry about errant notices.

-Marcus

Re:Total

[arf_barf]

Loved the article. There are not many people/companies that will share these kinds of details. Kudos.

Once the slashdoting dust settles could you please update the article with post slashdot data ;-)

Thanks

Re:Total

[Octorian]

When I kicked off my main BlackBerry project, a surprisingly useful app called LogicMail, I had some similar motivations. I basically really wanted something that didn't exist (at least in any usable form) for the platform.

Though instead of trying to commercialize it, I went for the F/OSS route. In retrospect, one could say I was short-changing myself, but there are other very important pieces of the puzzle that you need to consider first.

First of all, the moment you decide to sell an app, you pretty much cut yourself off from any and all possibility of community contribution to the code. In the beginning, its no big deal as no one contributes anyways. But as the project grows, everyone has a pet feature they want and you don't have the time to work on. Often these are low-risk items you don't mind including.

Second, and probably the biggest issue, is support. If you are going to sell an app, you really should be able to confidently stand behind it. You are essentially taking on an obligation to support it and resolve any user issues. This might seem reasonable at first, especially with small apps, self-contained apps, or apps that talk to sufficiently known/standardized servers with highly constrained protocols. But with my sort of app, there were just too damn many variables to consider. I basically had to turn my users into testers, and a beta stage wouldn't have really helped much. There are just too many e-mail servers and encoding formats to catch it all up front.

Finally, having an open source project is kind of like the developer equivalent of having a portfolio. Its an open way you can show what you're capable of, to a degree pretty much impossible with your day job.

Oh, and I do have a day job, and it pays well enough that I really don't need to stress myself to death for a few extra bucks.

Re:Total

[smoser]

Figured I'd take this opportunity to say 'thanks' for the article. It was very well written and informative. Good luck to you.

Re:Total

[Poohsticks]

There isn't a podcast application strictly on the Blackberry, but you can sync the Blackberry with your iTunes and include podcasts using the Blackberry MediaSync program. You can find it here: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/media/mediasync.jsp

Re:Total

[sharkdba]

(Commuting sucks without podcasts, imo)

I commute by public transportation. I used to listen to podcasts but went back to the old style, you know, reading thing. The biggest reason: I can read much faster than listening to a guy talking. If I have a lot of material to catch-up reading is much more effective.

Bad UI library

[Jeffrey Baker]

He's certainly right about one thing: his app has an ass UI. It's RIM's fault, of course. On the Palm, Android, or iPhone platforms even "hello, world!" looks great. On BlackBerry it's impossible to get even a simple app to look good. All apps on BlackBerry that do, in fact, look good are using full-custom drawing engines. See Bloomberg, Facebook, etc. For the small developer, doing your own custom drawing is a huge undertaking assuming you have any visual design talent to speak of.

Re:Bad UI library

[mattack2]

So then it seems like a developer has an opportunity to provide a library/framework/whatever you want to call it to provide a UI as a product.

Re:Bad UI library

[ballwall]

I think RIM really needs to get on it. Not having a unified look and feel in only going to hurt the platform in the long run. (Not that I care, personally)

Re:Bad UI library

[Jeffrey Baker]

Yes, it certainly would be a nice opportunity for someone to provide a framework or library for nice looking UI elements. There is also a business opportunity to make a library or possibly a service that takes the pain -- and it is a great deal of pain -- out of implementing BlackBerry's highly touted "push" network feature.

It seems more likely to me in the long run that RIM will simply buy Palm. One of them has good hardware and a solid operating system foundation, and the other has a spiffy user interface and a consumer market strategy that passes the laugh test.

Re:Bad UI library

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use lwuit on the blackberry. This can provide a nice UI to J2ME applications.

Re:Bad UI library

[Anonymous Coward]

RIM's a company of geeks, and you can be sure a lot of RIM employees read slashdot and have read your article with interest, and will be talking about it at the watercooler tomorrow morning.

Like me. And I quite agree with a lot of points you've made.

Re:Bad UI library

[mysidia]

There are already some UI libraries that add to Java ME, e.g. Apime, Pax Java ME.

And i'm sure there are others, that's just what is found by a cursory search for J2ME GUI Library

Re:Bad UI library

[jcr]

his app has an ass UI. It's RIM's fault, of course.

RIM may not be helping much, but that doesn't make it their fault. A developer certainly has the option of implementing their own UI.

-jcr

Re:Bad UI library

[Anonymous Coward]

he's made some god-awful design choices and should have a designer to help with that. RIM provide an extensive API for creating interfaces - all he needs to do is research the API, there's a Field class anyone can extend and create their own interface elements. It's a bloody simple and elegant API as well.

And no - apps that look good DO NOT use custom drawing engines. They extend native classes. Apps that DO use custom drawing engines are slow and sluggish and do not feel like native BlackBerry applications. Apps that succeed on BlackBerry have the same interface experience as the native applications - so the user knows where everything will be. Apps that depart from this are frustrating to use, the reason so many BlackBerry apps look shit is simply because the developers don't know what they're doing AND there's no draconian style guideline that must be adhered to - you're free to make ugly-ass apps.

What iPhone has is a static target, BlackBerry has several different screensizes, each device is unique - the API handles this beautifully but you do need to go slightly lower level. Android doesn't have this issue only because there's a couple of devices in the market.

Reading TFA it's clear he's not fully comfortable with the API and should maybe have spent another couple of months getting to grips with it before writing it. Many things he criticises are actually strengths not found on any other platform (Plethora network connection options for example) but you need to understand them at a low level to see why RIM have done things the way they have.

Re:Bad UI library

[ballwall]

Just to pipe in in my defense. I did state with the networking stuff in the article that it can be figured out, but it's a huge hurdle for non-network apps that may need an HTTP request every now and then.

As for the UI, I'm fine extending the base classes and drawing my own stuff (but make no mistake, you're drawing lines and shading rects to make it happen), my point is that I *don't* have any skills in graphic design, I know that. But... all of the other platforms make allowances for that and give you base widgets that set you up pretty well right out of the gate.

The thing about Blackberry

[erroneus]

The thing about Blackberry that the business users love most about it is that it works and does exactly what they want it to do. They have their contacts, their email, their to-do list, their notes and a select few other things. They don't need much else. It's perfect the way it is for most users. Adding new software to it is not an entertaining idea for most users.

At the most, they want some mapping... google maps works quite nicely for me, but essentially, Blackberry already does what it needs to do and while some will, most users don't want anything more.

Re:The thing about Blackberry

[growse]

Exactly. Right tool for the job and all that.

Re:The thing about Blackberry

[fermion]

I have to agree that since the iPhone is a consumer device it is much less suitable for business. A blackberry is a workhorse, doing what needs to be done in an efficient manner. Really, it is like the Mac before all the toy gizmos like Quicktime and iTunes became deeply integrated into the OS, or even existed for that matter. One could set up a Mac as a production machine, have it do exactly what you wanted to, and not have to worry about the staff misusing it as a toy. Frankly that was my issue with MS Windows. Too many toys made it a toy and it was hard to use as a production machine without a lot of security and supervision. I am not sure what Apple can do about the iPhone. Right now if salesmen are given the iPhone, everyone will claim that they got a free iPod and video console. Not good for the PR.

Re:The thing about Blackberry

[Anonymous Coward]

Toy Gizmos? Deeply integrated? You probably shouldn't post about things you know nothing about.

As to the iPhone there are plenty of very large companies using them without the "issues" you are fantasizing about.

Re:The thing about Blackberry

[theJML]

Maybe I'm weird, but I use my iPhone for business. After looking into and working with other's blackberries, I can honestly say that I want none of that Kool-Aid. the iPhone Just Works(tm). I not only get a full featured "I'm not stuck with mobile sites" browser, but RDP which is extremely useful, Fully Encrypted Cisco VPN, AIM/ICQ Which we use all day at work, IRC which the dev team uses, SSH and VNC which come in quite handy being that I'm a linux admin, as well as many other network tools, including built in access to the company's WPA2 protected Wi-Fi and VPN over the 3G when I'm on the beach. All for $50 less than the cheapest WiFi enabled Blackberry on any carrier in the area.

I'd also point out that I'm not alone. In my division, well over half of the smart phone users are running with iPhones. RIM/Palm needs to really step up their game if they don't want to continue to loose market share. I will say the Pre looks fairly good, but it needs a lot of polish, something the iPhone has had a few years for. I'm by no means an Apple fanboy, but you gotta give props where props are due. They made a great platform, and people made some handy apps (IRC/AIM/ICQ/RDP/VNC/SSH/Telnet/etc...), most of which are free, or at most $1.99.

Re:The thing about Blackberry

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah and PC's will never need more than 128k of ram. Just because they use they key features of the Blackberry doesn't mean they wouldn't like more or better if they could get it. I will never understand IT people who think this way. Like a lot of IT people I have been using Blackberries for a very long time. I could not wait to dump it for an iPhone which gives me dramatically greater capabilities. RIM has to do something about their ancient and creaky OS in order to do something about the UI or to provide apps with iPhone like capabilities including in hardware. It's a kludge OS.

Re:The thing about Blackberry

[erroneus]

Yeah, I'm sure you're quite happy with your iPhone. Sounds like a terrific tool. Are you an AT&T subscriber? I guess you are. Blackberry is available to all carriers. iPhone is restricted to AT&T at the moment. Hope that changes.

I'm not saying anything about "blackberry vs. iphone" though. In fact, my original comment didn't even come close to talking about iphone. What I was commenting on was the culture of blackberry users. The users who use blackberry, do so because it does exactly what they want it to do and has a reputation for being exactly what it is. iPhone, now that you bring it up, has a reputation for being a fun toy. While I believe you when you say it is an incredibly useful tool, I have to insist that its reputation is quite a bit different from reality.

Re:The thing about Blackberry

[erroneus]

The reason many people, not only IT people, prefer Blackberry is because it is solid and reliable. They don't care if it has access to a software shop online that enables them to buy a zippo lighter simulator or a lightsaber thing. They turn it on, it works. It doesn't nag the user for updates and places the management of the device squarely in the hands of the administrators where it belongs.

And, oh yeah, I can take out the battery if I want to.

Re:The thing about Blackberry

[TrancePhreak]

I got all those apps free and can run them all at the same time. Go WinMo!

Re:The thing about Blackberry

[beelsebob]

What makes the iPhone worse for businesses? The fact that it can do exchange synchronization out the box, without need for additional software on your company servers, or communicating through RIM's servers? The fact that it provides exactly the required apps -- a phone, contact list, calendar, email client and browser straight out the box?

What does the blackberry actually do better than the iPhone in a corporate environment?

Re:The thing about Blackberry

[mdwh2]

Wait - I thought people were telling us how great the Iphone was precisely because it lacked features, and therefore made it easier to use, or something? That other phone may look better on paper, they claim, but that's just grumpy featurism.

But now we compare to a phone that you claim has fewer features, suddenly features are worth comparing? Well in that case, let's compare the Iphone to all the other phones, like Nokia's, on features.

Not that I see what the Iphone has to do with this story. I know it's been a whole day since we've had our last Iphone Slashvertisement, but when for once we at last have a story about one of the other devices (you know, the popular ones), it's a shame there still has to be the obligitary off-topic Iphone mention.

Re:The thing about Blackberry

[NormalVisual]

And put in a bigger flash card when needed.

Experience from user

[Anonymous Coward]

Man I have called Symbian and especially Nokia hopeless until I helped my cousin update his blackberry and back it up on Windows using boot camp on OS X.

That client software, which the horrible experience starts from downloading with uname and password, a gigantic file over HTTPS with IE is not just horrible, it is even offensive to Windows development. Yes, Windows can not be that bad, at last resort if you call it that bad, Trolltech Qt is available for years. I didn't check it and I am also afraid of the result, did they code it in Java? I mean coding with Java could make sense, it does not have to look horrible but... If you don't have courtesy of releasing it for OS X and Linux, why bother?

The update manager... Now that will make Nokia owners proud... It downloads 400+ tiny files over HTTP, realtime (what can go wrong?) and pushes it to device one by one. That is the most risky update process I have ever did and I am kind of a guy who dares to update his phone under MS Virtual PC on G5 running XP.

As it backed up, updated, I thought I better do a favor to guy as I forced him to update risk and boot camp risk on Macbook. I couldn't find any app at all! I went to Crackberry, I saw themes installed with ZIP file, which are extracted to device memory and selected... No verification of theme compatibility, no tiny SVG like Nokia. There is risk of messing entire UI.

I have one question in mind and trust me, I hate iPhone fascist device too... Nokia sells because they have a open attitude, company culture, people using their stuff for years (watch experienced Symbian users), Europe based company with Euro style... Question is How can Blackberry sell devices?

To the poster of that great article: You should have used J2ME with multimedia etc. extensions. You should have released it for all J2ME devices and compare that experience.

Re:Experience from user

[PCM2]

The update manager... Now that will make Nokia owners proud... It downloads 400+ tiny files over HTTP, realtime (what can go wrong?) and pushes it to device one by one.

No it doesn't. BlackBerry firmware updates are distributed as Zipped installers. The installer places ALL of the necessary files into a directory on your hard drive. The next time you run the BlackBerry Desktop software, it will find those files and inform you that a new update is available for your phone and ask you if you want to install it. During the update process, the files on the BlackBerry are backed up, the flash memory is erased, the new firmware is loaded, the device reboots, and then your custom files/databases are restored. I've never had any kind of problem.

How can Blackberry sell devices?

They accept money. Lots and lots of money from lots and lots of happy customers.

love podtrapper

[Mr. X]

I've been a PodTrapper user since this past January, and I have recently started looking into BlackBerry Development myself. As his write-up makes clear, Marcus at Versatile Monkey has to be one of the best developers I've had the pleasure with interacting with. I really appreciate the 'insider' view of developing for BlackBerry, and I'm sure his observations will be useful for my own pursuits.

Re:love podtrapper

[mgblst]

I have looked at getting into bb development as well, but it is just pure hell. I have an old 8700, I can't even find out if it can run application, and I can use it as a developer platform. There is no guide on the bb website to tell anyone this, going to this shitty bb page for the 8700 reveals no useful information.

They have made it so painful I will not be going back, they can go fuck themselves. Useless fuckers can't even produce a simple document detailing what software you need.

Re:love podtrapper

[Anonymous Coward]

I have looked at getting into bb development as well, but it is just pure hell. I have an old 8700, I can't even find out if it can run application, and I can use it as a developer platform. There is no guide on the bb website to tell anyone this, going to this shitty bb page for the 8700 reveals no useful information.

Yes, the 8700 can run applications. You need to learn how to search with google. RIM even releases free blackberry emulators so that you can test on different models. Some links for you:

http://www.blackberry.com/developers/downloads/simulators/index.shtml
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/
http://www.blackberry.com/developers/downloads/
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/javaappdev/javadevenv.jsp
http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2006/01/24/introduction-to-blackberry-j2me.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVFi39yvAr8

Boil it Down

[iluvcapra]

I'm sorta cribbing from his summary, but I did RTFA...

Pro:

• Code in Java
• No App Store
• Got licensing DRM to work...
• Web/press reviews were important to success
• App World is Good Thing

Con

• Different platforms/versions
• Very limited UI toolkit
• Networking, particularly testing network reachability, seems overly complicated based on his description
• Many BB devices are very resource constrained, and this a problem for many obvious and obscure reasons
• Got licensing DRM to work, but is a hack and doesn't allow all the options author wanted
• Not all retailers as good as App World

Most important lesson IMHO: "Everything is marketing."

His issues with the platform and the resources available on a BB really bring the differences with iPhone OSX and BB into relief. An iPhone is guaranteed to have a particular hardware config, and be very capacious in RAM and drive space, and has very teh shiny widgets and will always have the latest APIs; it also provides a brainless e-commerce platform to sell and install your app, to the point where buying a mobile app could be considered impulsive. You pay for all this with the fact that the Apple overmind decides if you can sell your app or not and takes its cut.

Re:Boil it Down

[davester666]

...and software config...

The thing that the iPhone has over the other OS's is that the OS and the installed applications are easy to update.

The OS has a big 'Update' button on the same tab as the the Sync button in iTunes.app.

Now Apple could make updating Applications easier, as it's hidden as a small button in the iTunes Applications panel.

Microsoft's problem with licensing their OS is that their 'customer' [namely, the device manufacturers] get no benefit to allowing users to upgrade the OS installed in their phone. Hell, Microsoft probably charges them extra for the right to ship updates to the OS.

I think this blog really highlights what the other manufacturers are missing
-like having a wide variety of low-quality frameworks
-really limited installed memory [both RAM and for storage]
        having such a small amount of RAM for processing kills the 'feature' that you can have multiple apps running. Yes it works, but if the experience for the end-user winds up sucking so much that they have to restart or reset the device, is it really that useful?
        (really RIM, you want us to re-download apps from your servers as a workaround to having such a small amount of memory to store them in)
-the wide variety of handsets and controls you potentially have to deal with

Re:Boil it Down

[iluvcapra]

Now Apple could make updating Applications easier, as it's hidden as a small button in the iTunes Applications panel.

It's hard to miss when your third-party iPhone apps are ready to upgrade, the App Store app gets a big red badge telling you a new version of SuperFoo is available.

The memory point struck me too. BBs are the defacto standard for text messaging, but many of them only have 32 or 64 megs of RAM and maybe a Gig of onboard storage (though with an SD slot). Only the Storm begins to compare to something like the Pre or a 3G (non S) iPhone, and then marginally. I'm not saying BBs are bad, it's just clear how quickly the whole smartphone market has gotten out from under BB, and really how special-purpose their devices are compared to this next gen of "media" smartphones.

Re:Boil it Down

[BSDevil]

• Networking, particularly testing network reachability, seems overly complicated based on his description

For that specific point, this is one of those features that doesn't make any sense to most developers, but is great if you're a very good BES admin. The idea, from that point of view, is that you have very fine control over how applications (and this includes internal RIM ones) connect to the network so that you can control costs that may arise from downloading large files. For example, you may set it so that you can only download software updates on WiFi or Serial Bypass, but that you can download high-priority ones over the network if WiFi isn't available.

Having said that, you would think that there'd be a wrapper API where you could just ask it the BES to make the decisions for you, if your app signifies (by using the particular call) that it's OK with pretty much any type of connection.

Re:Boil it Down

[arf_barf]

Every mobile platform has issues (even or especially the JesusPhone). Symbian has issues, WinMo has issues. It just a question your perseverance and if the target platform is willing to deal with you. WinMo is cheap to develop, but the manufacturers don't give you drivers to the nice hardware. Symbian is expensive and difficult, but Nokia has API for every piece of hardware they stick into their phones etc.

As for Apple, well I joined the anti -apple cult...

Re:Boil it Down

[mgblst]

be very capacious in RAM

Nope, maybe the new 3gS, but with the older versions you are not guaranteed anymore than 20mb. Try to use more than that and you will get memory warnings, depending on what apps you are running/have run in the past. (Some apple apps run in the background).

And how the hell can lack of an app store be a pro??

Re:Boil it Down

[RAMMS EIN]

``An iPhone is guaranteed to have a particular hardware config,''

Not anymore, now that there is more than one model. This "advantage" of iPhone will erode further over time as more models are released.

``and be very capacious in RAM and drive space,''

I'll take your word for it. Of course, one day, iPhones, too will seem bitty. Then again, it baffles the mind why one would not just stick a bit of extra memory in a device, as a manufacturer. It's a cheap and easy way to make it better. You really don't want your devices to be resource-constrained if you can help it.

``and has very teh shiny widgets and will always have the latest APIs;''

Nope. That's not going to last.

Otherwise, I agree with your post.

Re:Boil it Down

[k_187]

And how the hell can lack of an app store be a pro??

A) There is an app store. Multiple ones actually, but there is an official one from RIM.

B) To my knowledge, there is no approval procedure for the RIM store. So there are no limits on what gets distributed. I would call that a pro.

UTMA accounts

[tepples]

there are a proportion of users for both platforms that are weary of giving out credit card information, either A) they can't get a credit card because they are too young (and there are large amount of iPhone/Blackberry users who are 16/17)

In most cases, a seller who asks for a credit card will take a debit card. Banks in most U.S. states will open a checking account in the name of "$adult as custodian for $child under UTMA" which reverts to $child a few years later, and checking accounts nowadays tend to come with VISA check cards.

or B) are afraid that their identity might be stolen

Do they pay cash for groceries? For car payments?

Re:UTMA accounts

[Darkness404]

In most cases, a seller who asks for a credit card will take a debit card. Banks in most U.S. states will open a checking account in the name of "$adult as custodian for $child under UTMA" which reverts to $child a few years later, and checking accounts nowadays tend to come with VISA check cards.

Yes, but these aren't the "financially responsible independent working for all the fancy phones" kind of kids, but rather, "mom and dad are never home so to compensate buy their kids all the fancy gadgets" type who usually have iPhones and Blackberries.

Do they pay cash for groceries? For car payments?

The thing is the media has them so convinced that their identity will be stolen to the point where buying anything online sounds risky to them. I don't know how many times I've had to convince someone that no, wal-mart isn't going to steal your identity when you buy online from them (over HTTPS of course) nor that some E-Bay seller when you pay with PayPal will hack into your bank accounts. On the other hand these people have no problem with handing credit cards to a waitress for them to do whatever with it. But the fact that its online scares them. I've never really understood it myself considering that more people have been scammed in person than online.

Huge demand

[Geekthing]

You do have to take into account that PodTrapper had huge demand. There was absolutely no solution for OTA podcasts on Blackberry before PodTrapper. It was a game changer. I don't even use my iPod after I got it.

Re:Huge demand

[ballwall]

Very true. I wanted to talk about that in the article but had no way to quantify the impact. It's definitely worth noting, though. Thanks for bringing it up.

-Marcus

Great article

[sootman]

Great article so far. I'm only a fraction of the way through it but one part really caught my attention.

RIM has all sorts of UI widgets they use in their first party applications -- rounded corners, sliding screen transitions, gradient list fields, etc. -- but they don't release any of that for use by third party developers. The results are apps with wildly inconsistent UIs, created by developers who had to spend considerable effort making them inconsistent.

Say what you will about Apple, they really want developers to create great-looking apps that look at home on the iPhone, and they really do a good job of giving developers almost all the tools that they use themselves. (Same with OS X/XCode itself.) Someday an anthropology student will write a great tome on the different development communities and their relationships with the vendors: BeOS, Palm, Apple, MS...

Re:Great article

[RAMMS EIN]

Amazing, isn't it? How stupid do you have to be to provide a platform with many capabilities, and then allow developers to use only a subset of those capabilities, allowing them to write apps that look ugly and sort of work at best.

And then a competitor comes along that tries to make the developing experience and the end result for third party apps as good as possible and takes your cake. Duh!

Re:Great article

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this API is available to 3rd party developers... it's the BorderFactory API and related classes.

Sliding transitions IS something we're all waiting for, it is possible but involves some fairly hacky workarounds, storing a bitmap from a screens Graphics object and researching 'tweening' transitions to get a smooth effect.

Again - iPhone developers have a single screensize to code for, BlackBerry devs have to make their apps much more dynamic which means often they err on the side of caution/simplicity. that's not to say you can't make a slick looking app though, you just need to learn to code/design better...

Re:So

[ushering05401]

A lot about it. That is a pretty long posting with some insight for people completely unfamiliar with the world of blackberry development.

The story gets an upmod for that, though I suppose it could be seen as a really long plug for the guy's product. He mentions the surge from advertising on blogs and even includes graphs showing his trials vs. sales over time with some bumps pointed out.

A decent read overall.

You chose poorly

[actionbastard]

If you'd selected the iPhone to develop for, right now, you'd be sitting on a beach earning twenty percent.

Re:You chose poorly

[ballwall]

IIRC the only podcasts apps created for iPhone by third parties were all rejected by the app store.

Re:You chose poorly

[Anonymous Coward]

A quick Google search would seem to indicate otherwise - http://www.nextdayoff.com/

Re:You chose poorly

[ballwall]

Yup, looks like I had old data. Probably worth noting that it took them 4 months to get in, and they had to remove features to make it happen.

Re:So

[ballwall]

Ssshh. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. :)

In all seriousness, while marketing was the goal I wanted it to be a mutual exchange. (I actually mention that in my conclusion). I hope that there's no less value in it as a result. (I did try to mention the actual product as little as possible)

-Marcus

BB vs Windows Mobile

[raind]

No way have I found a BB device less painful to support than a Windows Mobile phone. Both have there problems, most time it's the provider or user. If you have a good running Exchange server(s) I'll take a BB everytime.

/. Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Let us see a graph of sales after the slashdot post.
 

Sounds like a lot of trouble.

[jcr]

What I take away from TFA is that developing an app for the Blackberry is more hassle than it's worth.

-jcr

Re:Sounds like a lot of trouble.

[ballwall]

Not at all. If that was the impression I gave I think I did a poor job of communicating. I have gripes, definitely, but I had a lot of fun doing it. And, platform wise, this app wouldn't even be possible on the iPhone or Pre. (I am thinking about porting to Android, though, if their user numbers pick up).

I would have loved to know some of the stuff I know now before I started, and help from RIM on the look and feel, but that's about it.

-Marcus

Re:Sounds like a lot of trouble.

[jcr]

platform wise, this app wouldn't even be possible on the iPhone or Pre.

Why not?

Do you mean that the iPhone and the Pre prohibit this kind of app, or are you referring to the availability of Java?

-jcr

Re:Sounds like a lot of trouble.

[ballwall]

I probably shouldn't have spoken about the pre, as the only reason I had was the current lack of an SDK.

For the iPhone the lack of background apps and large local-only storage are the issues. (You can store things on the phone, but the stored data is always synced on backup, as far as I know. PodTrapper regularly manages gigs of data on an SD card). After that you have to deal with the app store, but I imagine they'll be lightening up on that soon.

It's probably worth mentioning that the base podcast solution on the iphone is probably good enough for most users, but that third parties attempting to build better ones have been rejected by the app store in the past.

Re:Sounds like a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are certain locations on the iPhone that are not synchronized on backup. Check out the /Library/Caches directory (See page 118 of iPhone Application Programming Guide). This directory does not get restored on a device restore though...

Sounds like a cool product! :)

Re:Sounds like a lot of trouble.

[Ukab the Great]

I think it would be really interesting for you to learn development for the iPhone using Apple's SDK and compare and contrast the experiences you had doing development for the BlackBerry.

I'd suspect that the conclusion you'd reach would be that the iPhone SDK is the most pain-free (relatively speaking) mobile development experience you've ever had and you'll start to understand why Apple is getting so much developer mindshare despite their draconian stances on the App store and background apps.

Re:Sounds like a lot of trouble.

[ballwall]

Oh I'm sure of it. I say in the article I really envy the iPhone developers out there, the tools look really slick (though I wouldn't enjoy going back to memory management)

The only hesitation I have is precisely that it's the "number 1" platform as far as mindshare, which means there's a LOT of competition out there. Marketing is by far my least favorite part of this, and it seems like it would be even more important on a platform with so much competition.

Re:So

[namityadav]

Well, it should be pretty obvious to everyone that all such stories have "Marketing" as a goal. However that doesn't make this story any less interesting. Kudos, Marcus! And all the best for this app.

Re:So

[Alpha830RulZ]

I, for one, enjoyed the read, and walked away more informed. Thanks for taking the time. I hope your product does well for you.

fail

[binaryseraph]

So I just tried for the last 5 Minutes to make a joke out of this, as I do with every other post... but I failed. There is nothing funny here. *shakes fist*

Move along... this is not the comedy you are looking for.

My experiences developing on the BlackBerry.

[rgelb1]

I actually have a free application on the BlackBerry App World called HP Printer Fun, which lets users mess with the LED screens on the HP Laser Jet printers (plus some inkjet ones too) for fun.

I've written some other apps as well and the experience is not so great. My gripes are as follows:

• Java is limited to an ancient version (e.g. no generics or other recent goodness)
• Very weak debugging support (compared to say, Android)
• When the emulator is running, your app is basically locked. In other words, you have to restart the emulator each time you make a change to the code - which takes 1-3 minutes depending on your config.
• The looks of the IDE make Windows 3.1 seem modern.
• No support for modern programming fonts, for instance Consolas

On the other hand, the docs are pretty good. The support group at BlackBerry dev site is simple superb. Examples are plenty and the API just freaking makes a massive amount of sense. And for the adventurous, you could use a beta version (might be released by now) of an Eclipse plugin.

Re:My experiences developing on the BlackBerry.

[ballwall]

If you were using RIM's JDE I feel for you. I definitely should have put this in the article:

Anyone starting development should use the eclipse plugin. The RIM JDE is not an option for writing code. Unless you like writing in notepad.exe, and if that's the case I'd say stick with notepad.

That said, the RIM JDE is the only way to really profile your app for both performance and memory, they haven't implemented those simulator features into eclipse (yet?).

I end up using both. My major development and debugging is done in eclipse, and when I'm optimizing I switch over to the JDE. I *do not* use the JDE to write code.

 

Re:My experiences developing on the BlackBerry.

[Octorian]

That said, the RIM JDE is the only way to really profile your app for both performance and memory, they haven't implemented those simulator features into eclipse (yet?).

They have implemented those features in Eclipse, and they've been there for quite a while now. You just have to know where to find them. (basically some additional views you can open) So yes, you can do all the performance/memory profiling on the Debug perspective of Eclipse now. I also recommend looking into the BlackBerry Developer Conference coming up later this year. I went to it last year, and IMHO, it was a very positive experience.

Re:My experiences developing on the BlackBerry.

[ballwall]

Sure enough it's been there the whole time. Thanks for pointing this out! (This is one of the reasons I really wanted a slashdot discussion about it, cool things I hadn't thought of or seen).

Nice article, but...

[Renderer of Evil]

I enjoyed reading the analysis and the breakdown of converted trial users, but I must say, the application looks like shit. The typography is horrendous, the colors are all wrong, and the interface looks like something out of 80's or designed in MS Paint. The tagline on the app site is "Not pretty. Functional." What makes iPhone remarkable is that it demonstrated that you can have both pretty and functional. It's not an either/or proposition anymore. RIM/Nokia/Microsoft no longer have an excuse to say that in order for something to be functional it must conform to the lowest common denominator.

Contrary to popular opinion, the unwashed masses do appreciate well-designed, well-planned, and well-implemented products if it is within their price range. There is a reason why Pontiac Aztec failed in such a spectacular fashion.

Re:smartphone masturbation

[marmoset]

Some of us who work for a living and commute plug our oh-so-overpriced smartphones (which have the benefit of working in locations beyond our parents' basements) into our car stereos or headphones while we commute to our places of employment.

It's less masturbatory than sitting on Slashdot being bitter at people who like nice things.

Re:So

[stonewallred]

Pretty interesting. Shame that the later posts degenrated into a epeen contest over which phone has the hairiest nutsack. Oh, wait, this is /. My bad.

RIM can use a lot of encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, are you kidding me? The blackberry requires all your corporate communications to go through their third party server. That's the big security hole you need to be worried about, right there.

Not really. From how I understand things:
      . message arrives on your e-mail platform
      . it's encrypted, sent to the local BES server
      . encrypted again, sent to RIM's data centre (unencrypted on arrival)
      . sent to you carrier provider's DC, encrypted (GSM/CDMA) and sent over the air
      . unencrypted via the GM protocol, unencrypted with the key it shares with your messaging platform

You can also have all SD media encrypted as well, and have remote wipe functionality.

There are a lot of government types that use BBs, and I'm sure that it's been looked at quite closely. For what it's worth, the BES has a EAL 4+ CC cert, and the Blackberrys themselves are also certified. Commercially available units can't handle SECRET or TOP SECRET though:

http://na.blackberry.com/eng/ataglance/security/certifications.jsp

I'm sure that's good enough enough to protect most corporate information.

You know, the first FREE app and you're history

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't be long. Then what?

Re:You know, the first FREE app and you're history

[ballwall]

If a serious free competitor came along and it was enough to drive my support costs higher than the revenue (though that's an arbitrary line since my 'costs' are just my time) I'd probably open source it. (Though this may change if I can get some DRM providers like audible on board).

So what happens when there's a free app then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you made plans on going open source? Will you be free?

Re:So what happens when there's a free app then?

[Anonymous Coward]

He goes balls to the wall, man!

Too many slaves in this world
Die by torture and pain
Too many people do not see
They're killing themselves - going insane

Too many people do not know
Bondage is over the human race
They believe slaves always lose
And this fear keeps them down

Watch the damned (God bless ya)
They're gonna break their chains (Hey)
No, you can't stop them (God bless ya)
They're coming to get you
And then you'll get your

Balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall
You'll get your balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall - balls to the wall

You may screw their brains
You may sacrifice them, too
You may mortify their flesh
You may rape them all

One day the tortured stand up
And revolt against the evil
They make you drink your blood
And tear yourself to pieces

You better watch the damned (God bless ya)
They're gonna break their chains (Hey)
No, you can't stop them (God bless ya)
They're coming to get you
And then you'll get your

Balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall
You'll get your balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall - balls to the wall

Come on man, let's stand up all over the world
Let's plug a bomb in everyone's arse
If they don't keep us alive - we're gonna fight for the right

Build a wall with the bodies of the dead - and you're saved
Make the world scared - come on, show me the sign of victory
Sign of victory - sign of victory

You better watch the damned (God bless ya)
They're gonna break their chains (Hey)
No, you can't stop them (God bless ya)
They're coming to get you
And then you'll get your

Balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall

Re:So what happens when there's a free app then?

[ballwall]

Not while I see potential in doing it full time :)

Instead of just letting it die, though, I open it up. (Assuming it ever got to that point)

Re:smartphone masturbation

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Did somebody's widdle Blackberry abandon him as a child? Hmmmm? Myes, I know it did, yes it diddums....

Yep, BlackBerry development with Java on Eclipse

[Cris Malinescu]

Just check here: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/javaappdev/javaeclipseplug.jsp Free Plug-In for BlackBerry Java Development with Eclipse! Cheers, Cris

Great read

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

As someone starting to develop a BB app for app world et al myself, I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to write that article. That was an excellent read, and very helpful.

Location based services are hell on BB

[technopinion]

Wait until you try programming a GPS app. Every different telecom has different settings needed to get the GPS to work at all (even when they allow you to use the GPS without having to get special permission, like Verizon). Many of the documented API settings *don't* work, particulary on CDMA blackberries. Some telecoms have disabled BlackBerry Maps because they want you to buy their gps nav application, so you can't count on it being available, or even installable, and even the built-in map objects that you can in theory use inside your apps on OS 4.5 or greater relies on BlackBerry Maps being installed, so you can't rely on that either.

Why Audible isn't calling you...

[eyal0]

I admit no knowledge of Blackberry phones or their apps. Your detailed account of development was super-interesting and I wish you the best of luck. Just one comment:

You've been trying to contact Audible but they're not returning your calls. Reminds me of this:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/10c.html

Maybe Audible doesn't want to help you because they want to implement what you've already done?

No Marcus, YOU ROCK.

[cultjam]

I heart Podtrapper.