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RIM Offers Free Apps Following Outage

Posted by samzenpus on from the please-come-back dept.

wiredmikey writes "Following a series of outages last week that affected BlackBerry users around the word over a three day period, RIM has come forward with its plans to "make good" on the incidents that frustrated millions of users who bashed the mobile technology provider. Research In Motion today said it would offer a selection of premium apps worth more than US $100 free of charge to subscribers as 'an expression of appreciation for their patience during the recent service disruptions.' The company also announced that its enterprise customers will also be offered one month of free Technical Support."

8 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Bye bye, RIM by Scutter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is the second major outage RIM has experienced while my company has used their phones. Unfortunately for them, this one came right in the middle of my company's evaluation period for new phones company-wde and it just sealed their fate. RIM's going bye-bye.

    --

    "Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
    1. Re:Bye bye, RIM by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And in the mean time, our company's mailserver has been at 100% availability outside planned service upgrade windows. 100%. Not a single unplanned outage, ever, in nearly a decade. If there were a multi-day service outage, several people (including me) would be having an extremely unpleasant meeting with the company's owner to explain why we should still be employed.

      That's why I have no problem holding RIM accountable. For most people, Gmail, Hotmail, MSN, and Yahoo! are unpaid services. You pay dearly for BlackBerry service, though, and expect a higher level of professionalism out of them. I mean, there are circumstances that you just can't plan for. Rolling out a patch company-wide before testing it isn't one of them.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    2. Re:Bye bye, RIM by Eil · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Every one of those that you listed is a free consumer-level service. There was never even so much as a hint of guaranteed uptime. In fact, the terms of service quite clearly specify that Google, Yahoo, et al can do literally anything they like, up to and including deleting your account permanently for no reason whatsoever.

      RIM developed, marketed, and sold Blackberry as an enterprise communication system. It is most assuredly not free. The government relies on RIM's services, as well as the vast majority of large enterprises. My previous job was a sysadmin in a large financial institution where every minute of downtime was quite realistically estimated in the millions of dollars. Blackberries were how the entire IT department communicated with each other and the monitoring systems both during and after hours. Without the use of our Blackberries, we would have had no way to respond to "host down" alerts coordinate for the nightly 3 a.m. maintenance windows.

  2. Only problem is... by MrCrassic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When apps on iOS, Android and even Windows Phone are way better than Blackberry apps and people begin to realise that these types of outages are not possible on those platforms (everything on a Blackberry, including internet usage, goes through continental proxies; not the case on Apple et. al. except for specialised services like iCloud and Gmail and such), free apps aren't good enough. On top of that, this doesn't do anything for companies like mine that prohibit end-users from installing anything on our Blackberry phones for regulatory reasons.

    Even if they release a phone that's super-awesome and is somewhat competitive with today's smartphones (so far, this seems unlikely), their hub-spoke service model for consumer service is ridiculously outdated. Wake me up when they've gotten rid of BIS and internet proxies.

  3. Re:And the apps are ... ? by Neil_Brown · · Score: 4, Informative

    Listed on SlashGear:

    • SIMS 3 – Electronic Arts
    • Bejeweled – Electronic Arts
    • N.O.V.A. – Gameloft
    • Texas Hold’em Poker 2 – Gameloft
    • Bubble Bash 2 – Gameloft
    • Photo Editor Ultimate – Ice Cold Apps
    • DriveSafe.ly Pro – iSpeech.org
    • iSpeech Translator Pro – iSpeech.org
    • Drive Safe.ly Enterprise – iSpeech.org
    • Nobex Radio Premium – Nobex
    • Shazam Encore – Shazam
    • Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant – Vlingo
  4. You're kidding, right??? by cormandy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Loyal but pi**ed off Blackberry user here... I was impacted by the outage last week. Run a small consulting firm, no BES so I am reliant on Blackberry's infrastructure via my mobile telco. Listen here RIM, if I wanted apps I'd buy an iPhone. Any compensation for us business users? Blackberry's roots are with business users and the enterprise environment, which is why I have continued to suffer with the device as more flash products have been released by RIM's competitors. Last week's outage was such a serious blow to RIM as the back-end Blackberry infrastructure remains their only remaining advantage. The Blackberry Torch -- which I loath for many reasons -- is so gutless that it is barely usable for surfing the web let alone for running Apps. RIM has taken last week's disaster as an opportunity to market their no-doubt underutilized App store. Very disappointing RIM...

  5. Re:And the apps are ... ? by bedouin · · Score: 4, Funny

    The only thing missing from this 'premium' list is a fart app.

  6. Re:Unless... by simpz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yeah I keep hearing this spin. We are a BES user and all our BB's were all down for 2 days and some were down for all 3 days!