Developers Defecting From BlackBerry

jfruhlinger writes "Mobile app developers who build for multiple platforms need to figure out how to conserve their resources somehow, and many are choosing to do so by not bothering to build apps for BlackBerry phones. It's a combination of declining market share and the general difficulty of building apps for the BlackBerry platform, one developer told Bloomberg: 'RIM brought in a touchscreen and mixed it with a thumbwheel, a keyboard and shortcut keys, it made it really difficult and expensive to develop across devices.'"

Comments

Wait a second,

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

You mean to tell me that developers have been making apps for BlackBerry all this time? I coulda' swore that every time I saw an app that looked really cool it was only available for Android or iPhone. I can't even get that Angry Ducklings app that everyone is singing about.

Re:Wait a second,

[PCM2]

I haven't had a BlackBerry for a while now, but if I remember right, I may have kept an SSH client on there, and I think once I downloaded an Infocom player, just for fun. But overall, I just never considered downloading apps to be part of the BlackBerry experience. Maybe that's why I find the "DOODZ, WHERE DA APPS AT??" attitude of a lot of iPhone/Android users a little baffling. To me, BlackBerry's software was well-designed and reliable, and it allowed me to do pretty much everything I expect a communications device to do, so I couldn't really picture what else I'd need to downlaod. But then again, I guess to me, a mobile phone is something that spends most of its time in your pocket. That doesn't seem to be how a lot of phone users see it.

Re:Wait a second,

[h4rr4r]

Because these are not mobile phones, they are mobile computers that just happen to also offer phone service. Mine is used for data far more than voice.

Re:Wait a second,

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Yeah, that's a valid point. I'm not that big on apps, but there have been a few times when I've been stranded in an airport or some such place and desired some form of mindless entertainment, which the BlackBerry just doesn't really provide much of. BBSSH is a great SSH client, and I feel totally safe storing my keys on the BlackBerry.

Re:Wait a second,

[UnknowingFool]

Therein lies the problem. While BBs are good communication devices especially for email and texting, they were never elevated to be a mobile computing platform. Here is where Apple and Android have changed the game. Both allow consumers to extend their smart phones to be more than phones.

Re:Wait a second,

[whisper_jeff]

You forgot to end your post correct. Simply add "Now, get off my lawn!" and everything will be set right.

Re:Wait a second,

[shutdown -p now]

This is true of all modern smartphones (I have an Android phone now, and had iPhone before - both were used for data far more than voice).

Re:Wait a second,

[stephanruby]

FYI. Here is a screenshot of Angry Birds on Blackberry.

Re:Wait a second,

[Anonymous Coward]

You're also missing a pretty big point.

Internal developers aren't magically different from 3rd party developers. They use the same tools...

If its hard for 3rd party developers to build apps, you know its hard for the internal devs as well. This could be one of the reasons why they have had trouble releasing devices on time, updating various parts of their OS, and internal apps...

Re:Wait a second,

[Dogtanian]

Because these are not mobile phones, they are mobile computers that just happen to also offer phone service.

FWIW, I'd say that they're as much the spiritual successor to the PDA as they are a phone. They're not called that because (a) PDAs kind of went of out fashion and declined commercially a while back and (b) they evolved from the direction of the phone market.

I'm not claiming that they're the same as a ten-year-old Palm. I'm saying that if the PDA market had continued to be successful, they would likely have mutated into something very similar to the iPhone et al anyway.

The fact that they're seen as "phones" reflects the market they evolved from, more than what they are now.

Re:Wait a second,

[hairyfeet]

As you point out it isn't the "DOODZ, WHERE DA APPS AT??" that will kill RIM, sadly it is RIM itself. If you look at their competitors all treat their phones as a platform. You get X amount of support, you can update from OS # to OS #1 or whatever, the whole thing is treated as a platform.

RIM on the other hand goes "Oh look, here is our new phone! It isn't compatible with our old phone OS, and BTW we won't be updating squat on the last model (even if it came out yesterday) because we have a new model! Buy it now!" and frankly folks just ain't gonna go for that anymore. People want their phones to at least be treated as current for the life of their contracts, they don't want to feel abandoned three months after getting the thing yet that is EXACTLY what RIM has been doing.

So if you want to know who killed RIM, that would be RIM. My prediction? When their share price gets low enough they will be bought by MSFT and be replaced by a WinPhone Corporate Edition. MSFT has experience with businesses, it'll integrate with AD, and RIM still has plenty of patents that would look good in the MSFT war chest. So final total...Google and Apple trading one and two, MSFT/Nokia in third, everyone else toast.

Re:Wait a second,

[Lehk228]

and like computers ios and android have security problems. i trust my blackberry with my bank account credentials, something i won't do on my windows PC despite it being more than 5 years since i last picked up a virus. (which was a worm that got past zone alarm due to my lack of a proper firewall when i was on campus)

Re:Wait a second,

[profplump]

How did you do email? I like the security features on BB -- real encryption & wipe -- but the lack of a mail client makes it all but useless without third-party apps. And RIM's refusal to allow mail clients to integrate into the built-in messaging system make it even worse -- even once you get a mail app working the base OS still can't do email.

Re:Wait a second,

[tompaulco]

As another blackberry owner, I would also have to say that I have downloaded all of two apps. One was some expense reporting software from work that allows you to take a picture of your receipt and send it straight to your report in only 10 times the amount of time it would take to scan it in and fill out your report back at the office (but you get to tell all your lunch partners who are impatiently waiting for you to finish about your oh-so-cool expense report application), and the other was a trial version of a game. Apps are definitely not something I have any interest in, be they blackberry, android or iphone.

Re:Wait a second,

[Anonymous Coward]

you know what we say with people like you, "out with the old, in with the new"
Blackberry will not be missed, neither will its users

Re:Wait a second,

[MikeBabcock]

FWIW, I'd say that they're as much the spiritual successor to the PDA as they are a phone. They're not called that because (a) PDAs kind of went of out fashion and declined commercially a while back and (b) they evolved from the direction of the phone market.

I've been waiting to buy a smartphone until I could find one that would replace my old Newtons as personal data managers. Nothing since has truly impressed me until the Android series. With my Dell Streak 5 I can truly carry all my data around in my pocket.

Re:Wait a second,

[UnknowingFool]

Has it never occurred to you that some people and apps don't need high security?

Re:Wait a second,

[Radres]

And interestingly enough, on the developer side they still have almost all of the same broken APIs from version 1.0 of the OS. That side doesn't get upgraded.

Re:Wait a second,

[drtsystems]

And that would be because all Blackberry apps suck. On an iPhone (I'll use this as my example because I have one so I have experience with it) you have plenty of quality apps to choose from. And don't let the word apps distract you, because yes I know it has become a word that applies to all those stupid fart apps as well.

But things like Skype, Netflix, Pandora, Grooveshark, TomTom, Dropbox, facebook, weather channel, google voice, simplenote, WatchESPN, MLB AtBat, etc. etc. etc.

If you think you have no interest in these apps then you really are just too senile for a smartphone or haven't given it a chance.

Re:Wait a second,

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Google has more reason to buy RIM than Microsoft. RIM owns QNX. The Android VM ties to libc are in potential question of GPL dispute. The simple solution is to ditch Linux for QNX (QNX can already run the Android VM). Google also gets a tonne of hardware/marketing/carrier expertise and could start producing their own phones.

Apple, Microsoft+Nokia, Google+RIM

Re:Wait a second,

[ArtDent]

The simple solution?

Heh, yeah. You get on that. Let us know how it goes.

Re:Wait a second,

[Lehk228]

oh it certainly has occured to me, it's the best explaination for the popularity of Microsoft windows, Google android, and Apple IOS, also all forms of cloud computing.

the problem is that many people think they need less security than they actually do and scream bloody murder when it's THEIR account that gets emptied

Re:Wait a second,

[UnknowingFool]

Or maybe you don't understand people playing Angry Birds and don't log into their bank accounts on their phones. But I see you can only see things as binary.

It's not true

[microbee]

All thirteen of them said so.

Re:It's not true

[Anonymous Coward]

What is all this talk about defecating, RIM and the black dots in the logo.

Huh

[Anonymous Coward]

There are developers for Blackberry? O_O

Re:Huh

[Opportunist]

Yeah, they have their annual worldwide meeting in the phone booth behind the RIM HQ.

Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Daniel_is_Legnd]

The only reason blackberry is still in existence is because corporations and IT teams don't want to migrate to a new platform. Blackberry phones aren't anymore secure than an Android of iPhone with the proper corporate sync apps installed. Like many products, it became a standard even though a new and better product took it's place.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Opportunist]

I'd rather blame it on the perceived "air" around them. Blackberries have the "air" of being business-y and important, making the user some kind of nobility, while androids and iPhones have that stink of the commoner around them who uses it for petty games and enjoyment rather than important business.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[MightyMartian]

I'm hearing through the grapevine that Blackberry's corporate position isn't all that secure either. I know of one medium-sized company that has been replacing Blackberries with iPhones, and talking to their tech guy, they may be shutting down their BES server this fall if all goes according to plan. Since integration into Exchange, which is the big deal, isn't all that hard any more, the limited lock in that RIM had is gone.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Daniel_is_Legnd]

Sadly enough, this probably very true.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Jackdaw Rookery]

That's not quite true. The BB is a secure smart-ish-phone which makes it ideal for corporate/government use. It's locked down and encrypted.

Don't get on your platform high horse or anything, something happening too often here (get off my lawn) but ...

Android isn't secure at all. Until Android phones start coming with hardware based encryption we can't use them, it basically rules them out at the first stage. People are pushing to use Android but it is a no go right now. Same for Windows Phone 7, no hardware encryption = no use, although no-one is pushing for WP7.

We're slowly moving to the iPhone 4 through Exchange and a MDM, people want to use the iPhone, we can configure it just as strongly as the BB and it has AES 256 hardware encryption. It's a win-win.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[errandum]

This is not exactly true. Some parts might be secure because they're encrypted and whatnot, but the phones themselves are easy to jailbreak/root and get access to everything you have in there.

Furthermore, the state of Android updates leaves most phones frozen in time in relation to security updates... And iPhone's encryption, at least, has already been broken by a Russian firm.

Not saying they are insecure, but stating they are the same is dangerous. The reason RIM is liked it's because it has stood the test of time and, until now, not one is complaining about security.

The judge is still out on that.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[drb226]

Like many products, it became a standard even though a new and better product took it's place.

Not that I'm a BB fan, but what exactly makes iOS/Android that much better?

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Opportunist]

C'mon, everyone who ever worked in IT and had to somehow integrate Blackberry into their system will be able to tell you a story about some manager coming in, getting his Blackberry and looking like a child who found the prized toy he always wanted under the Christmas Tree.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I only use the BIS service, but I'm concerned about losing my phone or having it swiped. There is stuff on there that my competitors would find very valuable. I know that with the BlackBerry it is virtually impossible to get information from a locked phone (except probably for governments, but that's not a concern for me). Every article that I've seen comparing various devices comes to the conclusion that BlackBerry is by far the most secure. There was quite a good one within the last year that was posted here in slashdot, although I can't find it right now, so I've stuck with BlackBerry. The other thing I really like about BlackBerry is that it is the best way I've found for typing emails, which I do a lot of on the phone when I'm traveling. I really don't care for typing on the touchscreens and all of the other qwerty keyboards I've tried out are too small or not well thought out.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[errandum]

There were news some time ago that said that the 256 bit encryption was based on a 4 digit numerical value, so it was possible to brute-force in less than 24 hours.

I wouldn't stick my head out for the iPhone yet.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Blackberries have the "air" of being business-y and important, making the user some kind of nobility...

I would have used the word 'heir'. Blackberries feel old.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[vux984]

The only reason blackberry is still in existence is because corporations and IT teams don't want to migrate to a new platform. Blackberry phones aren't anymore secure than an Android of iPhone with the proper corporate sync apps installed

And how does one load 'the proper corporate sync apps'? They create an itunes account for each phone? Or does one purchase of the app qualify the entire organization?

How does IT manage software roll outs to a fleet of iphones?

Sorry, iphones suck in IT. They're ok in environements where only a few CxOs have them and you can have person literally walk to each handset when ever something has to be done, or where staff are responsible for their own handsets, and IT only has to give them their email settings. (which is suitable in some environments... but not all of them)

In any situation where real security is required, or IT is expected have any sort of actual control over the devices, iphones are a nightmare. Yes you can use iphone configuration profiles to set policy... but what if you need to change policy... how do you roll that out? There are all sorts of common cases that are not easy on an iphone that are trivial on a BES.

I don't know much about droids... but i'm skeptical their enterprise / IT support is much better.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[errandum]

For one, just read the thread bellow this one.

Also, the intuitive interface, the great phones and... APPS. For any/everything.

The only thing BB's still have going for them is the encryption and (some) of the physical keyboards, that I consider the best qwerty keyboards on the market.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[jessecurry]

Only when the user sets a 4 digit pin as their lock code. When the user has a text-based lock code the key can be much longer. The security policy of the phone can be set for force a text-based password.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[h4rr4r]

The availability of applications, a much better OS, much higher quality devices.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[jessecurry]

The Russian security firm was able to brute force devices that were locked with a 4 digit PIN because there are not that many possible 4 digit PINs. They could not crack a phone with a text-based lock code.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing. At this point, most of the platforms are equally capable software wise.

Each platform has it's own area of strength: Android has customization. BB has messaging. i*, WebOS, WP7 has user experience for the masses. Some fanboys will say company _____ "does it better" than other companies. Don't believe them. LOL

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Anonymous Coward]

From an IT standpoint. Blackberry Enterprise sucks. Bailing on that is a must.

1. You need to install a server software to integrate with Exchange (unless you reroute all your email to some internet email service)
2. Not suppose to have Exchange and BES on the same server, so one more point of failure.
3. Said server requires....is it Java, Kerberos, and mixed Server OS environment combination that's broken? I don't know, I stopped trying to fix it. RIM didn't have a good explanation and their ultimate solution sucked.
4. Not fully integrated with Exchange, Exchange's mobile policy's don't push to it. Blackberry Server has it's own mobile policy I guess

Smartphones that talk to exchange are wham, bam, thank you ma'am. For BB, if you have the Java,Kerberos, mixed Server OS issue, you can't add new phones. If you can't get into your exchange server to do the MINOR configuration, you have bigger problems then not adding a new phone.

The only thing I wish they'd port to Exchange-capable phones is, RIM doing token/serialized authentication, removing the need to redo password on the phone each time it's changed.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[SuperKendall]

If you turn on encryption and locking for an iPhone it encrypts all storage, and you can instruct it to wipe remote. It will also wipe on a handful of failed passcode attempts.

For emails if you had to do it a ton you could get a small foldable Bluetooth keyboard, or just learn to type on the on-screen keyboard. I prefer that to tiny keys on most devices.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[zonky]

If it wipes after 10 invalid attempts anyway, then what does it matter?

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[zonky]

Yay for installed apps clutter. Honestly, it takes longer to find the right icon than to just use the web browser in the first place.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[errandum]

You sure about that?

Source or I do not believe it. I highly doubt every time you change your pin/id method it re-encrypts everything on your phone with the new key (that would require quite a while, even with symmetric encryption). I believe the problem is that all (default) keys are generated during production and then used for everything.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[errandum]

I answered to this later, but I want a source to that.

No article I read mentioned that. And I do not believe the phone re-encrypts anything because you changed id method.

I might be wrong, but it wouldn't be feasible.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[errandum]

I stand corrected, the key is the one encrypted with the used defined password that by default is 4 digits.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Jackdaw Rookery]

This. If you leave your devices set to a 4 digit pin then really you are asking for trouble.

Setting your device to alpha-numeric-symbol and enforcing it through exchange or MDM is the way to go.

Also set your devices to auto-wipe after 10 password attempts to prevent brute force or guessing at poor passwords.

The reason you wouldn't stick your head out for the iPhone yet is you don't know enough, do your own research and don't go on 'news you heard some time ago.'

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[errandum]

but,

"If the passcode was too long to bruteforce, the company said it was possible to bypass this by hacking what are called "escrow keys," which are created by Apple applications such as iTunes and stored on a user's computer."

So still not BB like

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[acoustix]

Since integration into Exchange, which is the big deal, isn't all that hard any more, the limited lock in that RIM had is gone.

If integration with Exchange isn't a big deal then why can't ActiveSync give the iPhone the same capabilities as a BlackBerry with BES?

Just curious.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Toad McFrog Esq.]

There are products available that make all of your gripes about the iPhone go away. See MaaS 360 MDM. Not only can you push software to devices, you can perform remote wipes (even selective remote wipes) and update policies. I'm sad to say it, but most of the "BES is the only option" arguments that I see from people are purely human change resistance at its finest. Better devices exist - why not use them?

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[errandum]

I answered to this later, but:

"If the passcode was too long to bruteforce, the company said it was possible to bypass this by hacking what are called "escrow keys," which are created by Apple applications such as iTunes and stored on a user's computer."

If you also happen to steal a computer along with an iPhone, you might be able to. And for the record, before the OTA update this might actually be a true scenario (you need a computer to get stuff into-from your iPhone)

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Anonymous Coward]

My desktop PC has no hardware encryption either - what does it matter? Most mid-range Android phones should be plenty powerful enough to crypt in software. In addition, the BB isn't quite as secure as you think it is, but I refer to my sibling posters for that.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck using the blackberry web browser for anything. Last time I used a blackberry I found the browser to be a godawful piece of shit. Not useful for much more than viewing very basic HTML (slashdot = NO GO). Opera Mini (you know, the stripped down Java ME dumbphone browser) was a major step up from whatever crap they built into the BB OS. At least with Android you start out with a proper webkit browser with JS support, and you can install something even fancier from the app store (Opera Mobile, Dolphin, Firefox) if you are so inclined.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[acoustix]

From an IT standpoint. Blackberry Enterprise sucks. Bailing on that is a must.

1. You need to install a server software to integrate with Exchange (unless you reroute all your email to some internet email service)
2. Not suppose to have Exchange and BES on the same server, so one more point of failure.
3. Said server requires....is it Java, Kerberos, and mixed Server OS environment combination that's broken? I don't know, I stopped trying to fix it. RIM didn't have a good explanation and their ultimate solution sucked.
4. Not fully integrated with Exchange, Exchange's mobile policy's don't push to it. Blackberry Server has it's own mobile policy I guess

Smartphones that talk to exchange are wham, bam, thank you ma'am. For BB, if you have the Java,Kerberos, mixed Server OS issue, you can't add new phones. If you can't get into your exchange server to do the MINOR configuration, you have bigger problems then not adding a new phone.

The only thing I wish they'd port to Exchange-capable phones is, RIM doing token/serialized authentication, removing the need to redo password on the phone each time it's changed.

In other words, you haven't read any documentation on the BB environment. Besides, BES supports more Exchange features than ActiveSync. And yes, BlackBerries have their own policy settings separate of Exchange with much, MUCH more control over the devices. This is something you would know if you would have actually read something about the BB platform.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Such as what exactly?

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you high? Anyone with 7 seconds of spare time can root/jailbreak/pwn a Android/iPhone. Once that is done, you're 'app' is useless. And before the 'but this app remote wipes' or 'this one has the encryption' or 'blah, blah, blah' comments come out, there is a way around each one of those - any you know it.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[h4rr4r]

I have mine locked to the bottom bar. Easy to find on on home screen. I also only keep frequently used apps on any of my homescreens. No clutter.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[drb226]

a much better OS

Thanks for the tautology.

higher quality devices

[citation needed]

availability of applications

Now this is legitimate. BB suffers a downward cycle in this respect, due to the topic of TFA.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[whisper_jeff]

I haven't read this but I'd wager it answers all of your questions - it is, after all, called the iPhone OS Enterprise Deployment Guide: http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Enterprise_Deployment_Guide.pdf

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost every Blackberry user I know, Corporate or Commoner, has fled to another platform. The only ones that haven't are the late (or never) adopters who are the last to embrace change.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Jackdaw Rookery]

To do that they'd have to first brute force the full disk encryption we have on our devices. Security in depth, don't rely on one layer alone.

Anyway, if someone has physical access to your device, plus time and/or money, then it's game over.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[rtfa-troll]

The normal way to do that is that the human entered password encrypts a longer secret. The longer secret (or secrets) encrypts the drive. When you change the password then you do reencrypt the longer secret. That way you change the decryption password without re-encrypting the whole device.

If you think about it there's really no other way to do it. If the user can enter the device with just a PIN then that PIN has to open the encrypted stores up.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[vux984]

It mostly it answers them with useless responses.

Here is how to deploy a custom enterprise app for example:

The process for deploying your own applications is:
1 Register for enterprise development with Apple.
2 Sign your applications using your certificate.
3 Create an enterprise distribution provisioning profile that authorizes devices to use
applications youâ(TM)ve signed.
4 Deploy the application and the enterprise distribution provisioning profile to your
usersâ(TM) computers.
5 Instruct users to install the application and profile using iTunes.

1, 2, 3 are fine.

4 - wait I can't do this over the air? Everyone has to tether their phone to a computer at work with their "itunes profile" for that device? So.. itunes has to be installed on every corporate computer...er but we use lightweight locked down client installs with virtual desktop infrastructure... or terminal services...

5 ... wait I have to have the user manually install the profile and application via itunes?

That's not "enterprise deployment" that's small business crap.

Or how about:

Remote Wipe
You can remotely wipe the contents of an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. Wiping removes
all data and configuration information from the device.

So far so good...

If you recover a device that was wiped because it was lost, use iTunes to restore it using
the deviceâ(TM)s latest backup.

Wait ... what... who is managing the itunes backups the end users? And where exactly is itunes installed again?

Apple's OOB support for iphones in the enterprise is half assed and pathetic. That said, some 3rd parties are picking up some of the slack, from one of the other posts in response to mine.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Blackberry phones aren't anymore secure than an Android of iPhone with the proper corporate sync apps installed.

You gotta be kidding.

The blackberry platform has been tested, audited & certified from end-to-end by many government & non-governmental agencies:

http://us.blackberry.com/ataglance/security/certifications.jsp

Iphone & android have been certified by... nobody.

Ever find it odd that no government talks about banning iphone & android? If you want real security (and not everyone is interested in security), there is only one choice.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Are these new options? Because articles reported being able able hack right past the Android and iPhone encryption in no time flat.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[willy_me]

4 - wait I can't do this over the air?

An obvious problem that is fixed as of iOS5 and iCloud. I know it's not available yet, but as least it is on it's way.

Wait ... what... who is managing the itunes backups the end users? And where exactly is itunes installed again?

Once again, this is fixed via the new iCloud service. No longer will a computer be required to sync/backup an iOS device.

Apple's OOB support for iphones in the enterprise is half assed and pathetic.

Not going to argue with you about this - I agree it needs to be improved. The point is that those improvements will be here later this year.

And with regards to making employees install their own apps - it is not a big concern. An email could be provided with a URL linking directly to the app. Two 'clicks' is all it would take.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[stephanruby]

Android has encryption all the way through. It had it officially since Android 3.0 and it had it in custom ROMs for the enterprise since at least version 1.6 (long before the iPhone had anything remotely secure). Why else do you think some of our US Special Forces have chosen to standardize solely on it?

Another advantage of Android is that some of its models can been manufactured in the US, and the same can not be said of the iPhones/iPads. And that replacing the batteries, or using cheap larger extended batteries, with an Android phone, is not a problem. And don't get me started on the weird wording of the iPhone/iTunes terms of services that says "You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons." What the hell does that mean anyway?

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[stephanruby]

And yes, before I forget, Android has had "hardware-based" encryption, even memory card based encryption available, since at least version 1.6. It wasn't officially in there, but since Android was open source, it didn't prevent researchers, defense contractors, and OEMs from baking hardware-encryption directly into their own versions (something that they were completely forbidden to do with iOS).

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[iluvcapra]

"Prudent and Simple Procedures Render Hacker Tool Useless" doesn't make much of a headline.

iPhones can have alphanumeric passwords of eight or more characters; I'm certain Android phones can as well. You do that, and the only demonstrated way of cracking an iPhone is by getting access to the system you run iTunes on, but if someone steals that and you don't encrypt ~/ you're going to be pretty hosed no matter what phone you own.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[smash]

Maybe for old companies who got on the mobile PDA bandwagon some time ago. We weren't big enough at the time (to justify the server license) and didn't have mobile coverage in a lot of places we worked, so we didn't bother.

5-6 years on, our standard became iPhone. The execs love them. Easy to use. Fairly easy to support. Can do other stuff. No third party shovelware required on the exchange box.

Interest from them in jumping ship to android? Interest in supporting android with the million different possible email clients, etc? Zero.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[smash]

Especially when it can also be wiped when the user reports their phone missing and you click "wipe device" in exchange.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[dead_user]

To the corporation, iphones are toys, blackberries are tools. In a way they are right. There are precisely 0 fun things to do on a BB. It's sortof like how when the world was all big iron and green screens, the machines just worked. Once the users got PC's, they discovered wonderful, virus-ridden, bloated 3d screensavers of kittens chasing butterflies. Sometimes things just need to work.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Opportunist]

It's still quite entertaining to see your 6-figures manager look wistfully at you because you got an Android from your company while he has to have the Blackberry. Once the new car smell washes off and they've shown off to everyone they know, they start realizing that they can't play with their toy.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Richard_at_work]

Point 4 - yes you can deliver over the air, its identical to the adhoc installation mechanism for general developers - in that case, you sign the app with the device IDs of the devices you wish to deploy to, Apple issues you the cert to do that signing, and then you put the packaged app up on a web server. The client down loads it, it installs and runs. If a device that isn't on the allowed list tries to install it, it fails.

The corporate enterprise method is similar, except that each device you bring into the business gets the corporate provisioning profile installed on it, you sign the app against that profile and deploy it as above.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[h4rr4r]

It is not a tautology, go learn about the OSes used in each of these devices and compare them features wise. Even RIM admitted their OS sucks, that is why they bought QNX.

As to my preference that would be that it runs some form of linux so I can have busybox and all the other stuff I like. Android comes close.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[vux984]

The corporate enterprise method is similar, except that each device you bring into the business gets the corporate provisioning profile installed on it, you sign the app against that profile and deploy it as above.

But the corporate provisioning profile itself can't be delivered or updated over the air?

And installing the app requires each user take an action to visit the webserver and click on the link?

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[Richard_at_work]

I'm sorry, I didn't realise you wanted magic.

I can't think of one device that works like that - not even the BB experience is that slick.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[vux984]

Yeah, it is. You can provision a blackberry without tethering it. And once provisioned you can install software, update policies, etc all ota.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[jon3k]

You know, I thought the same thing, so we piloted a bunch of iPhones. I gave them to what I _thought_ were our more tech-savvy director and executive level folks and they all said the same thing. "It's awesome, the screen is great, web browsing is awesome - but I have to have a keyboard, I can't type on this." And that was after a month demo! I'm still kind of floored. If Apple made an iPhone slider, or maybe the new myTouch 4G could be an option - but they really don't want to give up their hard keyboard. And we dumped quiiiiite a few hours into getting the ActiveSync proxy setup. It would be a total waste if the IT staff wasn't using it at least.

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[jon3k]

So wait you have to break into the computer that it was activated on? Because we enterprise activate all our devices (it's a command line switch when starting itunes, it's in the IOS Enterprise Deployment Guide).

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[errandum]

Any computer that can be used to interact with your phone is enough (since iTunes is a requirement)

If you only allow your clients to do it in the office then yes, it should be safe. But is that as safe as BB?

Re:Blackberry is the corporate standard

[jon3k]

Yeah we only do it in the office. It's probably slightly less secure, in theory, but what are the chances someone can break into that specific workstation (behind a firewall) and then still manage to steal one of our iPhones? It would be easier to just hit grab someone with an iPhone, tie them up, and hit them on the head with a wrench until they gave you their password (ala XKCD). Honestly, it would be a lot easier to drive truck through the building at 2am and run off with the e-mail server.

Finally

[nemasu]

I've been saying this for years. Developing on the Blackberry was a nightmare...and I wasn't even on that team. Good riddance.

Re:Finally

[errandum]

This is what I was going to say.

When BB was the majority, you had a reason to stick around. But there are new kids on the block that don't rely on developers to adapt to their stupidly absurd development environment.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Developing on the Blackberry was a nightmare

You weren't really supposed to write code on that tiny keyboard and screen.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been saying this for years. Developing on the Blackberry was a nightmare...and I wasn't even on that team. Good riddance.

Developing for blackberry is pretty simple java. As much as I despise java, java has a pretty big developer community. For many many years, RIM has given away free documentation & SDK (unlike Apple). RIM doesn't make you sign an NDA. RIM gives away free blackberry emulator software so you can test your application on different models (unlike Apple).

RIM places no restrictions on installing & selling your application (unlike Apple). RIM places no restrictions on what your application can do (unlike Apple). You can sell through blackberry app world, or any other mechanism you choose, including just putting the files on your website for anyone to download.

RIM does not have the ability to remove applications from end-user blackberries (unlike Apple).

RIM doesn't restrict what computer IDE you use to develop in (unlike Apple).

Re:Finally

[Richard_at_work]

I'd agree with some of your points, except I had to investigate the potential of a BB version of an internal iPhone app last year - and fuck me, did the RIM documentation ever suck. Pages which changed content depending on how you arrived at them, pages with download links which resulted in 404 errors, pages which referred to tools which were out of date and no longer available. Eclipse plugins which didn't plugin without huge amount of effort, eventually resulting in having to revert to an older JDK (getting that from the Sun site was fun), and ending up with a Blackberry-plugin-orientated restart loop which takes manual hacking of the config file to resolve.

Entering the RIM code signing keys was a nightmare as well - the instructions tell you to do them one at a time (there are several for different things). Yeah, follow the instructions and the second time round you discover that the menu item you are told to use has vanished - Eclipse/BB-Plugin removes it once there is a key available, so its off to Google to see if there is another way to install the keys, and yes there is but its buried deep in the configuration screens.

Worst experience I could possibly have had. I will never touch BB again.

Re:Finally

[intheshelter]

RIM does not make a good phone (unlike Apple).

RIM has a shitty user interface (unlike Apple).

I dread having to use my company issued POS RIM device (unlike Apple).

RIM is dying (unlike Apple).

Does it matter?

[alvinrod]

Considering that with the Playbook they added the ability to support apps written for Android, they could essentially decide to do the same for their phones. The experience may be diminished, but they'll still be able to provide access to a large amount of apps.

This also raises the question of whether or not RIM's decision to allow Android apps to be ported to the Playbook has further influenced developers to abandon creating native applications as they believe that in the future this capability might be extended to BlackBerry's phones.

This in stark contrast to Apple's decision to limit third party development platforms on iOS to a large extent should make for an interesting comparison several years down the road when we can see how these choices have impacted developers and their choices regarding whether to develop native applications for RIM devices.

Re:Does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are so many other differences between iOS and the Blackberry that it would be impossible to attribute the rise or fall of either to its parent's policy on third party development platforms. They're completely different devices.

Re:Does it matter?

[StripedCow]

The bigger question is... why aren't we still not all developing for a common denominator, like HTML+javascript?

The way things are organized now means that we'll end up in a nasty monopolistic situation.

Re:Does it matter?

[Bogtha]

This also raises the question of whether or not RIM's decision to allow Android apps to be ported to the Playbook has further influenced developers to abandon creating native applications as they believe that in the future this capability might be extended to BlackBerry's phones.

Unquestionably, this is the new OS/2. I've already started steering clients away from developing native PlayBook apps. It's a dying platform, the looming prospect of Android compatibility will dampen demand, there's just no way of making an app cost-effective for my clients. RIM is facing imminent failure on every front.

And BBOS8 only makes it worse...

[Anonymous Coward]

The first SDKs? WebWorks and Adobe AIR, ffs... they're still promising a native SDK, not to mention the Java SDK, oh and did I mention they plan to support Dalvik apps as well?

So, unlike Apple and Android with their clean, unified APIs, we're gonna have, what, 4 BBOS8 (when the QNX platform is meant to take over) SDKs, plus Android app compatibility... good job making sure the developer community remains deeply confused, RIM. Well played.

Ask Slashdot

[Thunderstruck]

What phone should I move to now?

I bought a PALM centro because it was easy to sync with Evolution on my Ubuntu Desktop. Palm began to lose market share rapidly. Then palm abandoned local sync with the Pre. Then palm got bought by HP, and has apparently disappeared.

So instead, I bought a Blackberry Bold, because it was almost as easy to sync with my Ubuntu desktop. Then Blackberry began to lose market share...

So tell me, slashdot, what phone can I move to now that will allow me to sync easily and locally with evolution on my Ubuntu desktop. (Local ethics rules and security concerns prevent me from using cloud services like google calendar)

Re:Ask Slashdot

[mr_lizard13]

I place my phone face down on a flatbed scanner, and take an image of the phone with the calendar app open.

Then I use OCR software to identify the text, and copy/paste the calendar entries into the computer's calendar program.

The best part? The scanner is WiFi. WiFi!!

Sync with no cables! I'm living the future.

Re:Ask Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

stick with blackberry, it's not going anywhere, yes they are loosing market "share" but only because the market is growing, BB total sales have continues to increase, but the smart-phone market has increased at a faster pace, hence the "loss" is no loss at all. It's just this crazy perception where only percentages count, not reality.

Re:Ask Slashdot

[DontBlameCanada]

Go with an iPhone. Your history of killing the leading platforms when you migrate to them would be beneficial to the up-and-comer companies that I have in my stock portfolio.

TIA!

Re:Ask Slashdot

[bsharp8256]

Don't switch to Android please. I don't want my phone's platform killed off just yet.

Re:Ask Slashdot

[mr1911]

You should switch to the Nokia phones running Windows Mobile.

Oh wait, I was thinking you wanted to migrate to the next phone manufacturer rapidly losing market share.

Re:Ask Slashdot

[R3d M3rcury]

Oh yeah. And the iPhone will work so well with his Ubuntu desktop...

Re:Ask Slashdot

[stephanruby]

Just search for iCal on the Android Market (it seems the app called "iCal Import/Export" should do the trick for you)

Now, you didn't say whether you wanted online sync or offline sync, so if that app doesn't do the trick for you, note that the calendar data on an Android phone can easily be gotten through its Content Provider or through its underlying SQLite database, so it should be easy enough for a budding programmer on Ubuntu to write a small utility for that.

Also the last I heard Ubuntu was centralizing contact data and calendar information on couchDB, and note that couchDB also works on Android (the only drawback seems to be that couchDB on Android takes quite a bit of space of internal memory right now, but hopefully that will improve).

Re:Ask Slashdot

[smash]

whoosh

Re:Ask Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah. And the iPhone will work so well with his Ubuntu desktop...

Of course it does! But only if you're this guy.

Re:Ask Slashdot

[Paul1969]

Um, no.
When you have to slash your own *already* lowered profit estimates after just a few weeks, it means your entire enterprise is going South at a rapid pace.
RIM's management has been described as "arrogant," "tone-deaf" and "clueless." They keep pushing back product release dates, while having nothing currently on the market that is drawing in customers.
If there isn't a major shake-up at the upcoming shareholders meeting, I can see RIM suffering a total collapse of its stock price, leaving it with no viable option but hoping for a buy-out.
Think it can't happen? Just look at Nortel!

Re:Ask Slashdot

[ilsaloving]

Let us know next time you get a new phone. That way we know what to avoid. ;) (j/k)

Yes it matters

[SuperKendall]

Considering that with the Playbook they added the ability to support apps written for Android

No, they said they PLAN to add that support. When it will be delivered? Who can say.

they could essentially decide to do the same for their phones.

For existing phones? The ones with no Android specific buttons? The ones that were never built intending to run Android?

No.

The reason all this matters is that there is no coherent story about BB development anywhere (since the tablets use Air and the phones do not), and what development was going on was with a nightmare API (I looked over it once to evaluate doing a port to BB and ran away).

Blackberry has the same problem Nokia did, BB is just much more entrenched and harder to shake loose. But they haven't done anything to firm up the grip they had, and when it goes it will go fast.

Re:Yes it matters

[spion666]

Incorrect, support for apps written for Android has already been implemented for the playbook

Re:Yes it matters

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a little late: http://www.knowyourmobile.com/blog/875391/playbook_gets_android_support_plus_native_email_contacts_tasks_and_calendar.html

And it would be trivial to redirect software Home/Menu/Back to keys on a physical keyboard (for phones) or have software buttons (on Playbook, just like all Honeycomb tablets that are able to support phone apps without physical buttons).

Re:Yes it matters

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're a little early. That's a demonstration video, working under controlled circumstances with carefully selected apps, no doubt.

Hardly the same as a working release, which is still due "sometime this summer" last I checked.

Re:Yes it matters

[Paradise Pete]

Incorrect, support for apps written for Android has already been implemented for the playbook

A rigged demo does not mean it's done and delivered. If you're the guy who bought the Playbook, go ahead and fire it up (If you can't find it it's over there, propping open the kitchen door.) Now see if you can run an Android app on it. No, you can't. And now the kitchen door has slammed shut. Nice going.

Business lockdown also limits BlackBerry app sales

[CarlPatten]

Where I work, we are strongly discouraged from loading any non-business-approved applications on our BlackBerry phones. As a consequence, I have never bothered visiting the Blackberry app store. If I had a business-approved iPhone I imagine it'd be the same way, but since BlackBerry's entire focus is on business I'd imagine these sorts of restrictions are hurting their app sales more so than for comparable devices.

Those defecating blackberries need medical help

[phonewebcam]

Anyway, isn't Elops mission complete now? He's just waiting for Ballmers command to become RIM's CEO so they can all start using some crappy toy xbox-controller OS for the phones.

Ok now Bye bye then....

[Anonymous Coward]

Hope Blackberry either dies a quick death or one of their two CEOs demands that the BB OS gets a revamp a la QNX from the Playbook ,either way they are on life support as it is. With their present buggy bloated platform that is years behind the modern mobile OS (android/ios hell even windows phone), this news of mass developer exodus comes as no surprise to me.

I've often been amused at how nothing has changed at RIM since the early 00's their hardware is a complete joke for a modern smartphone.

Shareholders are going to flee soon if this all keeps snowballing.

Typical Blackberry user

[SuperKendall]

To me, BlackBerry's software was well-designed and reliable, and it allowed me to do pretty much everything I expect a communications device to do, so I couldn't really picture what else I'd need to download.,

That's because like every other Blackberry user I ever knew, you NEVER LEFT THE EMAIL CLIENT.
Not even to talk...

There's a whole world of interesting applications for a smart phone if you don't respond to emails the second they arrive.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[SoCalChris]

Even the email client sucks horribly if you need to use IMAP. Seriously, why can they not implement proper IMAP support in a device that's designed mainly for email? And before anyone suggests it, BES is not a replacement for proper IMAP support.

I switched to an Android phone about 6 months ago, and was immediately blown away by the difference in experiences between the devices.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[jojoba_oil]

That's because like every other Blackberry user I ever knew, you NEVER LEFT THE EMAIL CLIENT. Not even to talk...

Most pre-iPhone smart phone users used the BlackBerry as a portable email client (and breakout game for the subway), while they maintained a regular cell-phone for talking. I can probably count the number of times I received a call from a BlackBerry on one hand, and those were only in situations when the regular phone had a problem. BlackBerries used to pick up ridiculous amounts of background noise (and maybe still do).

TLDR -- you're right: many probably never left the email client to talk... They DID probably leave it to play breakout.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[PCM2]

That's because like every other Blackberry user I ever knew, you NEVER LEFT THE EMAIL CLIENT.

It's more than that. On the BlackBerry, the email client is more of a unified inbox. Your text messages arrive in the same inbox, as do voicemail notifications. The whole thing is organized in a way that makes sense to me: chronologically, just like my inbox on Thunderbird. That's one reason why I seem to be one of the few people on Earth who actually likes Motorola's Motoblur skin for Android. It gives me a UI that's pretty much how the BlackBerry does it, but it also throws Facebook messages into the same inbox, plus it automatically updates my contacts with information my Facebook friends have provided about themselves -- so I magically have some folks' phone numbers without having to ask for them and enter them myself. To me, this package is about the most useful thing a communications device can do. It's what attracted me to the BlackBerry platform and it's one of the things that made me choose my particular Android phone over some others.

Not even to talk...

Don't know about that. I used the one phone for everything. I think if you saw people keeping a BlackBerry plus a separate phone for voice calls, it was probably because work gave them the BlackBerry but they already had their own phone with all their phone numbers in it. Also, a lot of people like to text their friends as well as call them, and businesses are sometimes reluctant to pay for unlimited SMS plans, so it makes more sense to do your "phone-y" business on your own phone (where your contacts will be able to text or dial the same number) and just do the email on the business BlackBerry.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[PCM2]

Seriously, why can they not implement proper IMAP support in a device that's designed mainly for email?

What did you find deficient about it? What did you want it to do that it couldn't do?

(I'm really still a POP guy myself, because IMAP has always seemed clunky and prone to data loss, to me. I'd rather download multiple copies of messages to different devices than trust my phone or some random client not to do something catastrophic to my mail folders. If I remember right, actually, what I did was setup a forwarding rule on my mail server to send copies of my incoming mail to my BlackBerry email address. Doing it this way, instead of polling my mail accounts every 9 minutes or whatever, new mail would arrive on my handset within seconds.)

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[SoCalChris]

Two way syncing of read/unread status. If I read an email on my computer's email client, it would be marked as read on my BB. If I read an email on my BB, it would not be marked as read on the server, so later when I'd check my email I would have to go through all of my messages again and figure out which ones I had already read.

Also, deleting an email from my computer's mail client would not remove it from my BB. So if I went through and removed a bunch of spam, or moved mail to different folders on the server, those changes would not be applied to my BB inbox.

  It doesn't sound like a huge issue, but when you've got a ton of email that you're dealing with every day, it became a huge hassle.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[layer3switch]

another thing is contacts and calendar schedule. oh boy, i don't know what i would do if i had to import schedule on multiple places.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a Blackberry and used it mainly for e-mail. I actually found the e-mail client to be quite lacking. It only allowed "top posting." My primary mailer is ALPINE so I found this highly annoying. Furthermore the e-mail client would choke on long e-mails, truncating them. So if I got something with lots of output or some huge e-mail thread (often with code samples in it) it would refuse to get the message.

I use K9 mail on my Android phone now and find it vastly superior to the BlackBerry e-mail client. So I find when people say "Blackberry is excellent for e-mail" I think they aren't e-mail power users. Most BlackBerry users are probably just executive types who use e-mail to add a one-line top-posted canned response like "FYI:" or "Why?"

I say good riddance to a bad platform.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[PCM2]

Those are valid points. I just don't have the same usage pattern, or (apparently) the same mail volume.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[layer3switch]

At my work, our oncall phone (aka Uncle phone, a derivative of Big Brother phone) is Blackberry with unlimited data and SMS and ridiculously low prime talk time like 200 minutes. One time, upper manager wanted to move us to "smartphone" during the iPhone/Android wind blew its direction to our department. If we are going to move to "smartphone", I specifically asked for more than 24 hours of idle standby time even with extended battery. In short, no smartphone we tested ever lasted more than 12 hours in standby.

Yes, I made everyone in my department stuck with Blackberry since then.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[Slutticus]

What did you find deficient about it? What did you want it to do that it couldn't do?

You must not get a lot of emails. What's the point of email on a mobile device if I have to re-sort through my emails when I get to my desk? I don't want to have to keep track of who i've replied to and what messages I've already read and deleted. After IMAP, I really can't go back to POP. It's just a freaking mess really.... Our company uses gmail, and the IMAP implementation with the iPhone mail client has been pretty flawless (users don't even need IT to set this up...). Now the IMAP behavior with the Apple Mail OS X client...that's a different story....

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[Lehk228]

don't need to leave the email client, just answer the call, switch to bluetooth or speakerphone and go back to email.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I find the BlackBerry integration of IMAP seemless. I use it on several email accounts.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[profplump]

I'd rather trust my mail server to keep track of my mail than hope the my phone/desktop/etc. all have valid, non-conflciting, easy-to-backup copies. And I need my mail to be sorted, or I would never be able to check "important" messages on a mobile client. But that's mostly personal preference.

The problem with the RIM "mail client" -- IMAP or POP -- is that it A) requires you to send your password to RIM B) only supports unread messages in a single folder, even with polling C) does not reliable sync read/unread/deleted/etc. between the phone and the server D) has very limited support for multiple accounts.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[Hal_Porter]

fyi lotus notes mgraton over the wkend mandatory unpaid overtime for all in us/eu

Most BlackBerry users are probably just executive types who use e-mail to add a one-line top-posted canned response like "FYI:" or "Why?"

Well yeah, but they do it while quaffing free champagne waiting to board their business class flight.

The "email power users" are all shackled to the desk back at the office doing the actual work. And the execs can force them to migrate to Lotus Notes if they feel like poking the serfs in the eye.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[Anonymous Coward]

fyi lotus notes mgraton over the wkend mandatory unpaid overtime for all in us/eu

Thankfully all the employees in the US & EU were let go. But I do think all the employees in Mumbai and Shenzen have mandatory unpaid overtime.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[PCM2]

Mine does 24 hours now, no sweat. 48 hours is pushing it. My BlackBerry definitely outperformed my current phone on battery.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[PCM2]

I feel like the initial attraction of the BlackBerry was that it was the only device of its kind. Then other smartphones started appearing, but they would only poll your inboxes every so often, and they didn't seem as well integrated as the BlackBerry. Now that's largely changed. I'm not sure how it works (or how it jibes with RIM's patents), but my Motorola handset features email delivery that's at least "pseudo-push" if not actual push. Stuff like Exchange ActiveSync policies are supported on a lot of handsets now, too (even including the iPhone, I believe). BlackBerry's competitive advantage is narrowing, and at the same time, its handsets don't seem to be keeping up with what's happening in the rest of the industry. Thus, BlackBerry just doesn't look as attractive as it once did -- apparently, since I jumped ship myself, the last time I was pricing new phones.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[228e2]

I've been certain that I just haven't found the option to replicate properly.

Thank you for restoring my sanity.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fucking idiot.

Re:Typical Blackberry user

[swalve]

Try reading the instructions. It has all of that.

RIM already noticed this, responded

[Qwavel]

On the plus side, you can't accuse RIM of being ignorant of this problem, or of not taking it seriously.

RIM's decision to support Android apps on their new QNX-based OS must have been very painful and probably resulted in a backlash from partners who had invested a lot in their existing app platform.

The upside is that the Playbook and the next gen of BB phones will have access to the vast store of apps that consumers want these days in spite of the lack of developer support described in TFA.

Re:RIM already noticed this, responded

[Anonymous Coward]

The QNX based system will support the old BB apps, through a java VM. Same with Android apps. It will also run native C++ apps. Mind you, this is mostly rumors I heard.

RIM makes it difficult

[X10]

As a BB developer, you can't use the api's that RIM developers can use to build apps. While Apple and Google do what they can to make life easy for their developers, RIM doesn't seem to like their developers.

Call BS on secure

[SuperKendall]

The BB is a secure smart-ish-phone which makes it ideal for corporate/government use. It's locked down and encrypted.

Right, it does all that and then sends everything through Canada BES servers.

Or sometimes has the traffic take a side trip through something like a Saudi scanner depending on what country you are in.

To my mind this is what will move a lot of companies to Android/iPhone, they actually have full control of the security, and do not have to wonder just what mode BES is in when execs go traveling.

I figure the government must have their own BES servers that are immune from such nonsense. but even they are going to iPhones in greater numbers.

Re:Call BS on secure

[Jackdaw Rookery]

Of course we have our own BES. So yes, it is secure as we own everything about it and, regarding the BES, know where every packet goes.

No it does not do this "sends everything through Canada BES servers. Or sometimes has the traffic take a side trip through something like a Saudi scanner depending on what country you are in." and if you can list your sources that would be great.

Actual sources though, not an unsubstantiated blog post. Oh you are making random stuff up? OK then, off you go.

Re:Call BS on secure

[canistel]

Right, it does all that and then sends everything through Canada BES servers.

As a Canadian I find this statement hilarious... "Oh no, the horror!" Like what exactly (in the small chance that this is true for large corporations who have their own BES) is the danger here? King Harper is going to read your emails and .... do what ... ? You should be far more worried about your own government reading your stuff.

Re:Call BS on secure

[intheshelter]

I don't think they are slamming Canada so much as making the point that it is all funnelled through servers in another country, so you are at the mercy of their laws and it's a single chokepoint, which is bad.

Customers Defecting from Blackberry

[mr1911]

A related headline that may help explain the developer story.

The sky is falling!

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple of nobody app developers aren't going to do a BB app! It is the end of RIM!

What a load of shit.

Blackberries are thriving!

[cashman73]

Blackberry isn't dead yet! Just in the past few weeks, I've seen tons of signs on the highways here in eastern Tennessee advertising Blackberries! They're selling them by the ton! Oh, wait! Those are signs for the fruity variety, not the phones. Sorry, my bad! ;-)

Re:Blackberries are thriving!

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Flash back to this...

I don't think it's about security

[damn_registrars]

Blackberry phones aren't anymore secure than an Android of iPhone with the proper corporate sync apps installed

I think security is a pretty small bit of it. I think it has more to do with BB enterprise applications, as well as the fact that the BB platform is pretty homogeneous. If you swap an employee between two or three different BB phones, you can count on the same desktop software working in the same way for all of them. You can also manage the remote data for all of them the same way.

In contrast, Android for all its strengths is a nightmare of conflicting setups. There is no consistent sync software that I've seen so far, likely at least in part due to all the different deployments of Android across the different vendors with their Android phones.

And then the iPhone. Even if you overlook that it locks you into iTunes, the iPhone does have one huge downfall in the eyes of some users - which other seem to consider a great asset. I'm referring to being completely dependent on the touch screen for everything since it has only one button on the entire phone. Some people still prefer physical keys, and a touch screen that makes a clicking sound won't do it for that.

Great...

[lpp]

With less and less attention being given to the RIM platform, it's just going to make it harder and harder to get a RIM job.

Re:Great...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ba-dum-dum! (Rim shot)

Take my BlackBerry, please!

RIM Buys All the Good Ones

[gpmanrpi]

I think the difference with Android and iOS is that Google and Apple don't buy out the good developers. It seems like RIM consistently does it, and then makes it a part of their OS. This stinks of the Microsoft embrace and extend approach to development of a platform. To be frank, blackberries don't "need" many apps. They are designed to be mobile E-mail/Contact Convergence platforms for corporations that use Exchange or Domino server infrastructure. So when things like Twitter apps or Web Browsers are made by others that work in a way that can be integrated to this existing infrastructure, RIM buys the good ones and makes it part of the approved platform. This works really well for things like enforcing copy and paste consistency, or adding/updating contacts consistency. Those are both really really big problems in iOS and Android. Additionally, multitasking seems to save state correctly (I am looking at you android browser and contact manager). While it is fun to pick-up the girlfriend's Samsung and shoot some birds at some swine, when I try to switch between a browser and a contact manager to add contact information, or make a selection of an address to add to a contact, I don't have to start all over on my Blackberry Curve, but I do on her Samsung. It makes me cry sometimes how little integration tasks I am used to on the Blackberry are completely missing on the iOS and Android platforms, since the others have so much more overall potential. But RIM has a decade head-start or so, so they should probably worry they will go the way of the PalmOS if they don't get their act together.

dev of crap app complains due to few downloads

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Seesmic was a crap app on BB. They always treated it as an "oh by the way" platform, and it shows in their product. They face stiff competiton from UberMedia (ubertwitter) and RIM's official twitter client which included in in all new BB devices. When you have a poorly rated app that is among the worst offerings, it's no surprise that downloads decrease. And as far as the multitude of OS versions and devices - if you design your app poorly, it will be difficult to manage that for any platform. And if you design it well, it's really not a major hurdle. Especially for the bb devices - every os 4.x (barely used anymore) through the upcoming 7.0 is backward compatible; and is fundamentally the same OS. Consider programming for win 2000 v xp - the same basic os but new features in xp. If you develop for 2000 the app will work on xp - though if you want to use all the xp features you'll make a build to support it that will extend (in oo fashion) the work you've done for 2000.

I program for BlackBerry

[iONiUM]

I am someone who has made several BlackBerry apps, the most recently was last month. To me, this is no surprise. If anyone has actually worked with the BB platform at all lately, they wouldn't be surprised either. The first point that must be addressed is: you have to target BBOS 4.5 or 4.6 to reach the maximum number of devices. Now, you may say "well, I have to target Android 2.0 or 2.1, which is the same.", except, it's not. BBOS 4.5 and 4.6 are awful, and they lack many features. In fact, even BBOS6 still lacks may features (the platform). Part of the problem is they're using J2ME, whereas Android uses almost a full compliment of Java.

I'm not going to go into details about everything that bothers me about the platform, but suffice to say that it needs a real markup language for the UI (it has none right now, unless you count some hacks people have released), and it needs to update the default controls. They look terrible, and they feel severely dated. And there's just the little things, like the TreeField doesn't allow variable row heights (wtf?), and there's no workaround. There's also no API call in the framework to generate standard 128-bit UUIDs, so you have to write that function yourself.. You can't change the background on a forum without subclassing.

Sorry, looks like I did start to ramble. Suffice to say it sucks, and you spend the majority of your time re-implementing things that have existed for years, or fighting stupid bugs, or fighting the ridiculous emulators that carry no documentation and do not support hotswap.

Sorry RIM. I'm Canadian, but your platform sucks, and I really hope you get your shit together with the magical QNX release that may or may not come.

Re:I program for BlackBerry

[Cyrrus30]

I totally agree with you. We're developing an app in parallel for BB, Android and iPhone, and BB is clearly the one that costs the most to develop. Being stuck with J2ME, stupid APIs that aren't clear, lack of feature, total lack of documentation or any community that might help, and really inconsistent behavior between each device are some of the aspects that make my days miserable. It's getting worse when you try to stay compliant with 4.6 while supporting touch screen enabled devices (Torch, Storm). However, it seems that low-end BBs are very popular in emerging countries. So we'll keep struggling with RIM for a while I guess.

Re:I program for BlackBerry

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Just an alternative perspective from a fellow BB dev:

The first point that must be addressed is: you have to target BBOS 4.5 or 4.6 to reach the maximum number of devices.

Well, yes and no. Targeting 5.0 gets you something like 85% of all apps (the stats are at the RIM site) - and a higher percentage when you consider consumer-only devices, those who are free to install whatever apps they want.

That being said, you certainly aren't limited to targeting just 4.5, 4.6. If you build your app well, it's fairly trivial to include platform-specific functionality for 5.0, 6.0; with some minimal effort you can abstract out the stuff that most apps use (and some of this is already done in the platform albeit imperfectly). Point being: you can deploy builds for each major version, without having to consider them as separate applications. If you're interested in options for how to do this with minimal pain, stop by ##blackberry-dev on irc.freenode.net and I'll be happy to help out (I'm mparadise there).

. BBOS 4.5 and 4.6 are awful, and they lack many features.

True, but again it's not a lot of pain to just support multiple versions if your app is architected well.

Part of the problem is they're using J2ME, whereas Android uses almost a full compliment of Java.

I do agree - lack of full Java language features is irritating as J2ME is tied to the 1.3 spec. (Or was it 1.1?) This is probably the single most frustrating aspect of BB dev for me.

In fact, even BBOS6 still lacks may features (the platform).

It's lacking in terms of tools for creating GUI' (which can be frustrating unless you're comfortable in creating UIs via code); but in other ways I find that the OS offers levels of integration it's very hard to get on Android, and even on the new PlayBook OS. I can't speak to iOS as I haven't tried to develop for it yet.

but suffice to say that it needs a real markup language for the UI

Like I said above... I can understand that if you're not comfortable creating GUI's programatically - and most folks probably aren't.

Sorry, looks like I did start to ramble. Suffice to say it sucks, and you spend the majority of your time re-implementing things that have existed for years, or fighting stupid bugs

No more than on other platforms in my experience. Not that this makes it less frustrating, but it isn't just a RIM problem.

, or fighting the ridiculous emulators that carry no documentation and do not support hotswap.

The emulators do all function the same and have for years; there is documentation but it's not the best. On the other hand, I haven't actually needed to refer to it in the last two years, so I'm honestly not sure what issue this is causing. Hotswap has worked well since the OS5 emulators have been released, about 95% of the time - even more so with the latest tools released several months back. The only real difficulties I've run into around hotswap are if you want to debug an app component that auto-starts at OS-startup. And frankly... pre-5.0 startup is fast enough that it's not too bad most of the time.

Hah, I love you Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for the Rimstitution back in the stone ages...we had people that were SO desperate to get RIM's crap viewed as cool, and they'd regularly post here trying to drum up support since the late 90's even. Now that we're finally seeing the decline of RIM it's nice to see that Slashdot stayed the course and never bought into the RIM hype during their prime (pity about the endless Apple worship here though).

Oh and incidentally, I challenge the view that RIM phones were ever "smartphones." They were good at what they were designed for--messaging. The whole "app" thing didn't happen until everyone else was doing it. Appworld has always been an also-ran as a result.

On this day the 27th of June the year 2011

[Anonymous Coward]

R.I.P

Research In Motion

If they were smart...

[Anonymous Coward]

If they were smart they would get out of the handset business entirely, and focus on making a customized version of the Android operating system that supports the encryption, IT policies, etc that RIM is well known for and sell it as an OS on someone else's handset.