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Black Sheep Blackberry Blackballed By Business
Hugh Pickens writes "Nicole Perlroth writes that the BlackBerry, once proudly carried by the high-powered and the elite, has become a magnet for mockery and derision from those with iPhones and the latest Android phones. as Research in Motion clings to less than 5 percent of the smartphone market — down from a dominating 50 percent just three years ago. One of the first steps Marissa Mayer took as Yahoo's newly appointed chief executive to remake the company's stodgy image was to trade in employees' BlackBerrys for iPhones and Androids and although BlackBerrys may still linger in Washington, Wall Street and the legal profession, in Silicon Valley they are as rare as a necktie. BlackBerry outcasts say that, increasingly, they suffer from shame and public humiliation as they watch their counterparts mingle on social networking apps that are not available to them, take higher-resolution photos, and effortlessly navigate streets — and the Internet — with better GPS and faster browsing."
Stupid people like to tease me for liking Star Trek and the Misfits. Fuck them, it's what *I* like that matters to me. If you switch phones because your old one isn't cool enough, you're a dipshit and deserved the mockery you were getting in the first place.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
honestly, if you "suffer from shame and public humiliation" because of your phone, you need to grow a spine
Brought 2 U by letter B.
You can't handle the truth.
The annoying alliteration in the headline makes me need to acquire an avalanche of aspirin.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I use a Blackberry (Bold 9900) by choice. A few reasons:
:)
- I love the keyboard!
- Unified inbox; everything is in one spot.
- Different modes; EG: when I go to bed I have a mode called "bedtime" that only alerts me if something important from someone important comes in.
- Contact based alerts. So during the day when I'm at work my phone will only "ring" if it's my mom (she has cancer, so lay off) or my wife (only calls if it's important, sends a text otherwise).
- Canadian company. Home country pride
Yes there is a lack of apps and yes, the Java based OS does sometimes show me the lovely hourglass but for me, it works.
As for other phones, I have looked but not willing to move at this time. I am very excited for BB10 and hope it will allow RIM to mount some kind of comeback.
I have never been randomly made fun of for my phone. Sure friends and co-workers will sometimes poke fun; but it's people I know.
Finally; it's just a phone people - there are bigger things in life to worry about.
K Man
WTF is this world coming to if someone can be "shamed and humiliated" because of what type of phone they have?
Can we agree that anybody who experiences "public shame and humiliation" about their cell phone should be reassigned to some ghastly corner of nowhere where they can feel 'public shame and humiliation' over how many goats they own? And, of course, anybody inflicting public shame and humiliation over cellphones should be reassigned to be one of the goats in said ghastly corner of the world?
A title with the word black in it 3 times, and also all the words except 1 start with B. On top of that, its an article about people embarrassed of a phone they own? Huh? Whats stopping them from getting a different phone? Who gets embarrassed by a phone? Also don't give me that plan crap. You can get out of plans. Whats stopping these embarrassed people from sticking the SIM card in an unlocked phone bought from someone who needs some quick cash on Craigslist. Wait, its a business phone and you have to use it? Correct me if i'm wrong, unless you are in marketing, you aren't going to get judged by other business people by your phone. I still use an old 3GS with a pay as you go plan and WIFI for internet because it just works.. Seriously people! Get creative. It just pisses me off how people do not do anything anymore for fear of breaking a rule that may or may not exist. Sorry. Feeling ranty this morning.
Whether you deserve mockery depends on which Star Trek you like:
Same with old phones, the first people to use a real useful smartphone were the Nokia communicator users. Then for the people who found that to hard to use, the blackberry was invented.
Then the iPhone came along for those who didn't have any real use for them apart from playing flavor of the day games. How many slicing games does a platform need anyway?
But at least your not a windows phone user.
There is always a pecking order and always someone at the bottom. Windows phone users and Enterprise watchers are the equivalent of the dead half cannibalized chicken at your local factory farm. McNuggets.
Queue this post being modded down by a future McNugget.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Exchange support is fantastic.
Meeting alerts rock, calendar is big and easy to manage.
Multiple email account support, unified or separate.
Video conference and Skype support. Webex support.
Games. Sometimes you just need a few minutes of downtime.
If you *need* to take notes, bring a laptop or a pen and paper. Any phone keyboard is deficient
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I used a Blackberry since I got to my place of work 5 years ago. A few months ago it was traded in for an Android RAZR. On the personal front, I bought an iPhone 3GS 2 or 3 years ago.
For consistent reliable access to company e-mail and alerts from the monitoring system, the Blackberry wins hands down no question. On the Android, we've had alerts not show up for hours and at other times, the alerts repeat every few minutes. The Blackberry is inherently part of the system for getting e-mail. On the Android I have to use a third party app ("Good"). If the app bails, I don't get any further e-mail until I log back in to the app. The Blackberry would last 5 days without having to charge it. I have to plug in the Android phone every single morning. And the battery's anywhere from 5% to 90% charged when I plug it in. At 5% it takes 4 hours or so to charge back up to "Charged".
The thing I dislike about both the iPhone and the Android are the virtual keyboards. Nothing is more frustrating for me than having to look at the damned keyboard while I type and still I get garbage in the message. Even worse, on the iPhone the autocompletion can be so frustrating that I have to put the phone away or I'll throw it as far as I can. I've bounced it off the carpet more than once over the past year. The Blackberry had an actual keyboard and I seldom made the mistakes I make on the Android/iPhone devices.
Back after I got the Blackberry, I was thinking about getting one for personal use. I kept putting it off because I had such a hard time surfing the 'net. Having to spin the little ball and press on it to click was annoying, not always staying where I pointed when I clicked so I'd click on some different link. And that's assuming I could even get to the site. It's the primary reason I went with the iPhone. The web surfing worked so much better than the Blackberry. And I was able to get all my e-mail in one place.
But you know, on the Blackberry, work e-mail and SMS alerts worked with very few issues. If I had my choice right now, I'd go back to my old Blackberry.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
I'm really not impressed with the sudden emphasis on gadget trendiness and 'cool' factor, implying Blackberries are less cool and thus to be shunned like clamydia or herpes sores.
You know when I stopped carrying my Palm Tungsten? Last week. That's right, about 7 days ago. Old? Yes. Perfectly functional, useful, and integrated into my daily system for staying organized? Absolutely. I upgraded to a "hot/awesome/trendy/fantastic" Google Nexus 7 tablet, and though it does some things better it does some other things worse.
So I'm not overly concerned about how tech pundits feel about Blackberry today. I use a BB for work and admit I wish it had better apps. But I love that keyboard (I have trouble with the Nexus 7 touchscreen keyboard even when I use a stylus and truly fail to see the attraction of a screen with greasy fingerprints all over it), and nothing tops it for email.
Pundits suck. I think the Android phones are fun and useful and do all sort of neat things that BBs don't. But that doesn't mean BB should just piss off and die. And I don't appreciate the attempt in convincing consumers that's the case.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
This whole post should tagged "Irrelevant socalled news" and moderated to "-5 Trolls feast here".
Hivemind harvest in progress..
The Blackberry is a great moving telephone, I don' t know what they're talking about. I can reads all my emails too, which is a bonus on a phone these days -- can't do that on the office or home phone. Very rugged, too, I dropped mine while adjusting the rabbit ears on my 24" big screen TV (still can't pull in a signal worth a damn anymore), and it didn't break. I hear you can even surfs the internets with the Blackberry, though I'm not sure just what people see in all that.
-Dave Haynie
So white kids and businessmen don't consider BlackBerry to be "cool".
You should see the shittier parts of London, where all the black gangsta types carry Blackberries. Not because of encrypted free BBM, but because it's "bidness, innit".
Don't think for a minute that you are the final arbiter of what is 'cool' out there, because as we should all know, one man's meat is another man's poison.
1) Except for that time that the entire European Blackberry base couldn't send or receive email for several days because it was all routed through one datacenter (even if you used a local Exchange connector, I believe) and there was a "data incident" that took WEEKS for them to catch up properly with normal email delivery for an entire continent? (Nothing to do with connectivity or the hardware itself, just the stupid idea of routing ALL email through a central server!)
Because that's what killed my employer's use of Blackberry from that day onwards.
2) The best tool for business is generally the best tool full stop. I'm not aware of many areas of technology where consumer/business versions aren't pretty much identical unless you're doing something quite serious - and that's a different matter. The majority of "business" is NOT huge corporations with thousands of employees.
Mobile phones, for example, were always consumer items until BB turned up. They got used in business. They were so popular that people offered business packages. And now BB is dying because all consumer phones can do what the BB can do.
Because that's what my employer did when the contract for the BB phones came up for renewal - they evaluated it, ditched it, went consumer, and never had any problems or missing features. They actually saved money at no loss.
3) You think your employees aren't surfing anyway? Sure you can chain them to the desk and enforce a "no-mobiles" rule, and block everything online, but you won't make a happier or more productive staff by doing so.
Whereas if you just open it up but say "on your head be it, and don't let it interfere with work", there's no expensive and resource-intensive management required, your staff will be happy that they can check that little Jimmy got to the doctors okay with his grazed knee without worrying, they'll be able to do what they want in lunch-hour anyway and you can STILL sack them if they don't do the work you require in a reasonable timeframe (which is the ONLY metric worth bothering with).
Though I agree that work is a place for work, I'd die in a place that wouldn't let me show others a picture of my kid from Facebook while I'm chatting at lunchtime, or log in to check my delivery status on my Christmas order just before the end of the day to see if I can drive straight home or need to drive 20 miles out of my way to pick up a parcel before leaving or, hell, just do things like add things to my personal calendar or sort out family "emergencies" (like Jimmy's left his school shoes at home but only I know where they are).
Sure, I can do that some other time. And I do. But I also do "work" stuff on my own time too and getting strict about that border actually works AGAINST my employers. Vastly.
The company that treats its employees like the enemy is like the customer services department that treats its callers like the enemy. Costing you more to do less and making everyone miserable in the process.
I have to agree with you. I dont even have a GPS, but I would have one if I hadnt spent way too much on this damn "smart" phone with builtin GPS. Which has the crappiest GPS antenna known to man and probably some other hardware problems as well - it usually works, eventually, but it's more of an irritant than an asset. I'd have been a lot happier with a simple phone that works, and a separate GPS device that also worked, instead of having both crammed into one device that often doesnt work.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I was forced to use a BB for work for years. I have a shoebox full of useless BBs that I can't even sell.
BB OS 10 won't run on your 9900. You can add it to your shoebox.
The camera, keyboard and call quality was nice. The MDM set the bar for the industry.
The industry passed the last of BB's advantages some time in 2011. There are much better devices out there now. Get an iPhone, it will not only have a better camera, microphone and display, but Apple won't abandon it next year. Your skills and knowledge will also be relevant when all those law firms finish evaluating iOS and start migrating.
I agree RIM's lockin was nowhere near as great but the fact is that IT departments still don't have a good management strategy for non RIM devices. BBMS had an exclusive. As far as not trained on iOS (I'm saying iOS not OSX deliberately here) on Android I think smartphones are solving that and at this point much less the 2020s Microsoft users will be familiar with those OSes and quite functional in them.
Blackberry doesn't have Grindr. That's a very important social app for some people (not me!).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I still use a Nokia 6310 most of the time. Sure, it doesn't have any internet connectivity, but it's a better phone than anything being sold today, the battery lasts for a week, I can drop it without it breaking, and no one's going to steal it. There's certainly no shame involved. Quite the opposite in fact. When people are boasting about their new phones and I pull my old Nokia out the reaction is: "Wow! I used to have one of those. Now that was a good phone!"
You know. You're right. You don't *need* any of those things in a phone. However, most people *want* those things in a phone.
I have a Garmin 76CSx with the entirety of North America loaded. I have used it extensively both for geocaching and traveling. It's an amazing device for autorouting and I would never consider a phone in their current states as a replacement for this device. That said, I use it only when I'm geocaching (which is pretty rare these days, after nearly 5000 found it's just not as fun as it used to be) or while I'm traveling across long distances which may find me out of service. The rest of the time I use my phone. Why? Because it's more convenient, it is easier to use, and it has voice turn-by-turn. Yup, they have their issues but claiming I wouldn't want a new phone w/a GPS I can turn on and off at will is silly.
I also own a Nikon D5000 DSLR. I use it to take photos fairly often, especially of food and ones of the kids that we want to make more special than our iPhone 4S and 5 can offer. However, it's a pain in the ass to upload and e-mail photos and it's big and bulky to carry around everywhere with us when we're already carrying stuff to fuel a 2.5 year old and a 4 month old. IOW, yeah, the DSLR is superior and an iPhone would never make up for it but the convenience factor alone makes the DSLR almost obsolete.
As for the browser and social media. I actually sometimes prefer the mobile browsing experience to the regular. In order to use my laptop I have to have access to it. Sometimes I'm somewhere that I do not have access to my machine. Other times the machine sits on the table and I am on my phone because it's easier to scroll through my RSS items, e-mail and social media stuff on the phone than it is on the computer. Oh and "high speed browsing" is kinda funny. My iPhone seems as fast as my MBP and it has LTE when I'm out of the house which matches (and sometimes beats--especially in upstream) my business class connection at home (I am routinely pulling 25/25 on VZW LTE in the MSP metro area vs 25/3 on Charter Business Class).
YMMV.
Not being a slave to trend and technology keeps me sane and my mind fresh. Do yourself a favour and detach yourselves a bit more from the devices around you. It will only serve you well as a rational human being. Also that is all I hear from coders is to "reduce and remove dependencies", yet they cling to their phones and iDevices. Isn't the hypocricy here just sweet?
If you want a no nonsense device with a physical keyboard and superior email and message handling, a BB is still the best.
"No nonsense"? Have you actually used a Blackberry? They do a few things rather well but overall they are almost obnoxiously annoying to use. I'll take any of the better Android phones or an iPhone over any Blackberry any day of the week. My mother uses a fairly recent BB and good grief is it irritating. Oh it can email fine but heaven forbid you want to do anything besides messaging with it including changing settings.
You also have to remember that the devices it is competing against are general purpose computers which happen to be able to make calls. The BB still is in a world where email is the so-called killer app. Things have changed and just email isn't enough anymore. Even if we concede that the BB is better at dealing with email and messaging, the difference is marginal for most people. The advantages of the BB don't even come close to outweighing its deficiencies.
Whats interesting and what I just thought of is this, You wouldn't ask a single contractor to overhaul your house, do the plumbing, electrical, wood working and etc.... So why would you buy a phone to be a jack of all trades. The more you can do in a smaller package the lower quality you can do it. Sure a contractor can do electrical and plumbing and frame a house but the work wont come close in quality as it would if you hired an electrician and plumber.
However I will give you that some times snapping a photo on a phone is nice, or just jumping on Facebook for an update. However I would say those are option which the phone can be used for as opposed to being used in a capacity to replace ( If that makes sense ). I'm one of those people who believe that when a device exists to solve a real problem, if exist for a reason. For instance GPS was created out of need, high quality cameras were created a need and the same with mobile phones. If I want to take a picture I wont go buy a GPS with a camera. That might be just me and a small handful of others.
The real reason businesses are switching is because Blackberry doesn't have as many games to keep you occupied during meetings. Not that you'll get management to admit it, but it's true.
People using black berries are mocked and made fun of? Get over it buddy. It is nothing compared to the humiliation and derision invited by the lone college freshman using Dell in an ocean of Apple logos.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Your explanation for setting up ActiveSync means the account you have is connected by an incompetent IT department.
Setting up an Android or an iPhone for Exchange needs only an email address and a password. There are at least 3 different means by which Autodiscover can be configured to take care of client device configuration. If your IT dept can't figure that out, what makes you think a BES server is within their capacity to manage?
Your shrill denunciation of SSL and the assumption that users are too stupid to use a password seems almost self-denigrating. You don't use SSL in any web app? You can't remember your corporate credentials? The iPhone might be too complicated for you.....
Finally, we see the issue - you have a phone you don' t like, so it must be someone else's fault. The phone you did like was designed and built by a company so incompetent they self-destructed. It must be someone else's fault. I'm starting to see a pattern here....
Regards,
Brian in CA
As long as I bill for less hours than I actually work, and I get my job done in a reasonable and agreed time frame, then my employer/client is ok with some private surfing and calls, and we can access pretty much anything from the corporate net. That is because we're all responsible adults here... and in the rare case that excessive surfing affects someone's work, it is easy enough to have a chat and set them straight.
A lot of job ads have something about the company looking for people who "don't have that 9-5 mentality". Guess what: that works both ways.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
A Camera! There are very few cellphone models that do not include a camera. If you work at a facility where no cameras are allowed, yet you need cellular voice & text messaging there are d@#n few options available. If only the keyboard and small screen weren't so good at "creating a negative pressure differential over deceased game fowl".
I had no problems with google maps on BB either, though the touch screen controls for zooming are very intuitive and faster than the mouse. I've never used the BB in place of a GPS.
Oh boo hoo, how will business proceeed without facebook?
Facebook is kinda important to a lot of business, talk to someone in PR. But more important are things like Linkedin for HR or sourcing. Twitter is becoming a regular source of information. There are also all sorts of business oriented networks like Jive.
Blackberry absolutely crushes android in email messaging and anyone who says otherwise either has odd definitions of usability, or else has never used a blackberry.
I'd agree, for authoring. For viewing I think screen size and pinch to zoom are rather helpful.
Blackberries are still the best device from an IT standpoint; whether the users like them or not SHOULD be irrelevant, because their job isnt to like their business phone, its to do business.
Two comments.
a) The more employees dislike their job the more money they demand to do it. Coal miners, sanitation engineers and police officers get paid a lot more than their skills would demand because of the unpleasantness of their work. Same with people who work for large trading houses, their job sucks but they make a ton of money. Employers because the job market has been soft have been able to get away with not being concerned with employee moral. However employee unhappiness results in turnovers, turnovers cost generally between 3 and 18 mo of salary in terms of lost productivity. Among millennials so far quality of work experience matters a lot to them statistically.
b) Blackberries are great to manage. The other platforms suck but are rapidly getting better. However, the advantages of IT disappear if IT has to implement complex workarounds for missing functionality.
What phone did you get that has such crappy GPS? I'm rather happy with my iPhone 4s, it is far faster to acquire a signal than any GPS I've owned and very accurate. Probably because this phone supports both GPS and Glonass, the latter being more accurate here in Europe.
By the way, here's what I don't need or use because I have a phone:
1) Social netowrking (ok, I don't this, period. Phone or no)
2) Camera. My phone makes very decent pictures and I always have it with me. For the very rare occasion that I need top notch photos and/or a decent flash, I'll bring a separate camera, but in practice I hardly use mine.
3) GPS. Who needs a separate unit that is bound to get nicked from your car, when you already carry one with you all the time?
4) Notepad/pen: Taking quick, short notes on the phone works just fine. And making a picture of whiteboards or flipovers is even quicker!
5) Music/video/entertainment device. My phone does it all.
6) When you're on the go, who needs a laptop or access to a full sized computer (in a webcafe or some such) when you have a smartphone? Sucks for prolonged browsing but great if you're outside and need to quickly look up an address or do a price comparison.
If I had to drop one feature from my phone, it'd probably be the ability to make calls.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
90% of my software is made in the last 2 years.
I have very few binaries dated 2007, let alone pre 2000. I have no legacy crap I need. true legacy can run in a VM if needed.
Anything that old is totally obsolete.
But old libraries and apis were much smaller and thus take little overhead if remapped under new frameworks.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Sounds to me like you need to move to allowed and supported: https://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/enterprise/
BTW if you are a mid or large sized business and want to talk about this seriously I'd be happy to.
I would get an android phone in a heartbeat but google in its infinite wisdom requires carriers and handset makers to include a camera to officially call it an Anrdoid device. They need to rethink this. You could suck up half of the extent BB market with a simple policy change.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
A phone is not just a phone...It hasn't been for a long time. Apple would be out of business if that was true.
I don't know that Apple would be "out of business" but agreed that a phone is no longer just a phone.
Phones are Jewellery and have been for a long time.
Kind of went off the rails with this bit of your argument. Your assertion that phones are merely jewelry could only be true if people use their phones for no purpose other than decoration. Maybe you know some people who do that but I've never met any. Phones aren't phones because they are now computers that also make phone calls. Any decorative purpose they might serve is mostly incidental to why they aren't just phones anymore.
It's a fucking phone.
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Enterprise_Deployment_Guide.pdf
You can disable the camera using the Enterprise management features.
Actually, I would hire a contractor to do the work and expect him to farm out the work to subcontractors to do the parts he cannot. Usually these subs are brought in at the lowest bid the contractor can find to get the job finished on time while passing inspection.
A phone seems to fit this model just fine.
mingle on social networking apps that are not available to them
That's OK, I'm the last person on earth (or so I'm repeatedly told) who is not on facebook. So I have no need for your social networking apps.
take higher-resolution photos,
I have a camera for that.
and effortlessly navigate streets
I can read a map just fine on my own, thank you. I have a GPS for when I really need it, and it has a better display than a phone for that situation.
and the Internet - with better GPS and faster browsing
My crackberry does 802.11g, and I'm too cheap to pay for a data plan.
I'll keep my crackberry, thank you very much.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Because I always rooted for those bitches, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A5XFA84tMs, they're so punk and badass.
Even bought the band shirts, I still get strange looks for it. (http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmxzjydGZP1qe75x7o2_1280.jpg, http://www.toplessrobot.com/1305-3785-large.jpg)
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Huh. Latest comscore numbers:
May 2012: 31.9%
Aug 2012: 34.3%
And that BTW is during the low sales period before the 5 came out. How is that dropping share?
http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/02/comscore-iphone-moved-up-to-34-percent-us-share-in-august/
- I love the keyboard!
Personal preference but nothing wrong with that. I used to prefer a physical keyboard but then I realized it is just a whole bunch more stuff that can (and does) break. I don't really miss not having a physical keyboard and I do like not having to carry the extra bulk of one around. Personal preference however and I get the appeal of a physical keyboard.
- Unified inbox; everything is in one spot.
- Different modes; EG: when I go to bed I have a mode called "bedtime" that only alerts me if something important from someone important comes in.
- Contact based alerts. So during the day when I'm at work my phone will only "ring" if it's my mom (she has cancer, so lay off) or my wife (only calls if it's important, sends a text otherwise).
I can do all of this on an iPhone and I'm pretty sure most of the better Android phones as well.
- Canadian company. Home country pride :)
You're proud of using an inferior product just because it was designed by a Canadian company? I live in the US but I'd never buy an inferior US product just because it was made here. When the Blackberry was genuinely the best product available a few years back I get that argument but now it makes little sense.
As for other phones, I have looked but not willing to move at this time. I am very excited for BB10 and hope it will allow RIM to mount some kind of comeback.
If you are fine with what you have and don't care about the bits you are missing out on then that is fine. That said I wouldn't hold my breath on BB10 making much of a difference. We're not going to see it for another 4-6 months and that is an eternity in this business. Once people dump BB they aren't likely to come back unless BB10 provides something that simply cannot be gotten from iOS or Android. I think RIM is headed either for bankruptcy or a buyout but I just don't see a comeback in the cards. Their three largest competitors (Apple, Microsoft and Google) have gigantic war chests and RIM doesn't. I don't really see any reasonable scenario where RIM makes a real comeback.
Finally; it's just a phone people - there are bigger things in life to worry about.
Actually it isn't just a phone. These days they are computers that just happen to be able to make calls. I use my smartphone as an alarm clock, news feed, camera, email, messaging, games, research, calendaring, calculator, reminders, music, podcasts, home automation control, shopping, navigation, video and oh yeah, making telephone calls. Saying it is "just a phone" really isn't even close to being true anymore.
I can't help but think this is what happens when you don't look after your walled garden... Sure, there's a variety of other factors at play, but app choice and quality is certainly a big factor too.
And I wonder which group is actually getting the work done they are supposed to be doing to collect a paycheck?
Eh, there is a constant back and forth between people who like devices that do one thing well or devices that do lots of things 'ok'. Some people prefer devices that cram as many features as possible into a single package but are not really built for any of them, other people would rather have multiple devices with each doing it's job well.
Yeah, effortlessly navigating streets that don't exist...
Some of your information was wrong in regards to Android, but others have corrected you there... a few points though where you are wrong on iPhone:
1) iOS is easily remotely configured by the enterprise, a user pretty much just needs the password THAT THEY LOG INTO WORK WITH EVERY DAY.
2) I can type one-handed on an iPhone too, it's not that hard. It also recognizes phone numbers including international formats. There is also ZERO LAG for pressing the software button for answering the phone. You should have bought a faster device I guess.
3) The iPhone has the same levels of on-device security without your data all having to go through a server in Canada. BES is a 24x7 man in the middle attack that you pay Blackberry for.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Linux didn't make you mocked in the 90's. The only people who really had an awareness of Linux were going to be the people who actually liked it. To everyone else, it was like some sort of UNIX or something. You'd be a nerd, but the same sort of nerd people had been dealing with for 30 years. The worst you'd get were people wondering where your beard and red suspenders were. And that's just for people who had any idea what UNIX was.
There are a few issues I can see for Blackberry
- Smaller Company with too many models for a company that is only in a single area (17 phones in 5 models currently on their website). This should have been reduced to a handful, in various price brackets.
- Not innovating as much as they use to. I don't recall many big news innovations or changes from RIM for awhile.
- Increased competition, more companies making phones.
One of the biggest pro's, over all of their competition is the fact that the phone can be centrally managed, though at an increased cost, with BES, it's $55/user at 500 users, and 2000 users/server. The Server price alone is $3000. They have added a product line to manage android and iOS devices as well, This looks like it's an additional cost as well, ontop of the cost for the BES server, the fuctionality should be part of BES not as a seperate server.
But the price is way high, and they would make a great deal more money, with a lower server price, with an option for licenses that must be renewed at a lower cost per year (or 3 years etc) to perpetual licenses at an increased cost.
But then everyone in your secure location has to keep checking if your iPhone is one of the ones using the enterprise management scheme or one where the camera hasn't been disabled.
I had a business meeting at the RIM office in Toronto in late 2005. I asked the lead technical guy i met with casually after we had rounded up after the session, when they were planning on launching a camera with their phone, not really expecting an answer. The answer I got I will never forget. "Why would RIM want to add a camera to its phones, we make business products, not consumer gadgets". In hindsight, RIM had likely already started adding a camera to their coming phones in development projects, but this relatively senior guy must have been unaware of it. But it was quite telling to me and showed clearly the mentality of a company which had found it niche and business model and refused to innovate.
Oh I see. Yes that's a problem. And since it has a front facing camera as well, you couldn't even just use a case that covers the entire rear.
I had a glimpse of what will be in store for users with Blackberry 10 at a seminar held in our school by RIM and I daresay it does have the potential to be in the league of Androids and iPhones.
The issue here is that the mobile platform isn't even okay at doing these jobs. It's really bad, if you bought a camera or GPS that performed at the level the phone does you wouldn't just send it back you would besmirch the name of the company for eternity. The GPS in my phone can't even lock onto a single satellite, I've tried it a few times for fun and just gave up. The "new" iPhone and Samsung S3 take pictures which frankly look about as good as a 10 dollar point a click. You would assume or think for the $600+ price tag you get something better then poor.
Oh puulease. I still use a Palm Tungsten C (yes, a Palm PDA - not even a phone!) every day. If someone ridicules you for it, they're a fucking hippster. Who the hell cares what other people think? This crowd should be used to that kind of stuff, anyway.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
At the facility where I work, you cannot have the camera hardware in the phone; disabling it in software isn't close to sufficient. You have to remove the camera module, fill in the cavity where the module was with JB-weld or other hard epoxy so that the phone can never again have a camera, and then get the phone inspected by security, and get a sticker/card for it. Another nearby facility I occasionally have to visit doesn't even allow that, the phone has to be non-camera from the factory.
The only reason I still have a blackberry is because it is the only thing close to a smartphone I can get without a camera. At least, without voiding the warranty on a new phone I have to pay big bucks for.
Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
Whats interesting and what I just thought of is this, You wouldn't ask a single contractor to overhaul your house, do the plumbing, electrical, wood working and etc.... So why would you buy a phone to be a jack of all trades.
Because I don't actually make decisions based on overstretched metaphors.
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You can disable the camera using the Enterprise management features.
Unfortunately, that won't work for most of the users that need camera-less phones. You may know your camera is disabled, and your administrator may know the camera is disabled... but how do you convince the security guard at the Federal courthouse of that? Or the person guarding entry to the SCIF, or the restricted NOC, or the other [insert camera-barred facility here]? That's why companies ask for phones with no camera at all, so it can be verified at a glance.
"95% of all Slashdot
I can type in complete sentences rapidly on an iPhone. You just have to trust autocorrect and type quickly...
I don't see anything wrong with that...
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
That has to be one of the most poorly edited articles I've ever read. I had to double-check and make sure I wasn't reading translated version from another language. Sadly, I wasn't.
And they don't get iPhones then. That is such a narrow use case that the market is not worth pandering to for the likes of Samsung, Apple and even RIM.
Ha Ha.
Fixing a word or two that autocorrect got wrong is still faster than typing carefully. And if you really use autocorrect a lot it does get more accurate for your typing.
I can type faster on an iPhone than I ever could on those miserable compact mobile keyboards, even a blackberry keyboard...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Makes sense. I know there are some high durability dumb phones that don't have cameras but yeah I gotta admit that is a good use case for BB.
The big problem with all the name callers is that their company issues ancient budget BB's and these can't compare to the idevice that they've got on a 7 year contract. Our stock device at work is the 9300 and its OK as a basic phone and organiser but that's about it. Bear in mind this phones costs £130 to us, whereas you are looking at double/triple the price for an iDroid Having a role in which I maintains mobile infrastructure I personally have used and trialled tons of phones, smart or not. I tried using a OneX for a while but fell back to using my 9800 Torch because it does what it is supposed to, the battery lasts forever and the email and organiser functions is seamless. I use Google Maps on it just fine and the Twitter and FB clients are really good, the browser isn't the best but it works and in ranks of functions for me its pretty low. The difference between a modern BB and a 'smartphone' is that the BB is the best communications device hands down, its not trying to be a smartphone. I've got a Nexus 7 and its great, I've got a BB Torch and that's great too. I couldn't give a monkeys if they are cool or not, each does the job that I need it to do. BB10 looks great, if they can wrap the security up in a competitive device it should work. I fear the press have got it in for RIM and even if they produce a jesus phone it'll still be derided. ActiveSync cannot compare to BES security, we've had independent commercial pen tests done against ActiveSync on iPhone/Android and the list of invulnerabilities tower above the BES list. If you don't deal with confidential data then AS is fine but anything else needs the security of a BES. Obama still doesn't carry anything else.
So why would you buy a phone to be a jack of all trades.
Because I only have one free pocket in my jeans.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
You chose the dumbest device that ever existed to carry around and now you think you're 'savvy' so you're just starting to notice...
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
Perhaps for those iPhone users who haven't upgraded to iOS 6?