Playbook OS 2.0 Released · Slashdot Mirror

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @03:54AM from the all-playbook-makes-jack-unproductive dept.

Alt-kun writes "On February 21st, The Blackberry Playbook finally received its long-promised overhaul. Called Playbook OS 2.0, this major upgrade provides native email and calendaring apps, limited support for Android applications (the developer has to repackage the app for the Playbook), and a bunch of other features. There are some fairly positive initial reviews, although one can no doubt expect a lot of too-little-too-late naysaying from various quarters as well. The Globe and Mail article also contains this somewhat interesting note: '...until RIM began deep discounting ... the device languished way behind rivals such as the iPad in terms of market share. One recent report by Toronto-based Solutions Research Group, however, pegs RIM's share of the tablet market at around 15 per cent, a big jump after discounting over the holiday buying season.'" ZDNet has some screenshots of the new features, and El Reg has a piece on an interesting bit of the new software.

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Re:I hate subjects by Nimloth · 2012-02-22 04:20 · Score: 5, Interesting

You're looking at it wrong. They didn't cripple it to sell more phones, they developped the product when they still had good market share in the mobile world and wanted to sell PlayBooks into existing BlackBerry accounts. It was a way to bypass IT having to manage another device and piggyback on the already-approved BlackBerries in enterprise (think FIPS approval, etc). They did not expect then that nobody would want BlackBerry devices anymore, and that it would be a major handicap to the PlayBook to not be able to function as a standalone device.
Short-sighted yes, malicious tactic I think not.