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BlackBerry PlayBook First Tablet To Gain NIST Approval
An anonymous reader writes "Despite its current struggles to win over consumers, RIM has always been strong in the enterprise. The company remained steadfast in its support for corporate environments with the launch of the PlayBook, calling it the only business-grade tablet. The NIST is now ready to back that claim, giving the BlackBerry PlayBook its stamp of approval — meaning it's now the lone tablet that is certified for use in U.S. government agencies."
Is that the sound of a $1,000 toaster?
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
We in the Air Mobility Command â" think cargo jets â" have been looking at tablets for flight pubs and Jeppesen products. The iPad is without question out for various reasons. The two we have been looking at are the HP TouchPad, and the RIM product. The HP product has received better feedback, but because the RIM product already has the NIST approval (and the fact that the government is already in love with RIM), it is probably the direction we will go. Keep in mind that, of course, the air crew will still have to haul around the paper products, they just will not use them. Also, most of our guys already pack personal iPads, but they cannot be officially used for anything involving the actual operation of the aircraft.
I'm sure the DoD will buy them buy the many 1000's.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
In the corporate world it is all about looking cool in the airport. Which means we have to support iPads.
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
to just buy the CEO a pair of clip-on sideburns?
Not quite. But for once, the article isn't any more accurate than the Slashdot summary. The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS), which comes from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is a test of the encryption module of a device or software. In this case, it is RIM's proprietary OS that runs on the PlayBook that has had its crypto module validated (PlayBook FIPS certificate). Yes, it is probably the first tablet to achieve this, since most computers leverage Window's validated crypto module (Go here, FIPS certificates, and search for Microsoft). However, meeting FIPS is only part of the process. Federal regulation also requires National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP) certification and a test by an approved DoD test lab. After all of that, the device or software will probably be "certified for use in the U.S. government".
A device that's so hard to get your media, email, and such onto or out of... no one's worried you'll bring one to work and be able to cart off any secrets!
#DeleteChrome
Cool story, bro.
With a name like "PlayBook", few bosses will be promoting this device in the work area/enterprise.
which according to our tech people will not be fixed by Apple until sometime in 2012.
Apparently iOs devices will retry a failing password over and over locking out the account. Happened to me and they told me, next time I change my password on the network delete the network entry from my iPad and recreate it afterward. They determined my iPad spammed the network with my old password the moment I turned it on.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Blackberry PlayBook is... how should I put it... hmmm... cramming in a roll-cage and bucket-seats into a family saloon.
Certainly, any digital toy can escape the hands of its owner. But mobile phones being with us for good decade or so, we rarely misplace it. On the the contrary, tablets being the new toy in our life, and PlayBook is in a smaller form factor; chances of misplacing is rather high. So it is somewhat justifiable to include the "bridging" feature. Then again, it kills the usability as a standalone device.
Personally I like the PlayBook. Recently I went to a mobile retailer, where they had both ipad and playbook demo units. I wanted to check some details on the internet. So I went to the big screen ipad... Alas! website I wanted to access was a flash site. Then I switched to a PlayBook, voila... accessed the site without an issue!
Good luck PlayBook! ... hate to say this, but it will have a painful future with other competitors..
The last time we had a RIM/Blackberry discussion, I went on about what is good about RIM/Blackberry and what they are doing right. Suffice to say, they are all about business and getting things done.
In contrast, all the other things in the smartphone movement are about fun distractions and what new, innovative and original thing can be done next... oh yeah, and getting sued or suing over it. With tablets, the firs thing in most people's mind was "what do I need this for?" and the most common criticism was "this is just a bigger phone!" And almost ALL of this focuses attention on the client side of things.
RIM/Blackberry's idea is that the phone is one of two parts of the whole. The other part is the server side. It is the server side which integrates the client device with the business stuff. If you're not integrating with your business, whatever that is, you're not getting what you need where business is concerned.
iDevice and Android use the opposite approach where the client side is the only thing. This approach is fine for Apple, because Apple wants a piece of everything the users does or experiences. This approach is fine for Google because they are getting what they want from the user as well. But neither of things things care much about what business wants,
But the majority of people here will continue to chant "RIM/Blackberry is letting the world pass them by! They are dying and they don't even know it!" I just can't subscribe to that point of view. There no question that there is a huge market for consumer oriented devices which includes iThings and Androids and that market is booming (and will have an expected bust eventually).
But that's not the market RIM/Blackberry lives in. They live in business and government markets where the requirements are different and among these are reliability, predictability, stability, workability and a lot of things that utterly bore the consumer public. The consumer public is a collection if solitary individuals and they only need to work (or play) the way they want to and they crave different things and new things all of the time. Government and business are entities comprised of teams of people who need to be able to do things in concert with each other. Enabling that need over handheld mobile devices is a tremendous challenge that they have mostly been able to meet and continue to meet.
It's not hard to imagine what you would be able to do with a tablet over a phone where Blackberry is concerned. The ability of a tablet to deliver and interact with information is quite obvious and that's what Blackberry is for. And for many business people, it can easily replace their luggable laptops. What is harder to imagine is how tablets benefit consumers. For most, it is a new shiny thing to play with and they will realize before too long that they don't need to be burdened with the size/weight/fragility of the tablet devices when comparing that against the benefits they get from their use. (A consumer's ROI analysis.)
It's nice to say that the RIM tablet is the first tablet to gain NIST approval, but I suspect it will be the only tablet to gain NIST approval unless Apple or an Android maker gets into making business integration servers which integrate the handhelds with the enterprise which is hard to imagine. Apple has repeatedly demonstrated that they don't want to do business or government -- it's too heavy of a responsibility for them. Android makers are more beholden to the carriers than the consumer or any business. It is just unimaginable for the tide to change in that regard.
If you don't include an e-mail client !!!!!
Whoosh!!! I think GP meant that Blackberry's are as useful as toasters (ie. not).
While I'm not disagreeing with that general image of people in the US, I also know (despite not living in the US myself) that there are too many exceptions to make it overall true.
Your post is completely off topic flamebait. Someone mod parent as such please, just to teach him to be polite.
didn't they have a pager with a keypad?
Where I live, few people use Blackberry's (iPhone and Andoid devices are far more prevalent) and the few Blackberry users I've spoken seem have been disappointed with them. So that's my interpretation of the "Gov't approval" post.
One would hope that something for government agencies would avoid the usual security problems (like Flash issues), but that doesn't seem to be the case unless they're getting a special configuration.
http://btsc.webapps.blackberry.com/btsc/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=KB27365
The submission was clearly written by a RIM PR rep. Simon says "SILENCE"
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
We get it, Steve, you have trouble maintaining weight since the cancer, and now this Playbook thing...
Rather than maximising the amount of money wasted on profit for corporations, when will government make it an aim to minimise the amount it does not produce in-house at cost? Entirely private innovation, where "private" means no connection to government or academia and "innovation" is meant in the technical rather than Apple marketing sense, is rare - if the need is to do something new, and the initial outlay is not too great, you'd be better off hiring and treating well the best people for the job. (Intelligence agencies know this, but no other branch of government seems to.)
Making a tablet is a matter of throwing a few existing components together. Government is large enough and sufficiently well-equipped to manage that bit. Hell, one man with good tooling equipment and soldering skills is, although you'd need something more than that to ensure a sturdy build.
But, no. Modern government is mostly a tool for skimming off funds for friends to those in government and collecting a nice kickback - if an advance fee hasn't already been paid as campaign funds.
There are two problems with government spending which explain most debt problems in the West:
The second problem, affecting the common man, is of course being dealt with in some European nations. The first, much more insidious, is being dealt with by selling off more government, making the problem worse.
Where I live, few people use Blackberry's
Where you live, do few people know how to use an apostrophe too?
Hint: That is what the grandparent poster was commenting on.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Did NIST not exist when they were using GRiDPad 1910s for inventory, or were they simply not approved devices?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That hasn't stopped Obama from showing off his iPad in public. Is he worried about NIST?
Ah, I see. I was whooshed. Thanks for the tip. :)
I figured that apostrophe use for plurals would differ between the word blackberry (edible) and the name Blackberry, which I thought should be immutable. I guess not.