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NTSB Dumps BlackBerry In Favor of iPhone 5
Nerval's Lobster writes "The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) plans on replacing its existing stock of BlackBerry devices with Apple's iPhone 5. Research In Motion's BlackBerry smartphones, the government entity wrote in a Nov. 13 notice of intent, 'have been failing both at inopportune times and at an unacceptable rate.' The NTSB's use of iPads means it has the operational support for iOS; consequently, the decision was made to go with Apple. 'The iPhone 5 has been determined to be the only device that meets the dual requirement of availability from the existing wireless vendor and is currently supportable by existing staff resources,' the notice added. RIM is fighting to retain the government and enterprise contracts that originally made it such a mobile powerhouse. If agencies and boards such as the NTSB begin to embrace alternative platforms, however, that could critically weaken RIM's business model just as the company attempts a comeback behind the upcoming BlackBerry 10 platform."
I just watched a demo of the new BB OS and it looked pretty good. I have had two concerns about their new phone the first being the touch screen for typing; with this it looks like they have a pretty innovative way of quickly typing. The second was that IT departments can and regularly cripple the phone. You have people walking around with a pretty good smartphone that was turned into a lump of crap by the IT department. No twitter, facebook, and even sometimes web surfing. So in the new OS they have created two modes of use business and personal. The guy specified that you could then cripple the business mode and free up the personal mode.
These sound great and if the screen typing works as well as the demo it could be a game ruiner for touch screen phones without it; but I doubt it. If I were a company and I invented this technology I would sell it to one of the players with real cash. Second I suspect that this personal mode itself can be turned off. There is a reason that corporate types have been given free BB phones and then they go out and buy themselves a $700 iPhone with their own money and that is that IT can ruin iPhones. This also causes corporate types to rebel against IT and simply insist that the company switch to the iPhone. It is not a matter of which is better but which can't be crippled.
So I think that the BB should have eliminated the ability of IT departments to treat their users like infants (CEOs & CFOs included) and they should have kept their awesome keyboards. Basically they should have eliminated a weakness and played on a strength. Lastly many BB users are older and all the cool whiz bang that I saw in the demo will result in the whole old dog new tricks problem.
It's a shame that NOBODY in those companies has figured that out yet.
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I'm surprised the NTSB wanted something as fragile as an iPhone. I would have expected them to go for something that had a ruggedized, waterproof model in the product family.
Rugged smartphones have been around for a while, but in 2012, they got bigger screens and current electronics. The Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro, the Honeywell Dolphin 70e, the rather bulky Caterpillar B10 Smartphone, and the thin Nautiz X1 all meet basic military ruggedization standards while running reasonably current Android versions.
Board might want/need to have phones with a reliable mapping application.
Unless there's a big software development project on top of iOS involved, I don't see where the "single-supplier" risk is.
If what NTSB needs is a modern smart phone, they have multiple suppliers to choose from today, and are proving that point by potentially switching from one brand to another. Presumably all these phones can make and receive phone calls between brands; make and receive text messages, emails, etc. NTSB can mix and match between suppliers at any time unless they enter into deal terms that keep them from doing so.
Now if they've built a bunch of custom IT 'solutions' on top of the phone that prevent them from doing this, I'd argue that's an issue not in choosing a specific phone but in how they set up their workflow in the first place.
According to CNet, the DOD is also moving away from RIM:
To add insult to injury, the U.S. Department of Defense also announced last month that it was ending its exclusive contract with the company and opening up bidding to other device makers, including Apple and Google.
That is a *much* bigger deal, because the NTSB is actually a very small government agency (only around 400 employees). DOD could involve an order of magnitude more devices than the NTSB.
Better known as 318230.
Just over a week ago, we all got an email from Corporate Mobility saying that the Blackberry was being phased out in favour of the iPhone 5. They started popping up around the place a few days ago. Fujitsu made some sort of arrangement with Telstra regarding data plans, too. It amazes me just how fast the stranglehold BB had has unraveled...
Blackberry phones are physically far more robust than iPhones.
If the reliability claims are not pure BS justification to get a more "shiny" phone, it's possible that the problems are with BES rather than the phone itself.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Can someone explain to me how these organizations manage to manage all of these apple devices? I mean with BB enterprise you can push and pull apps, wipe the phone and all kinds of stuff remotely.
In the classroom(I do IT for schools) with a microsoft tablet I can join it to the domain and set policies. once again I can push out applications and everything like a normal windows computer. The functionality on the IT department means that they are much easier to manage in both cases. It's gotten to the point that my department will refuse to configure 100+ ipads for a school because doing things like maintaining apps is an impossible waste of time. How are these large organizations doing it? How are they managing security with encryption? Is this safe?
If you know I would like to know how because I would love to present it to the other staff.
A government agency going to a proprietary, single supplier solution where an open, multi-supplier solution is available should not be legal.
You mean going from don't you? Unless BlackBerry is entirely open source and multivendor ... but its not, so this is really no different.
Second, there is no 'open source' Android phone. They all have plenty of proprietary technology in them, some have it in a software sense, they all have it in the hardware however.
Third, they're proving they have no problem jumping to another vendor. They can jump to another vendor later just as easy.
The idealogical solution you pretend exists does not in fact exist. Get some perspective and pull your head out of your ass. They had many vendors to choose from and did just that.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Depends on what you're using it for. Accident investigation is hardly the kind of job that requires a rugged phone. I mean, I wouldn't give an iPhone to a construction worker or to someone doing any real physically strenuous job, but accident investigation is much more about forensically analyzing a wreck, not the dangerous and rough parts during or immediately following one, such as the crash itself, first responders, search and rescue. It's incredibly important work, but it's hardly inappropriate for a "fragile" phone like the iPhone.