Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
honestly, if you "suffer from shame and public humiliation" because of your phone, you need to grow a spine
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. Phones are Jewellery and have been for a long time. The other side of the coin is why shouldn't I have a nice phone, that I'm proud of and can show off. I worked for it!
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.
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 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.