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RIM Unveils New OS Based On QNX
New submitter HommeDeJava writes "Research In Motion unveiled a new operating system for its tablet and smartphones at the company's BlackBerry developer conference in San Francisco. Called BlackBerry BBX, the new OS combines features of the existing BlackBerry OS and its recently acquired real-time QNX OS. Could BBX attract software developers and spur interest from consumers?"
...not.
I already know the future. Fail, of the epic kind.
You might get some developers if it remains more open than their competitors. The less roadblocks to writing apps for it, the better.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
sounds like an industrial strength, secure platform that might actually be adopted by governments, enterprise companies, medical, etc. not sure how it will be marketed to education and gaming though, except by showing nice 3d framerates
I last booted QNX something like 10 years ago...back then it was realtime, unix based (I think?), and relatively promising. I remember it was even more responsive than Linux (which was was more responsive than Windows).
The software, called BlackBerry BBX, bridges RIM’s current BlackBerry operating system and its newer QNX platform, co-Chief Executive Officer Mike Lazaridis said today. That should remove developer “roadblocks” and make it easier for them to build applications for RIM. Lazaridis didn’t say when the new BBX program will be available
Anyone have experience programming for QNX? If it's "just another unix" shouldn't porting to it be straightforward?
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
If RIM is going to switch OSes, why wouldn't they go with Android? Cheaper to obtain and support, far larger app and developer base, easier to market it than "QNX? What's that?", bigger security community.
RIM is just trying to protect its "different" status, despite the actual cost/benefit.
--
make install -not war
I agree. Too little, too late. It'll take years for them to turn things around, and they just don't have the time.
Yes, openness is clearly the reason that Apple's app store has floundered.
Wait wat
It sure seems like RIM is thrashing around looking for a path forward. Apple seemed to suffer from the same thing, limping along with an OS that lacked basic features like memory protection and preemptive multitasking until 2001, but look at them now.
Are RIM users loyal enough to wait out the problem years?
You have no clue. What developers care most about is how much profit is there to make.
RIM builds a failing platform, and an acquisition won't change that, nor does your 'openness' - the only thing who can change that are consumers, and they care about UX, not features.
... it most certainly is more death than ever... it wasn't even suited any more as an embedded platform,... let alone a multitasking, internet-safe, gamechanger - haha :)
The entire OS is written in assembly along with the applications. So if thats your thing then go for it.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I thought this was going to be a cut and paste of the BSD is dying usenet message from the 1990s.
You have no clue. What developers care most about is how much profit is there to make.
RIM builds a failing platform, and an acquisition won't change that, nor does your 'openness' - the only thing who can change that are consumers, and they care about UX, not features.
But give it one thing that it does well, that people like and they remain with a seat in the big game. Otherwise they are as doomed as Nokia.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
they could simply port the encryption and infrastructure to Android... I still believe they make awesome hardware and it's a shame to see it go to waste because of the same mistake done over and over and over again :\
Programming for the playbook was a nightmare. Where are you coming from with this?
No. No one wants to program applications that will only be seen by enterprise maybe kinda & the smallest niche of hipsters that close themselves off from the world by using BBM.
Seems to me that that's really the only way to get in the game at this point--make things as easy as possible for developers. Free SDK, free publishing license, and higher payouts for devs. Hopefully RIM has learned a lot from these days (and if you read the followups, it looks like they're making an effort).
Though I've never owned or really even used a Blackberry device, I do wish them well, just like I wish Microsoft well. I don't want the only players to be Google and Apple anymore than I wanted the only players to be RIM and Microsoft. We could use more honest competition in this space.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Is there a pool of developers out there, saying to themselves, "I'd totally develop for blackberry; but their kernel is t37 suxxor!"?
If, by some strange chance, the answer is yes, then yes, they should come flocking.
Otherwise, their fortunes will likely continue to depend on how pleasant their systems are to develop for, and how many devices capable of running applications are in the hands of users interested in buying them...
By all accounts, QNX is an accomplished OS; but it doesn't(in itself) solve the direst of problems with RIM's 3rd party dev efforts, which are not so much kernel limitations as user environment, dev tool, and API ones. If RIM can outperform its historical self in those areas, good for them. Otherwise, this "BBX" is going to offer the delightful choice of the same old blackberry crap, or Adobe Flash running like a wounded fainting goat on some flavor of ARM SoC; but with a rock-solid foundation...
I last booted QNX something like 10 years ago...back then it was realtime, unix based (I think?), and relatively promising. I remember it was even more responsive than Linux (which was was more responsive than Windows) ... Anyone have experience programming for QNX? If it's "just another unix" shouldn't porting to it be straightforward?
QNX is a real-time operating system. For programmer convenience some things are unix-like. However unlike Linux and other unix implementations QNX is a *hard* real-time OS, you are guaranteed that things will happen within certain timeframes. QNX is targeting embedded environments, in particular environments that require incredible reliability - for example military and aerospace. QNX is exactly the sort of thing you use when you are building a mars rover.
QNX is probably the best operating system ever. If properly utilized, I could see Blackberry overpowering all other mobile phone manufacturers. I ran it on my main computer a long time ago, and it was one of the best computing experiences I have ever had. If it were F/OSS, I would use it for much more.
Sig: I stole this sig.
I already know the future. Fail, of the epic kind.
I prefer fail of the EEPROM kind.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
No, the current Blackberry OS is very outdated. The problem for RIMM was that they should changed the OS years ago because all their competitors have a few years head start on them.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The sort of fail that can be totally erased by 30 minutes of hard UV is sadly rare these days...
The less roadblocks you have to development, the faster that cash comes in.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
good enough for nuclear reactors ... sounds like an industrial strength, secure platform that might actually be adopted by governments, enterprise companies, medical, etc.
not sure how it will be marketed to education and gaming though, except by showing nice 3d framerates
Seriously, how is this modded -1? QNX is all about special purpose dedicated applications. If the military needed a specialized tablet QNX may very well be the OS of choice, perhaps RIM the supplier. Likely, no. Plausible, yes. Similar story for specialized tablets for medical use, say something rated to be used in an operating room (note that this is more about the hardware than software, an iPad probably can't be sterilized without inadvertently destroying the electronics) to control equipment, display data, etc. Again, likely, no - GE or Siemens would probably license QNX and do the hardware themselves. Plausible, yes.
Agreed.
I own a BB and a Playbook. The Playbook, BTW, i bought at 50% off with bonus accessories.
The BB is good as a cell phone. But OS 6 release (i upgraded my phone), has been crap. Some stuff is major improvement like faster browser but there are many bugs. Since I'm regrettably on contract, I'm considering buying an iPhone 3 and using that instead.
As for the Playbook, its got a really nice screen, responsive, good feel. And thats about it. I'm using it as an ebook reader - I read a lot of PDFs and the eink readers are too slow. The Acrobat reader its bundled with is utter shit. And there are so few 3rd party apps, I'm really hoping BB does an Android compatability. I like using it even with the crappy ebook reader (I know there's the Nook app) and I'm optimistic new releases of OS improves things.
And I feel for the BB and Playbook devs. Probably low sales volumes = high price for app. But seriously, most apps are $30+ in the BBWorld store. Ugh.!
The less roadblocks you have to development, the faster that cash comes in.
Actually its the more customers you have. The hardware/platform that developers target is chosen by the customers, not the developer's convenience and preferences.
That said, what roadblocks to develop for iOS? A Mac, a device and $99 a year to publish on the app store? To be honest that is an extremely low barrier to entry.
Seems to me that that's really the only way to get in the game at this point--make things as easy as possible for developers. Free SDK,
Ummm, RIM has always done that. They also let you download free blackberry device emulators so you can test with many different devices.
free publishing license,
RIM has never restricted how you sell your applications. Blackberry applications have been around long before Jobs even thought of making a phone.
and higher payouts for devs.
Ahh, now the problem appears - you don't like Blackberry App World, RIM's app marketplace. Apps in the blackberry ecosystem are so different from Apple/Android that you need to stop & think.
RIM has no restrictions on how YOU sell your apps. You can put the files (.cod and .alx) on any webserver in the world and let people download & install your app.
Unlike Apple, blackberry applications have never been a closed shop. RIM has never restricted what your app can do (except for a couple sensitive APIs that require you to register, get a certificate & sign your app).
You can sell your app on your website, someone else's website, or a third-party app store.
If and only if you want to sell your app through App World, then RIM takes a cut.
But if you don't like App World, feel free to sell your app any other way you choose. Blackberry users can install your app without jailbreaking their device into an unsupported configuration.
Now, the one best thing Apple did was to get your billing information FIRST so that Apple can bill your mobile account for apps. RIM gets your billing info after.
I used QNX back in the late 80's. The company I worked for used it as a real time OS for laser show controllers. We replaced it with DOS, which was much easier to deal with for hardware access.
That's the EPROM. EEPROMs are Electrically Erasable.
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Apple pays 70%.
Suppose RIM were ultra generous and paid 100%.
So long as I sell 43% more on the Apple platform, I'm still making more money.
Put it another way, I'd have to sell 70% of my iPhone sales on the RIM before I made as much.
Ain't going to happen.
The BB is good as a cell phone. But OS 6 release (i upgraded my phone), has been crap. Some stuff is major improvement like faster browser but there are many bugs. Since I'm regrettably on contract, I'm considering buying an iPhone 3 and using that instead.
I have a BB Bold, which I agree is a good phone. Haven't gone to OS6. Has RIM figured out that people actually send html mail? As for the Playbook, I looked for one when they first cam out, but couldn't find a single working demo anywhere they were sold, so I gave up. I'd say RIM is toast.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
QNX is distributed, network aware implementation of POSIX APIs on top of a rather unique realtime kernel.
But it is a unix-based system, with most of the GPL tools cross-compiled. Your command line doesn't change much, if at all. The QNX GUI (if it survived the merger with Blackberry tech) is tight, slick, low-profile interface. Very responive.
Personally I'm interested in developing for any one platform, so I focus on Java 6 JEE based services that will eventually provide for HTML5 web interfaces to those distributed server clusters. There are far too many platforms in the smart phone and tablet markets to pick and choose, but they can all deal with HTML.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Too late. We switched as many BB users as possible to iPhones this week. The rest will be switched as their contracts come due.
The source code for QNX used to be available under a view-only type license. It was interesting to look at, not just another unix clone. Around the time of the blackberry acquisition, the source got pulled (I don't recall if it was BB or QNX that pulled it), but that should tell you everything you want to know about them being open. [side note -- anybody have a backup copy of the code?]
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Bimbo Newton Crosby, RIM is a corpse. If this would have happened five or even three years ago? they may have had a shot. but the ship has done sailed and from the looks of it the final tally will be Apple #1 with Android trading spots with iOS from time to time, so iOS and Android own 1 and 2, and MSFT buying their way into third place but not having a prayer of taking #2 much less the coveted #1 spot.
With mobile there is always a chance of something coming from out of left field, after all who would have thought 6 years ago that Android would suddenly explode, but RIM just doesn't have it. They don't have the hardware, the designs, nor the buzz, and even the CxO types are all running around playing with their iPhones and HTC Androids, its over. I just wonder who will buy them out for the IP, MSFT or Google? Maybe Samsung?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Honestly I'm not a fan of android. And why would a company want to be dependent on another company (Google) for all their profits? Seems like a stupid idea if you ask me.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
I care about RX damn it. They're the only scripts I run.
Considering they are the owner of the trademark BBX!!
Basis have produced their version of Business Basic called BBX since the late 80's. The RIM suits really should run things by their techie's before they run with it.
Given the legal challenges to Android right now, I would imagine they don't want to put all of their eggs in one basket. I can't blame them. It could turn into a win if the OS is well accepted. The game isn't over till it's over. If anyone in recent history has taught us that, it's Apple.
Android popped up in a smartphone market ruled by iOS and is now a huge player. RIM could pull the same move, although the OS won't be available for free, it could gain them needed traction in a market that is quickly slipping away. RIM still has a sizable corporate advantage that isn't completely burned yet.
Should be interesting to see how things develop over the next few months.
That's assuming you develop apps that are exclusive to one or the other. What if RIM had compilation software that could read 90% of your iOS files untouched?
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Who needs another operating system? RIM had a great run. Even if QNX is the best OS ever (until the next best OS ever), it doesn't change the fact that RIM's infrastructure is proven-ably unscalable and has not evolved. It's too bad, but that's the reality. Who knows what the the next quarter will bring, but I bet that the playbook will be resigned to the dust bin of technology. There is no way, no way, that RIM can supplant the iPad or the Android tablets.
I agree. Too little, too late. It'll take years for them to turn things around, and they just don't have the time.
Would you say it's a race against time? I love those.
RIM has no restrictions on how YOU sell your apps. You can put the files (.cod and .alx) on any webserver in the world and let people download & install your app.
Unlike Apple, blackberry applications have never been a closed shop.
A one stop shop results in more app sales.
Now, the one best thing Apple did was to get your billing information FIRST so that Apple can bill your mobile account for apps.
They don't bill it to a mobile account. Apple get a credit card number and charge apps, songs, movies, whatever to that.
BB is still entrenched in Corporate America. There's massive inertia there.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
It happens every couple of years. Go do a google search and you will see. They are as bad as Apple, it don't matter how bad they fuck up, people forget and go back to thumb typing.
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
I'm assuming RIM isn't completely clueless and doesn't require developers to only give exclusive apps.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Who says you can't dev for both?
You can write Flex apps that are compatible with iOS, Android and Playbook all at once. Even if you don't like Air or Flex, you can use HTML5 for your iOS app and port to WebWorks for Playbook and BlackBerry.
I agree that what developers (companies, not always individuals) care most about is being able to make a profit on their investment. And on that front iOS wins, because they provide the best app store, and have trained millions of users to pay for software.
This is as distinct from the Android store, which is not as good, and which sells far less software per person.
But a close second (first for many individuals) is how easy it is to write software for the platform. As an extreme example, iOS is very easy to write good software for, because the APIs are rich and consistent. So even when the platform was new and the market was tiny, developers liked writing for the iPhone because it was fun and easy. This is not true of anything RIM has produced.
Though I have some hope. QNX used to be a great little OS, and perhaps it's still cool and fun, as well as stable and efficient. Even if it's in a RIM product.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
So long as I sell 43% more on the Apple platform, I'm still making more money.
In the lower (that is, hobby and portfolio-building) sales bracket, that also depends on how much it costs to keep your developer certificate renewed. On iOS, that's an overhead of $250 per year: $100 per year for the iOS Developer Program and an estimated $600 for a new Mac every few years to run the new version of Xcode that is required to target new devices but isn't compatible with your older Mac. How much does RIM charge per year for access to the SDK, access to run homemade apps on a device, and publishing on App World?
What if RIM had compilation software that could read 90% of your iOS files untouched?
That'd be a change. The last time I looked into BlackBerry, everything had to be in 100% Pure Java or in another language that compiles to JVM bytecode. And I don't think Objective-C is one of those languages.
Good point.
To elaborate, people tend to own only one phone, so in terms of app sales each phone's market is a separate market, which you would independently decide whether to sell into. That is, you're not choosing either to sell into Apple or RIMs market, you're choosing each one independently. If you can sell enough to be profitable as an iOS app, you will do that, and (assuming you have the resources) if you can sell enough to be profitable as a RIM app, you will do that. And so on for each mobile OS. The equation of whether you can sell enough to be profitable is complex, involving the total installed base, the buying behavior, the market share that you think you can get, and the distribution costs. So, for example, Apple's 30% margin means that you'd have to sell more. Or (to make up a hypothetical) if RIM is harder to develop for that'll raise development costs, meaning that you have to sell more to be profitable. And WebOS' market is tiny, so nothing could justify investing effort (except as a hobby). The extreme case is BREW, which was at one point the mobile platform with the largest installed base, but the development tools and licensing terms were so amazingly bad that there were almost no BREW apps.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
HaHa!
13% of Blackberry developers on AppWorld make more than $100,000/year.
In contrast, only 1% of Apple developers make over $1,000
For the informed developer, the choice is pretty obvious.
That said, what roadblocks to develop for iOS? A Mac, a device and $99 a year to publish on the app store? To be honest that is an extremely low barrier to entry.
For students who have trouble paying for college, 1250 USD (Mac + iPT + certificate) is a lot of money. For people living in countries with undervalued currencies compared to the USD, 1250 USD is a lot of money. And I haven't been able to find one way or another whether high school students under age 18 are eligible.
Or an iTunes gift card.
I already know the future. Fail, of the epic kind.
I love my slashdot peeps! It WILL be a fail of epic kind, it is already happening rapidly! Europe will be last to see fall
BB is still entrenched in Corporate America. There's massive inertia there.
Oh yeah? Is that why RIM's morning general session at its conference had a heavy emphasis on games? From what I can tell, the most recent BlackBerry hardware has been targeted squarely at the teenage/college student market. Apparently BlackBerry Instant Messaging is more popular than SMS in some parts of the UK and Europe. Meanwhile, white collar workers have increasingly been demanding to use their own devices in the workplace; The Economist even did a special report on the trend a week or so ago. You think the general public is buying up BlackBerrys? Nope. It's iPhones they want to use in the office, and once it's the C-level execs asking for it, the IT department won't have much choice but to allow it. Get rid of the BES lock-in and it's game over for RIM.
Breakfast served all day!
Yeah, it's been a decade or two since I've seen QNX too. It was a real-time OS with a message-passing microkernel that was only 4KB, which meant that it could be running on-chip in cache (assuming the cache didn't have better things to do, which it probably did, but 4-8KB was a typical cache size for a processor back then.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
BOS
as in BOS(S) instead of BBX which is just sounding like they are copying apple/linux/unix/qnx...
If so, then yes, you'll have lots of developers.
Open Standards Portal
Don't get ahead of yourselves.
Let's not forget that Apple came back from a far worse shape than this in the late 90s. It is way too early to say that "they just don't have time".
They better put a move on it, pronto, would be a much more accurate statement.
What are the absolute numbers for each market? 13% of 100 people is a whole lot less than 1% of 10,000. Also, do your numbers count all registered developers? I might know a guy who is registered but not currently offering anything for sale. Does this number include people who produce only free applications? As has been said before, "There are three types of lies. Lies, Damned Lies, and statistics." --Samuel Clemens
They could pull a microsoft and license their patents/software to Samsung, HTC, LG etc.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Is the Epic king Apple?
I agree that what developers (companies, not always individuals) care most about is being able to make a profit on their investment. And on that front iOS wins,
Is this some sort of joke? Less than 1% of iOS developers make over $1000/year on app sales.
Contrast this with Blackberry developers, 13% of which earn more than $100,000/year on app sales.
Apples reality distortion is in full effect here -- developers *have faith* they can earn more targeting iOS and they *believe* that developing for Blackberry is unprofitable. Hence, more developers choose iOS.
The numbers, however, tell a different story. Only a total moron would develop their app for iOS before developing it for Blackberry.
"primarily BIS/BES services"
Yeah, how's that working out for them?
thats 3 weeks of working McDonalds.
Which is impractical if you're already working McDonald's to afford tuition.
And Windows PCs are free there?
Neither are Linux PCs, but a Linux PC is a lot cheaper than a Mac.
No, but you're pretending they are because 'everyone owns a PC'.
The installed base is such that one is far more likely to own a Windows PC than a Mac. Perhaps I should multiply the expected Mac buy-in by 90% to reflect the 10% chance of already owning a Mac.
A full Windows license alone is ~30-40% of the cost of the entire buyin for mac development.
You don't need Windows to develop for certain popular platforms that compete with iOS.
Anyone under 18 can't enter legally binding contracts in any sane part of the world
I don't know about BlackBerry, but if you own a device running Android OS, you don't need to enter a legally binding contract before you're allowed to load homemade programs onto it. This is one of the differences between Android and iOS.
That said, what roadblocks to develop for iOS? A Mac, a device and $99 a year to publish on the app store? To be honest that is an extremely low barrier to entry.
For students who have trouble paying for college, 1250 USD (Mac + iPT + certificate) is a lot of money.
Actually its $800 in hardware (mini + touch) and that is regular retail prices. Students are able to get significant discounts.
You do of course also have to replace a PC every few years if that's your development platform.
Then perhaps I should charge the difference between the cheapest PC and the cheapest Mac. For example, compare a $1000 MacBook to an (admittedly heavier) $400 laptop running Windows. That's still $600 for a Mac.
For Android it's $25 per year to get on the Google Android Market.
Since when? I was told $0 to unlock adb install, $25 for the first year on Android Market, and $0 for each additional year.
Android popped up in a smartphone market ruled by iOS and is now a huge player.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember seeing bunches of reports on Android back in the late Palm T|E days competing with Dell's Windows based mobile. iOS wasn't even on the radar then.
Actually if I was a developer, that's exactly what [more closed system] I would choose for in-house custom apps which anyone can write. More security theoretically on my custom apps being troubled with or snooped. There are plenty of businesses I've seen with their own custom rolled apps running on their iPhones/iPads.
Actually its $800 in hardware (mini + touch) and that is regular retail prices.
At that point, you have a Mac mini, an iPod touch, the iOS simulator, and no way to load your app onto the device to test it. That requires an iOS Developer Program certificate, which costs $99 and will stop working at the end of one year. Plan on renewals for years 2, 3, and 4, and we're close to the $1250 mark that I quoted. Do students get a discount on certificates too?
I would really love to see them show-off the BBX release for real-time performance and responsiveness. How well does it integrate the real-time performance with the fancy interface and graphics? I'd expect solid performance.
Given QNX has been marketed for medical and industrial control/automotive applications, it should function a true RTOS w/ advanced threading. Some older screen phones have been known to slow-down if you load up today's demanding web pages, apps and/or javascripts. This is unacceptable for a device which is also used as a business phone, email communicator and even potentially an emergency telephone.
Add to this that BSD ports already exist for QNX and there is Android support announced, it looks as though BBX should be competitive with the Android phones and tablets.
I hope RIM can *nix this test.
Embrace Android or die... those are pretty much your options at this point.
The original Android platform didn't look much like it's modern counterpart. It also had a negligible piece of the market until Google acquired it.
Apple #1? I don't think so.
I own an iPhone, and yes I know Apple gets way more press than Android... but Apple has 28% market share. Andriod has 56% and is growing:
Android Market Share Reaches 56 Percent; RIM's, Microsoft's Cut in Half
And this slightly older article:
Android market share nears 50% worldwide
Corporate America is rapidly shifting to support Android and iPhones (executives are demanding, and getting it). Two years ago, PwC was 36k some odd blackberries, today it supports iOS and Android and people are moving them in droves. Blackberry has nothing.
Apple also doesn't have a dead dog in the race, with frequent outages of service due to a single point of email and message failure controlled by their proprietary network. Apple also innovated the hell out of their products. RIM has not done this. It's a "me too" effort at best, and not a very good one.
Outside of organizations married to its corp-friendly proprietary nonsense, RIM has zero reputation right now.
As a developer, I wouldn't spare a thought towards porting my applications to that platform. It's a non-starter.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
There's a bit more to it. Sure, if your app is trivial, then adding another platform is a simple formula of cost vs profit. But, for any app with any real complexity, each platform you write a native app for increases your design complexity in a non-linear fashion.
For example, if you have just one platform, adding a feature is a simple process of of writing that feature, testing (etc), and deploying.
Now, if you have two, you need to write the feature twice, test it twice, and coordinate deployment across multiple app stores while ensuring compatibility (if the platforms interact in some way). You've now more than doubled the workload for the second device, if nothing else, because of the deployment issues.
This also doesn't take into account the additional design costs if you are trying to builds a good, professional app that integrates with the device's OS. Or the fact that you may have to design to the lowest-common denominator for the two platforms, instead of focusing on what works best for that platform. Or that you now have to double your support efforts, which can be difficult for your support team unless you want different teams for each device, and may negatively affect the perception of your current platform.
Add a third, and the complexity ratchets up even faster.
Another key is a basic cost-benefit analysis: if you focus on one platform, you may be able to put the additional resources into improving that product at a faster rate. (Of course, this is only true if you have equally-capable resources.)
So, you've got to look at more than just a simple cost vs profit on a per-platform basis. It's total cost increase and potential negative effects against your current platform vs the new platform's potential profitability.
not pronto, procnto is the process manager in qnx.
You know what I find really interesting about this story? BlackBerry is trying to save their hide by moving their telephone O/S to a Unix variant. Now that iOS and Android are both Unix-derived, it's old hat, almost a given. But it was just a few years ago that it was understood that Unix was old, antiquated technology to be replaced by newer, sexier Windows/Mac systems.
What a difference a decade makes! Linux has since come to dominate the server and engineering workstation spaces, MacOS has been reborn as a child of Unix, and just about everything from your router to your microwave to your cell phone run some variation of Unix.
Wow!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I have heard this 1% > $1000 several times, although I have yet to hear a reputable source for this statistic. Apple doesn't give out such stats, at least as far as I can tell. Who provides this metric? Competitors marketing slides don't count.
That's correct.
Android was demonstrated and shown off a few weeks before the iPhone was even announced back in 2007. There's a CES 2007 video showing Android.
Looking remarkably... blackberry-ish or WinMo ish with a 5-way navigator and stuff like that.
Then the iPhone was announced, and a serious amount of re-engineering happened to get it to the way it is today. (No, it didn't feature a touchscreen). It's why the initial release wasn't that great (no soft keyboard...?) - basically they took an entire year to re-engineer the UI.
Programming for the playbook was a nightmare.
Either you're basing your opinion on that blog post written by a moron who couldn't handle filling out a simple form on a website, or you've never written software for the playbook.
It's beyond easy to write apps for the playbook. It's so easy, in fact, that it makes VB6 look complicated. Seriously, what could possibly be simpler than WebWorks and Adobe Air?
Key measures are a) profit share and b) share of web browsing c) number of app downloads and total number of (quality?) apps availble; in other words, what matters is how much the user use and can use their phones. Android will overtake Apple in these measures but it is taking much longer. If you think like this Apple is still ahead so far (and only just, and only if you include the iPod touch!).
Incidentally, this shows that WP7 has almost no hope. If you are an app developer you will do an iPhone app and some will do an Android app to show you support "alternative" people. Soon it will be the other way round (in fact I'd say that it's already the other way round in some markets). The inertia you need to overcome the leader is too much. The only reason that Android is succeeding is that Apple left a low end in the market available for them to develop in. Now the market has to be analysed as the 1990's PC market. Apple is Apple. Android is Windows and Windows is OS2, a late entry by an an over-arrogant computing incumbent.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Yep, GP is a moron. Confirmed. Adobe tools are dead simple.
I tried looking and I can't find absolute numbers. Very old numbers suggest 40k iOS and 10k Androiddevelopers (probably equal by now?? there is much less need to register to try Android development). What's clear is that there are about 100k iOS apps and about 2k blackberry apps. If we have a 13:1 ratio (note the massive error bars) on the proportion of people making money, that suggests that about five times the number of develpers are making money on iOS as are making money on Blackberry.
In other words, Blackberry is doomed :-b
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Let's not forget that Apple came back from a far worse shape than this in the late 90s. It is way too early to say that "they just don't have time".
Have you even heard one of their co-CEOs talk? One is all techno-babble and the other is a bean-counter with no real product experience. None of them are the caliber of Steve Jobs, and as a company, RIM is not the caliber of pre-Jobs Apple in the 90s (which was still quite innovative, just mismanaged).
Fire one or both of the current leadership, and we can talk turnaround. As it is RIM does not have the DNA for a massive course-change.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
It's got a hybrid sort of licensing now. You now get QNX source code with QNX, but it's still proprietary. That's not quite F/OSS as you were looking for but it is a step forward.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Did RIM mention if any of the new/current Blackberry devices (which they were touting some of at the same conference) will get this new BBX update? Seems unlikely to me.
Now the market has to be analysed as the 1990's PC market. Apple is Apple. Android is Windows and Windows is OS2, a late entry by an an over-arrogant computing incumbent.
This is precisely how it's looked to me, and you described it well. What I'm really hoping for, and I realize this is outside the scope of the analogy, is personalization of hardware in mobile. I want to see what happened with PC's happen to phones, and I'd hoped that the Goog+Moto arrangement would have led to that. Then you've got software choices (with Android being the dominant player) running on hardware chosen by users, while Apple continues to deploy iOS on a few, closed Apple devices.
Probably won't happen, but how cool would that be? I can already see the build-your-phone engine now... "pick your radio > pick your screen size > select storage option > pick your case > select your OS", etc.
One of the best examples of the "Inventors' Dilemma". The rule is: If you don't cannibalize your products, someone else will. RIM had a product that was selling great. Inevitable that it wouldn't last forever. Someone would kill it. Happened to be iPhone and Android phones; if RIM had decent management then it would be a RIM phone destroying the Blackberry.
Does anyone know if they are selling more now than when they were the Only game in town? If they are what does it matter if they have lost market share?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Are you always a cunt or do you just play one on slashdot?
QNX... what it has always done best was to be a tiny little itty bitty real-time operating system kernel which... as a user of it for 20 years I can safely say was AWESOME. They fit their entire real-time kernel into kilobytes and then supported building whatever you needed on top of it using a fairly unique (for the time, but really similar to UNIX messages) message passing system to communicate between tasks.
... well.. it doesn't give us anything really... it just... well... we have NO IDEA what this can possibly give the user... but... it has an X in the name and that makes it special".
QNX was NOT fast. It was however quite efficient and bragged for years about task switching times in the milliseconds when that kind of resolution was almost certainly unreachable.
QNX later added on the Photon GUI which was almost a rip off of Xt and Motif... but without XLib. This worked out well since it supported the fairly dynamic message passing approach to development common in QNX. It also REALLY REALLY sucked. In fact... every since GUI produced by QNX was a dog with fleas.
The point of all this is not that QNX sucks... the point being that QNX is just not something that should interest the user. In fact... it's pretty lame to announce this. Apple sold the hell out of OS X to DEVELOPERS by using the term UNIX all the time during marketing. But Blackberry tells us that the UNIX roots (and QNX is basically just a real-time UNIX microkernel) are unavailable to programmers that have to use Java anyway. Apple and Google on the other hand.. they don't go on and on talking about the operating system kernel of their systems... that's just nonsense. They focus on what the actual platform is. "iOS.. Apple's platform with all these bells and whistles...oh an just one more thing"... "Android... Googles awesome platform with all Google perks like maps and translation etc... built into an awesome interface... oh and it has angry birds too". Then we get Blackberry... "The platform based on this really cool operating system kernel called QNX that
QNX is not a hardened secure OS... Blackberry's security just got screwed since now... instead of the half baked network environment they had before which made hacking pretty close to impossible, they now have a full POSIX networking stack which has never been hardened or challenged in an environment where people knew they could get your money. So... now... hackers know that with the new OS... they should start hacking QNX's networking stacks and file systems to get their hands on your banking data. Linux at least has the Linux stack which has been hardened over years. OS X has BSD which has been hardened over decades. QNX has... well QNX which has been hardened... well no it hasn't... but at least it has an X in the name and that makes it special.
Let's be honest... if this is the best that Blackberry can do... well... screw it.
Because they're really really REALLY fucking stupid. That's why.
This. If RIM had announced today they'd done a Blackberry skin on Android (like Amazon or HTC do) with a Blackberry Marketplace for Android and Blackberry security for Android - other vendors would be really worried. They'd probably have owned corporate and government Android.
Instead, the competition went out for drinks.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Apparently BlackBerry Instant Messaging is more popular than SMS in some parts of the UK and Europe.
That means nothing. Smartphones have brought about (S/M)MS for free in the shape of IM clients and other internet-based messaging (Skype, WhatsApp, Viber, eBuddy which unifies many services). There are folk who use Twitter / Facebook as their IM service. All of these have taken away from SMS. I hardly ever use it now, and I wouldn't touch Blackberry.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
That's right: if you're losing the match, move those goalposts. Can't have The Holy Apple losing now can we? It may upset the spirit of the Great Jobs (Peace be upon him), and we don't want that.
Interesting... I didn't know RIM had acquired QNX - it's a cracking embedded OS. They used to make a big deal of the fact that the inherent stability of the design meant it had found a natural home in applications such as nuclear power stations and air traffic control etc. and that their average uptime was often multiples of years. However, the power management support in Neutrino always seemed to be pretty elementary and certainly never stretched to supporting things like dynamic voltage and frequency scaling that many of the (potentially) most efficient SoC's support nowadays so I wonder how it'll compare on this front. Then again to be fair, most Windows Embedded and Linux BSP's never seem to be implemented that brilliantly in this regard either...
Apparently BlackBerry Instant Messaging is more popular than SMS in some parts of the UK and Europe
For the price of 2 months of an iPhone contract, you can buy a pay-as-you-go blackberry which has free messaging to other blackberry phones. This has made it very popular with the less well off in society (because you don't need to buy any credit to keep in touch). Unfortunately for Blackberry, they accidentally became the main organisational framework for the UK rioters this summer as a direct result. All publicity is good publicity as they say. Although in this case, a picture of a chav with blackberry in hand, smashing into a shop to nick a pair of Nike's, probably doesn't do any good for Blackberry at the high end of the market.
Business isn't about market placement; it's about profit.
No NO NO!
Android doesn't require patents, technology around smartphone does. RIM already has licensing agreements with most of the big players and they also own a lot of patents required by anyone that wants to build a smartphone.
Legal problems would be the least of their worries.
Walk into your local police station, law firm, government office you don't see the business people carrying around iPhone or Android. For security sensitive applications they are almost exclusively blackberries. This comes at a cost, sluggish phones and more potential for outages as they all rely on the encrypted infrastructure. It says something when middle eastern countries want to ban the phones because their intel communities can't get into them.
So while the common user may try to measure the success or failure of RIM in the home market they are still quite strong in the business world.
oh right, well i guess you're just one of those 'can't win, don't try' people.
No, he's a business man. He made no attack on Blackberry, he merely said that if the projected sales figures come out with a loss, or a minimal return, it is simply too risky to consider investing money to pay for the development. For exactly the same product on iPhone, that analysis may come back with a higher rate of return on investment. No I'm all for doing crazy code projects on a whim they might break even, but sadly, the recession means we have to be a lot more careful with our investors money these days.
too bad you don't get to see your idiocy pointed out to you then, everyone else can though :P
There was nothing idiotic in the guys comments. There were sound business guidelines to make sure you can keep paying the rent at the end of the month, and if you're lucky, take the kids somewhere nice on holiday.
Does anyone know if they are selling more now than when they were the Only game in town? If they are what does it matter if they have lost market share?
They reported 70 million current subscribers worldwide, up 20 million from last year.
Less than Android, but not that bad.
Sorry, I did not understand if BB with OS7 will be upgradable to this new OS.
thanks
RIM is not the caliber of pre-Jobs Apple in the 90s (which was still quite innovative, just mismanaged).
I call BS. Apple in the 90s couldn't put out an incremental upgrade to their operating system, much less create anything innovative. It took two years with Steve at the helm before OS 9 came out. Not a single product released by Steve came from before his return as CEO.
Fire one or both of the current leadership, and we can talk turnaround.
Let's work with that premise for the sake of the argument. Then you agree, they are not too far gone: all they need to do is fire the CEOs and they are back in business, which supports my point. They still have time, but they better get moving.
Mac Mini: $599
iPod Touch: $199
iOS developer account that can publish to the iTunes store: $99
Total: $897
$897 seems to be less than $1250. Also, you can just use the iOS simulator in Xcode if you're really scraping by, and cut the iPod Touch out, for a total entry cost of less than $700.
It's also a travesty that there is nowhere to buy refurbished Macs, or used Macs at a discount that work perfectly.
Thanks for playing.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
RIM has sold 165 million BlackBerry smartphones to date and currently has 70 million subscribers. A Canadian success story that I, as a Canadian, am very proud of.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
But seriously, most apps are $30+ in the BBWorld store.
That is expensive. The average iPhone app price is $5. The average Android app price is $1.50; and the cheap skates complain endlessly about that while the pirates work hard to destroy any and all possible income. If you ever wonder why the quality of Android apps tend to suffer compared to those found on Apple's platform, its because pirates have effectively killed the app ecosystem on Android. For whatever reason pirates are drawn to Android (presumably because its so easy to steal shit compared to the other platforms) whereby they frequently are driven to destroy any and all possible developer revenue. I don't understand it, but there is a large number of android users who are very proud of the fact they've fucked over developers by either using pirated/modified applications which strip it of ads or use add blocking software which prevents the developer's application from generating ad hits. And then these same dumb pirates then complain that if a more expensive ad-free version were available, they'd buy. Which of course, they wouldn't and don't. Rather, the ad-free version is just pirated at a much higher frequency.
Like most things pirates touch, hard working people get completely fucked over.
Don't like the anti-piracy draconian laws? Blame the fucktard pirates. They fuck up everything they touch while harming the economy. At the very least, its a well established fact for the Android platform. A fact Google doesn't like to publicize. If you're not kicking every pirate you know in the nuts until they bleed out their mouth, you're not doing your part to help the economy.
CxO types just learned last week that the vaunted BB security is deeply flawed. It's a 'trust it all with us' model. And it has broken a couple times this year:
- first they allowed Saudi Arabia and others to spy on users who are defenseless against that due to that model. Which they would not be if the model was more decentralized (think run pgp on each device and don't require any trust on the network and servers of RIM or operators)
- second they got a massive outage that only blocked mail when internet was working on devices and my gmail app was getting mail no problem and my company's servers were working fine.
To me this reads as: you could do just as well with a good email app and standards (IMAP over SSL, encrypted storage etc.) on iPhone or Android devices. And there are startups and companies providing all that with probably decent Exchange integration already.
I switched from a Storm to a Droid Pro yesterday. I was strongly considering the newest BlackBerry bold. Feature-wise, it was pretty much 1:1 with the Droid Pro -- wife, touch screen, etc. BlackBerry OS 7 is actually pretty nice, the keyboard is a lot more ergonomic than the Droid Pro's, and it has the sweet track pad in addition to keyboard and touch screen. It does wifi, html5, the whole works.
That said, I went with the Droid Pro because it was about $200 cheaper than the Black Berry and for personal use is more flexible. I still get device and SD card encryption and whatnot, and it was pretty much a steal (I bought it online during the 4-day super sale Verizon was having... I got the phone for $29.95 -- can't really beat that with a stick).
BlackBerry doesn't really need to compete in the consumer market any more than than Apple needs to compete in the enterprise. They each have their respective markets covered and anything else is gravy. If you're looking at it as a personal phone, you'll probably be disappointed, but you're also not really in the target market at that point. I'm kind of old school -- email, some web browsing, text or IM messages from time to time, so a BB would do me just fine, because I value the security more than the 'cool' factor of having the new shiny.
If this new OS works out, though, then on my next upgrade I very well may switch back to BB, because frankly their hardware is just resilient as a all get out. For all the things I can complain about with the Storm, I've never owned another phone that I could drop, have tumble down concrete stairs, hitting each one, and still be perfectly fine when it finally got to the bottom.
Oh yeah? Is that why RIM's morning general session at its conference had a heavy emphasis on games?
That's exactly why. They are already entrenched in the corporate market so they want to focus on the area they are bleeding like crazy, the consumer market. I thought that was obvious?
Mac Mini [...] iPod Touch [...] iOS developer account that can publish to the iTunes store [...] Total: $897
$897 seems to be less than $1250.
Now add the cable adapter to use your existing monitor on your Mac mini, and add the $297 renewals to keep your certificate from expiring three years before your Mac and device become obsolete. Total: a lot closer to $1250.
Also, you can just use the iOS simulator in Xcode if you're really scraping by
I've read that the speed of the iOS simulator is nowhere near accurate. Some things are much faster on the simulator than on the device. It would be unwise to attempt to publish an application that has been tested exclusively on a simulator because its slowness on a device would draw harsh negative reviews.
used Macs at a discount
I was under the impression that used Macs were more likely to be more than five years old, meaning they have a PowerPC CPU, which is incompatible with recent Xcode. I did notice that some of the eBay listings were for used Intel Macs. But are used Macs eligible for, say, AppleCare so that the buyer is covered if the thing breaks in a week?
Oh they might own a PC but it's a Celeron that is being used to surf the web and it may not be the best computer for developing.
Not the best != completely incapable, unlike the situation with iOS and computers other than Macs. I frequently code on a Linux netbook.
not dying or failing!
RIM doubled down protecting their turf investing in security and reliability. QNX continues BlackBerry's legacy in high security communications providing a robust QNX engine to power their future, well-armed for imbedded processing. RIM, which has gone unnoticed and under appreciated, now has communications technology to operate impossibly smaller imbedded implementations beyond the current handheld fad right into the datacenter server farms. RIMM would be an excellent BUY here.
RIM already has licensing agreements with most of the big players and they also own a lot of patents required by anyone that wants to build a smartphone.
You meant STOLE a lot of patents.
Fixed that for ya.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Since 2007, QNX is available under a hybrid license. As a user, you get the source code and can work with it and modify it, just not redistribute it. While not FOSS, it is a big step in the right direction.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
That's funny, when I googled 'CES 2007 Android', I couldn't find any related hits. So then I check wikipedia:
The unveiling of the Android distribution on November 5, 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 84 hardware, software, and telecommunication companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices.[10][11][12][13] Google released most of the Android code under the Apache License, a free software license.[14] The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) is tasked with the maintenance and further development of Android.[15]
Which I interpret as 5 months after Apple sold their first iPhone and 10 months after they announced it.
Do they have to pay to use them? My point stands.
Let's not forget that Apple came back from a far worse shape than this in the late 90s.
Apple's come back had much to do with returning Steve Jobs to the helm. Without putting to fine a point on it, RIM does not appear to have similarly competent leadership at this time. I agree that a come back is not remotely out of the question for RIM but they have far less cash than their primary direct competitors (Nokia, Microsoft, Apple and Google). RIM has also managed a pretty spectacular string of mediocre-at-best products, operational screw ups and strategic blunders. I cannot see them surviving as an independent company without some pretty immediate changes in top management and strategy.
Actually there is now a hardened QNX.
The Mac Mini includes an HDMI to DVI adapter in the box. I don't know what else you'd want, except maybe this DVI to VGA adapter that costs all of $0.01
They won't fit together.
There are two kinds of DVI signal: DVI-D (digital) and DVI-A (analog). DVI-D is the same signal as HDMI; DVI-A is the same signal as VGA. There are also two kinds of DVI connector: DVI-D and DVI-I (integrated). A DVI-D connector can transmit only DVI-D signals; a DVI-I connector can transmit both DVI-D and DVI-A. A DVI-A plug will not fit into a DVI-D socket because of extra pins around the "bar" at one side of the connector, as I describe in my article about DVI connectors. I'm pretty sure an HDMI to DVI adapter will produce only DVI-D, and such a cheap DVI to VGA adapter will require DVI-A.
Of course the iOS sim isn't completely accurate for how it's going to perform on a device.
I guess I've been spoiled by NES emulators, which are in fact cycle-accurate.
you would also need to include possible revenues of any apps you develop and sell
Which just goes toward the trend of people feeling the need to make even the simplest apps paid in order to recoup that $99.
if it already has AppleCare on it, it's fully transferrable.
Thank you for confirming this.
While the electrical erasing is certainly a convenient feature, I'm pretty sure that if you can scrape enough of the case off to bombard the die with hard UV, an EEPROM will also be erased(not terribly useful, in practice, just as the epoxy-case windowless EPROMs were functionally WORM media). I'd be fascinated by the gory details if it turns out that EEPROMs are actually light-resistant at a die level, though...
well until it's not.
Hardening can be done in theory by running tests and closing the holes you know about up. But hardened is not secure. It's just more secure than if you haven't done the tests.
Security comes from hardening after being attacked. QNX has never been a proper target of hackers. Yes there have been a few ATM machines that used QNX, but those ATM machines come from a generation when they were dedicated connections as opposed to connecting them over the Internet or using wireless phone technology. And even then, finding them to hack them was an issue.
Putting an operating system on 100,000 or more phones commonly purchased by people wearing neck ties on purpose on the other hand, that makes the phone a target. So until they have done that for a while... I wouldn't trust them to be secure.
I'm surprised you didn't know QNX got it's network stack from NetBSD. But you're right, eventhough the network code might be mature the rest of the OS hasn't seen the level of real-world testing the BSD family and Linux has.