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BlackBerry 10 Review: Good, But Too Late?
An anonymous reader writes "Ars has an extensive review of the newly-released BlackBerry 10 operating system. Since it's such a late entry into the market, the tech community has been eyeballing the new operating system with trepidation — would all that time go to waste with a poor offering, or would BlackBerry 10 be a reasonable alternative to iOS and Android? Well, it seems BlackBerry (the company formerly known as RIM) actually put the time to good use. The review finds most of the UI innovations to actually be.. innovative. "BlackBerry took a lot of time to see what the competition is doing, and then it worked to refine its operating system. It essentially had an excellent cheat sheet, filled with everything that has worked wonderfully and all the things that have bombed. That said, BlackBerry still has to mold its product for its two huge core audiences: the business-oriented multi-tasker and the developing smartphone markets. To that end, it has included all of the essential features and apps to appeal to both of those parties. The corporate user has his or her share of content to watch on the train ride to work, games and apps to help keep busy when not entrenched in a meeting, and the perfect Hub for messaging (not to mention the literal split between work and personal environments)." However, the review also notes that the system is not really designed to make people drop their Android or iOS devices, so uptake is going to be slow at best. The question for the platform's success (and the company's) is no longer 'Is it any good? but 'Is it too late?'"
There's also a review of the z10 smartphone itself.
I bought my wife a playbook this Christmas. A playbook that I periodically charge and then put back (unused) on the shelf. I could make a long list of what does work well in the device but I will still sum it up as the layer cake of crap. To start with it was a huge effort to get her phone upgraded so that the two could talk. Then it was a long trudge through a labyrinth to get it configured to talk. Then it was a bit of an effort to connect the two. Then they are so slow as to be nearly useless when talking. Loading files onto it is slow. The interface is just not well thought out. There are many oddities; not bugs really but oddities such as when you are using it and charging it the charge % doesn't go up but it does seem to be getting a charge.
Everything is just confusing and awkward. Sort of like one of those early product demos where you have to keep guiding the person to what works and away from what doesn't. I consider myself pretty technically adept yet the total time from Christmas to functioning connection between a 9700 and the Playbook might have been 6+ hours and a number of weeks while my wife located someone who knew how to upgrade the handset OS in a company with 100,000+ employees; that same employee a blackberry "expert" took a crack at getting the two to talk but gave up. On my journey I don't think that I received a single useful error. I would install things like Blackberry Bridge and the icon wouldn't show up; just nada. I would then go on the internet and find some horrible but in the end correct advice. Yet BB tried all kinds of cool tricks like having QR codes where you point things at screens to get them to go to some next step. Yet BB would throw in a handful of stupid steps that more than made up for the smart step. Like one where I needed to have some kind of blackberry store account to download software that should be part of the OS. Then when you log in on the other device it says that you can only have one device connected to the store at a time. This is BS. Another bit of BS was there was one agreement where I had to scroll to the bottom to hit I agree. It took me around a minute of scrolling. I suspect that there is some hidden scroll-to-the-bottom button but a hidden button is a useless button.
Then I get BS steps like having to download the software via the cell network. I don't know what my wife's data plan is(if any) so I want to download via Wi-Fi but nope the BB wouldn't have any of that. This software is clearly being written by people who are not under control of anyone who has a single Steve Jobs bone in their body. They desperately needed someone who would say "No that is too many steps. Reduce it to two and ideally one." This person must be near the very top of the food chain not reporting to some lowly department heads. He must be able to say "No no no!" even if schedules are slipping. If you look at all the features as a simple checklist then the BBs that I played with are perfect. But when you actually look at the features almost none of them are "Finished" just in a technical state of "Completed"
The whole experience was horrible and I expect no more from the newest product. Unless they have reshaped how products are internally judged as complete then I suspect that the new phone will be fairly bug free but will bug the hell out of its users.
Burma Shave?