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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
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?
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.
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.
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
iPhone has per-account sigs.
Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in very large numbers.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
- 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.
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
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.
Perhaps for those iPhone users who haven't upgraded to iOS 6?