What Apple Can Learn From BlackBerry Not To Do (informationweek.com)

dkatana writes: There is no shortage of news about the fight between Apple and the Justice Department to unlock the iPhone of a suspect in the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist case. Apple can take a page from the fight BlackBerry had back in 2010 with some governments in the Middle East and Asia. At that time -- afraid to lose a lucrative business -- RIM [gave] in and allowed those governments to access its secure BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) service. The rest is history. If Apple complies with the Justice Department request, according to Craig Federighi, senior VP of software engineering at Apple, "[This software -- which law enforcement has conceded it wants to apply to many iPhones --] would become a weakness that hackers and criminals could use to wreak havoc on the privacy and personal safety of us all."

Comments

What nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason Blackberry went under has absolutely nothing to do with it opening up the platform to the government. It had everything to do with the instability of their server infrastructure.

I get the fact that you guys don't want Apple to open up its platform to the government, but this story is downright dishonest.

If you want to do away with the government then go live on an oil rig. Until then, the government will always have more power than you would like. That's life.

Re:What nonsense

[AchilleTalon]

Exactly. Unfortunately /. is publishing a lot of faked news about the Apple vs DOJ case which are only an opportunity for Apple groupies to show off. Some of them seems to believe /. is the platform of choice to raise an army against the DOJ. I'm just tired of that shit. So, if this f... legal procedure can reach an end asap, I will be glad to return to business as usual on /.

Re:What nonsense

[Maury Markowitz]

"The reason Blackberry went under has absolutely nothing to do with it opening up the platform to the government"

Indeed. In fact, one can clearly point to the *exact second* where BB died.

You've all seen the 2007 iPhone "are you getting it" moment, right? Well when Lazaridis showed that to Balsillie the day after the intro, Balsillie somehow managed to utterly fail to understand that the technology was better. When Lazaridis pointed out they had a real browser, Balsillie's takeaway was that Apple had a better deal with AT&T. It was entirely viewed through the lens of carrier incentives. And that was something he knew about, and geared up to come up with better license deals. That they also needed a better phone never crossed his mind.

A few days later he was quoted in the Canadian press saying something along the lines of "Apple doesn't know phones". I knew they were dead.

Re:What nonsense

[Antique Geekmeister]

> The reason Blackberry went under has absolutely nothing to do with it opening up the platform to the government. It had everything to do with the instability of their server infrastructure.

I'll disagree: Both were signs of some fundamental failures at Blackberry, and a failure to understand the desires of the growing market for smarter, portable devices., That included more bandwidth, reliable service that could be used by even fools, and a sense of personal security for private data. The "security hardened Blackberry", for example, was a very poor marketing decision. It implied that the normal Blackberry had little security in the first place.

Re:What nonsense

[drinkypoo]

If you want to do away with the government then go live on an oil rig.

You're kidding, right? An oil rig can't even exist without a government. Without protection, someone would show up to take it away from you in a hot second.

Delusions of privacy

[shanen]

If the situation is as described in a recent statement attributed to Tim Cook, then this is a completely fake issue. In summary, that quote said it would only take a few man-months to produce the software that the FBI wants. If so, then it is barely conceivable the FBI lacks the resources to have created it already, and it is dead certain that the NSA (and foreign counterparts) already have it.

So why the charade? Evidently to make suckers (AKA you and me) think that there is still some privacy out here where the peasants live.

Also, perhaps because they've decided it's politically expedient to make Apple look bad with this juicy and loaded situation.

Don't look at me. I'm getting so ultra-paranoid that I think Snowden was a sincere patsy who revealed exactly what the NSA wanted us to know and Michael Hastings car was hacked, too. If I still had a vote, I might be approaching the level of craziness required to vote for Trump and "government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald" just on grounds of simplicity.

Re:Delusions of privacy

[raftpeople]

It's a few man months for Apple because they have the source code and understand it. The FBI would have a very large job to create the modified version of the OS if they didn't have the source code and Apple's help.

Re:Delusions of privacy

[hawguy]

If the situation is as described in a recent statement attributed to Tim Cook, then this is a completely fake issue. In summary, that quote said it would only take a few man-months to produce the software that the FBI wants. If so, then it is barely conceivable the FBI lacks the resources to have created it already, and it is dead certain that the NSA (and foreign counterparts) already have it.

So why the charade? Evidently to make suckers (AKA you and me) think that there is still some privacy out here where the peasants live.

Also, perhaps because they've decided it's politically expedient to make Apple look bad with this juicy and loaded situation.

Creating the software is only half the battle -- they also need the signing keys so they can get the software onto the device.

BB got done by its refusal to adapt

[Dorianny]

As a 600 pound gorilla it thought it could dictate where the market should got and got a painful lesson by customers that decided that touch-screen smartphones was what they wanted in their pockets

Re:BB got done by its refusal to adapt

[leonbev]

Not the mention that Apple's fanbase is insanely loyal. Caving to the FBI's demands will cost them a few privacy minded buyers, but the general populace doesn't really care enough to make it a deciding factor on what phone to buy.

Re:BB got done by its refusal to adapt

[BitZtream]

It wasn't touch screens so much as phones that weren't ridiculously over priced calculators.

BlackBerry devices have been technically inferior from a CPU/RAM/OS perspective since the iPhone was released. They were only cool before hand because no one had email, so the shitty ass crap that BlackBerry pushed was awesome because the alternative was no email (or windows mobile, which was effectively the same :)

When the iPhone came out with a real browser and email client, the only chance BlackBerry had was to make a REAL smart phone, not that crap that had less power and resolution than a TI graphing calculator.

Then Android landed ... and then there wasn't just one awesome smartphone on the market, there were hundreds ... (awesome compared to the BB devices if nothing else) ...

And they kept on with that shitty device that didn't get real email, got some fucked up version of a text email that they created ... wasn't even just the text portion of the message, some mangled version they created from html. And web browsing ... seriously. iOS has a full browser. Android has a full browser. BB had ... a text based browser?

It wasn't the touch screen ... lots of people wanted a physical keyboard and would have been fine with a smaller touch screen ... but they did want their fucking email and web pages to look like email and web pages, and for page refreshes to not be so slow they were visible draws.

The BB devices were just pieces of shit, and even at the end of their falling apart, they were still far inferior to the competition.

Not really

[kamapuaa]

Blackberry stopped being popular because it sucked and the iPhone didn't, not because of some 2010 Middle East decision.

Re:Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really.

I worked at BB during all this.

BB got done in because iPhone was hot and shiny, but the feature set was laughable. It didn't even have copy paste! Unfortunately, Apple is good at convincing the first set of users to say the first generation product is great even though it's shit (first Gen iPad was shit too, didn't even have a camera). Then Apple fixes most of the screwups in the next generation model (copy and paste was added to OS 3) and because first gen Apple users said their shit product was actually great (because they bought it as a fashion/lifestyle statement, they pretty much have to) the users that buy for features come out of the woodwork.

It was this second generation of product that was really the issue. BB employees were right to laugh at the first gen iPhone, it was a total piece of crap. Problem is, Apple isn't dumb and they fixed the major issues. BB didn't see that coming, and should have. And instead we release the Storm, because hey, compared with the first gen iPhone, it's just as shitty.

Everything after that was a bad game of catchup until BB 10. By that point users ignored BB and were happy with an inferior product (BB 10 had features you simply couldn't get from other phone OSes and still can't get, and it even ran Android apps). Which is the second wave of other bad phones managing to outpace BB by quickly improving and already having a base set of users.

Honestly, it sucks, because now I'm stuck with a shitty Android phone, and BB has basically torn the BB 10 dev team to shreds. Not to mention that John Chen has decided that security is a bad idea. It's disappointing because at this point I feel I've had to take a step backwards from BB 10 to android because BB is toast. I suppose in 5 years Android might get some of the features BB 10 had.

TL;DR: BB doesn't react fast enough to customer needs, BB isn't willing to put out a shitty initial product and hope users like it, then fix it later.

Re:Not really

[harperska]

Not really.

I worked at BB during all this.

BB got done in because iPhone was hot and shiny, but the feature set was laughable. It didn't even have copy paste!

BB got done in because they thought that an extensive feature set was all people care about, when it turns out people would rather have a device that does a few things really well than a whole bunch of things half-assedly.

Unfortunately, Apple is good at convincing the first set of users to say the first generation product is great even though it's shit (first Gen iPad was shit too, didn't even have a camera). Then Apple fixes most of the screwups in the next generation model (copy and paste was added to OS 3) and because first gen Apple users said their shit product was actually great (because they bought it as a fashion/lifestyle statement, they pretty much have to) the users that buy for features come out of the woodwork.

It was this second generation of product that was really the issue. BB employees were right to laugh at the first gen iPhone, it was a total piece of crap. Problem is, Apple isn't dumb and they fixed the major issues. BB didn't see that coming, and should have.

Thing is, anybody who pays attention (as you rightly state BB should have) would know that this is Apple's M.O. For years, ever since the return of Jobs, whenever Apple would introduce a new product line, the first generation was lacking in one way or another. Each subsequent generation would be iteratively improved and polished to eventually become a pretty good product. Every single Mac line and every iDevice followed this pattern. So no, BB employees were not right to laugh at the first gen iPhone, because if they thought an iPhone 5 years down the road would have exactly the same quality and feature set, and therefore was all they would have to compete against, they were fools.

Re:Not really

[edtice1559]

I think it's this perspective that got BB in trouble. BB was consistently better for business and iPhone was consistently better for recreation. Companies bought their employees BB and they went out and bought their own iPhone. This seemed like a good situation since both Apple and BB got paid. But then companies realized that everybody had their own iPhone and that the incremental value to the corporation wasn't enough to pay when they could just have employees use their own devices. Plus the improved security of BB became a moot point once executives started insisting on hooking up their iPhones to corporate systems in spite of objections from IT. If I had a choice of device, the current Android BB with the Hub is what I would carry. But I have an iPhone 6S because my employer no longer even offers BB as a choice. And I'm not an executive so my protests don't go anywhere.

Re:Title

[PopeRatzo]

I'm English, title sentence makes my brain hurt...

I've taught English, and the title sentence makes me want to go to Vegas, shoot heroin, have sex with nasty hookers and then drown in a swimming pool.

My life has been for naught.

Piffle

[onyxruby]

Blackberry withered on the vine because they refused to accept and embrace change. They refused to adopt the Android OS, insisting on their proprietary OS years after the market had moved on. If Blackberry had embraced Android from the get-go they would be the Samsung of the cell phone world today.

They failed to realize that their previous market of corporate issued communication devices was no longer the only de facto market. People had a choice and spending a small fortune on a device that couldn't play angry birds vs a much cheaper device that could was a no-brainer.

Just another company that thought they could corner the market through their proprietary bit. Their moves with opening up their platforms to third party governments only very narrow use cases. /supports Apple's crypto fight

Re:Title

[PopeRatzo]

Just in case some Slashdot editor with a fourth grade education notices this headline and fixes it, I want to preserve it for all time. Here it is:

What Apple Can Learn From BlackBerry Not To Do

Yes, someone actually made that headline.

Re:Slightly OT: Self-destructing safes

[viperidaenz]

IF the contents can survive being frozen, dump the safe in liquid nitrogen for a while. Crack it open with a hammer.

Good luck finding something that will incinerate below 63K

Dishonest to say favor will result ...

[perpenso]

I get the fact that you guys don't want Apple to open up its platform to the government, but this story is downright dishonest.

One particular dishonesty is that Apple creating a modified iOS "would become a weakness that hackers and criminals could use to wreak havoc"

That is PR spin. The FBI, hackers, criminals, etc do NOT need Apple to create the software. All are perfectly capable of tampering with binaries as people have been doing for decades. The ONLY thing that stops such efforts is that the firmware is expecting the software to be digitally signed. The only thing the FBI really needs from Apple is to sign the FBI's tampered iOS binaries. That's it. Having Apple modify iOS is just a convenience, not a requirement.

However *** IF *** the court forces Apple to comply then Apple should make the modified iOS. This way they can lock this modified iOS to the one device in question. The FBI, hackers and criminals could not tamper with this lock down either. This modified iOS is just as tamperproof as original iOS due to the digital signature. With this lock down the FBI would need a new court order for each new device.

The only scenario that leads to havoc is if Apple does not do the code and lets the FBI tamper with the binaries, then there will be no lock down to a particular device. Once signed by Apple this FBI version of iOS could run on anything. This is why Apple must do the software, *** IF *** the court is going to force them to comply.

This is a great example of a negative / negative decision.

Re:Dishonest to say favor will result ...

[Sique]

That is PR spin. The FBI, hackers, criminals, etc do NOT need Apple to create the software. All are perfectly capable of tampering with binaries as people have been doing for decades. The ONLY thing that stops such efforts is that the firmware is expecting the software to be digitally signed. The only thing the FBI really needs from Apple is to sign the FBI's tampered iOS binaries. That's it.

No, that's downright the problem itself. Apple gets either forced to make a statement they don't want to make (e.g. creating the new binary), or they are forced to sign a statement someone else makes and thus declare it their own statement. That's simply unconstitutional. And that's why the Fourth Amendment comes into play.

Re:Dishonest to say favor will result ...

[Sique]

Legally, code is (protected) speech. And the Freedom of Speech means that you are also allowed to keep silent if you don't want to speak.

Re:Dishonest to say favor will result ...

[MachineShedFred]

Even if they lock it to a specific serial number / UID, the legal precedent is set. Then every district attorney with an iPhone in their evidence locker starts filing paper with their local judge. Apple gets buried under orders to do the same. In order to cope with these orders, Apple internally makes it easier and more streamlined to comply, which implicitly means granting more access to the signing keys.

Then it's only a matter of time until those keys are leaked / stolen / compromised. We've been down this road before, and that is exactly what Apple is fighting.

Re:Title

[605dave]

“Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.”
  Steve Martin