The problem for RIM was the critical window was one year after the iPhone launch. They had one year to ditch the albatross of the current platform that is developer hostile and figure out some modern approach.
That's stupid. They were the market leader until 2011, with a massive lead on iOS. They had a lot more time than you seem to think. Of course, even then they were already well in to the transition to their new platform, so I don't know where you get these ridiculous ideas from.
They're still not out of the game. They have no debt, they're still growing, and they're still pulling in billions in profits. They have a fantastic new platform that gives them a strong technical edge. They've also been innovating heavily and have several products and features that are WELL ahead of the competition (Fusion and Balance come immediately to mind).
Their new QNX-based platform is amazing, btw. Check it out.
WebOS really was ahead of everyone else -- even today. Here's hoping RIM continues to steal their great ideas -- and others follow suit! (Check out the UI on RIM's PlayBook tablet some time -- they stole a lot of the best parts, including the cool "glowing red corner" it gives me a lot of hope for the new crop of phones running qnx.)
When they were still the #1 smartphone manufacturer with more than 40% of the market? When their "old" products were outselling the iPhone quarter to quarter? When they were the uncontested market leader experiencing exponential growth?
the smartphone market today is largely aiming to replicate the iPhone.
Only as far as the "touch only" fad. Beyond that, no one is imitating the iPhone. Just look at the UI on BB, Android, and Windows Phone for example. Even then, you'll find that keyboard sliders are still quite popular (I see more of those than 'slab' phones in the wild -- especially among women.)
It's easy to imitate the iPhone -- but no one in their right mind would do that. Take a look at the Samsung Galaxy Note for some real innovation in that particular form-factor, or the BlackBerry 9900 for a clever touchscreen + keyboard interface. I'd also point to the sadly defunct WebOS UI which was well ahead of it's time (if the PlayBook is any indication, we should see the best of WebOS in the new lineup from RIM)
Yeah, Apple changed the market (They made it "okay" and even "cool" to have a smartphone) and they popularized the horrid UI that is the capacitive touch-screen only interface. Of course, that was years ago. Apple has since stopped innovating. The competition has long moved beyond mimicking Apple.
Well, they were a step ahead of the thumb-wheel (which was brilliant at the time). I never had a problem with the track-ball -- then again, I'm not filthy.
The ball has since been replaced with an optical track-pad, which is one of the greatest things about owning a BB today. You don't know how much effort having a track-pad saves when your doing anything with text or even just browsing the web. You don't even notice you're using it until you're on a different platform without one -- then you mourn the loss greatly...
What are you talking about? The documentation is clear and easy to access -- the best I've ever seen, really. It's even easy to get advanced bits of their new development tools ahead of release.
I think you're remembering their site from years ago, which looked like every other site at the time (remember pulling down tools for j2me development from Sony?)
That's like saying "if you didn't care about the wheels and the engine" when talking about a car.
LOL, that's ridiculous! The web-browser is not what defines a smartphone, neither is the touch-screen! That's perfectly absurd.
Really, capacitive touch-screens like the iPhone uses are absolutely wretched for doing anything beyond scrolling through a webpage or tapping really big targets. The best you can say about tying on one is "you get used to it" Horrible.
Of course, RIM offers touch-only devices and one of the best mobile browsers on the market. In short, they've caught up already. Their next line of phones looks to put them ahead.
I don't follow. BlackBerry basically invented the smartphone, they had apps many many years before Apple had a platform (and obviously before Apple realized that Apps were something users wanted and fixed that massive oversight.)
BlackBerry has always been a multi-purpose tool. What on earth are you talking about?
First, the headline is a lie. They're laying off senior staff (think VP level) and threatening to shake-up their marketing department. They're not laying off (nearly) everybody.
Too true. This is a prime example of what happens when you fail to innovate in the face of a changing competitive landscape.
What are you talking about? RIM was innovating constantly and made efforts to break into the consumer market years before the iPhone.
You might remember the Pearl (one of their earliest "consumer" phones) from way back in 2006 and the Style (a "flip" smartphone) among others. Really, they've never been afraid to try dramatically different styles than their core product line -- and have even been known to radically change that on occasion:)
Some of their more recent innovations include BlackBerry Balance (which keeps personal and work use on the phone separate, letting users have a full consumer experience while keeping the business side locked down), BlackBerry Bridge (now with slick "remote control" features, including a presentation mode), and let's not forget about Cascades and Fusion.
It's ridiculous to say that RIM wasn't innovating -- they've done more of that than Apple over the past four years. The real problem was that they stuck to low-end hardware (to maintain their legendary battery life) for far too long.
Of course, that's all in the past. RIM's latest products are fantastic (the 9900 is just a joy to use) and the next generation running QNX (if their tablet is any indication) will put RIM ahead of the competition (from a technical and UI perspective anyhow).
And if we do the latter, do you really think the million or so people out of work at Foxconn would *thank us* for sending them back to working as subsistence farmers in third world poverty?
You're right. It's much better to work long hours in an unsafe manufacturing environment while living in third world poverty.
An example would be end to end encryption on messages, which would need not be different from the users perspective than the same message sent as plain text.
The bit I didn't understand was "then the device would be a fucking pain to use!!" I don't really see how good security would significantly impact the user experience. Sure, in your example entering a password is a roadblock getting started, but it otherwise doesn't impact usability from that point forward. Just to take my earlier point a bit further, if you replaced the slide to unlock on your phone with a slide over a fingerprint-scanner you'd gain security without adding additional complexity.
IIRC, the media card attack only worked if you picked "device password" under the "mode" option under media card encryption. If you picked the stronger "device key + password" you were still safe against the attack (also if you picked device key only, I believe.)
In short, you got less security if you opted for less security:)
It's "Read messages with help from RIM" vs "Read anything we want OTA"
Besides, if you're on BES, RIM can't "give the keys away" because they don't have them. If you want to keep the government from reading your messages, BlackBerry is the only way to go.
It's far better than the alternatives, and has a proven track-record. It's also the only brand that consistently achieves the highest level of FIPS certification (on both phones and tablets) to say nothing of other security related certifications.
The question here is about the most secure mobile phone. BlackBerry is, without question, the answer.
My post was about usability vs. security. I was asserting that, from my experience, the legendary security that RIM provides does not hinder usability.
Science is Bayesian. If you understand that you can drop all your nonsense about "models"
I love that you claim that "science is Bayesian" considering the known limits of Bayesianism as far as the young field of model selection is concerned. In a bit of fun, making such an assertion actually supports my post!
I'm still trying to work out what you mean by "pseudo-Cartesian gibberish" -- perhaps you can elucidate further. So far, your assertions have be rather helpful to my case.:)
Science doesn't deal in truth -- and arguably, despite the name, deals only practically in knowledge -- science deals with understanding.
From science we build models of the natural world that are explanatory, but need not be true in any meaningful sense of the word. To declare something "true" is to make an unscientific statement as such a declaration denies falsifiability.
Consequently, science does not lead iteratively toward truth -- a popular misunderstanding. Such a goal is decidedly anti-science.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem for RIM was the critical window was one year after the iPhone launch. They had one year to ditch the albatross of the current platform that is developer hostile and figure out some modern approach.
That's stupid. They were the market leader until 2011, with a massive lead on iOS. They had a lot more time than you seem to think. Of course, even then they were already well in to the transition to their new platform, so I don't know where you get these ridiculous ideas from.
They're still not out of the game. They have no debt, they're still growing, and they're still pulling in billions in profits. They have a fantastic new platform that gives them a strong technical edge. They've also been innovating heavily and have several products and features that are WELL ahead of the competition (Fusion and Balance come immediately to mind).
Their new QNX-based platform is amazing, btw. Check it out.
WebOS really was ahead of everyone else -- even today. Here's hoping RIM continues to steal their great ideas -- and others follow suit! (Check out the UI on RIM's PlayBook tablet some time -- they stole a lot of the best parts, including the cool "glowing red corner" it gives me a lot of hope for the new crop of phones running qnx.)
The time to leave was 3 years ago
When they were still the #1 smartphone manufacturer with more than 40% of the market? When their "old" products were outselling the iPhone quarter to quarter? When they were the uncontested market leader experiencing exponential growth?
Yeah, that was the time to leave!
the smartphone market today is largely aiming to replicate the iPhone.
Only as far as the "touch only" fad. Beyond that, no one is imitating the iPhone. Just look at the UI on BB, Android, and Windows Phone for example. Even then, you'll find that keyboard sliders are still quite popular (I see more of those than 'slab' phones in the wild -- especially among women.)
It's easy to imitate the iPhone -- but no one in their right mind would do that. Take a look at the Samsung Galaxy Note for some real innovation in that particular form-factor, or the BlackBerry 9900 for a clever touchscreen + keyboard interface. I'd also point to the sadly defunct WebOS UI which was well ahead of it's time (if the PlayBook is any indication, we should see the best of WebOS in the new lineup from RIM)
Yeah, Apple changed the market (They made it "okay" and even "cool" to have a smartphone) and they popularized the horrid UI that is the capacitive touch-screen only interface. Of course, that was years ago. Apple has since stopped innovating. The competition has long moved beyond mimicking Apple.
The trackballs were horrible for businesses.
Well, they were a step ahead of the thumb-wheel (which was brilliant at the time). I never had a problem with the track-ball -- then again, I'm not filthy.
The ball has since been replaced with an optical track-pad, which is one of the greatest things about owning a BB today. You don't know how much effort having a track-pad saves when your doing anything with text or even just browsing the web. You don't even notice you're using it until you're on a different platform without one -- then you mourn the loss greatly...
What are you talking about? The documentation is clear and easy to access -- the best I've ever seen, really. It's even easy to get advanced bits of their new development tools ahead of release.
I think you're remembering their site from years ago, which looked like every other site at the time (remember pulling down tools for j2me development from Sony?)
That's like saying "if you didn't care about the wheels and the engine" when talking about a car.
LOL, that's ridiculous! The web-browser is not what defines a smartphone, neither is the touch-screen! That's perfectly absurd.
Really, capacitive touch-screens like the iPhone uses are absolutely wretched for doing anything beyond scrolling through a webpage or tapping really big targets. The best you can say about tying on one is "you get used to it" Horrible.
Of course, RIM offers touch-only devices and one of the best mobile browsers on the market. In short, they've caught up already. Their next line of phones looks to put them ahead.
I don't follow. BlackBerry basically invented the smartphone, they had apps many many years before Apple had a platform (and obviously before Apple realized that Apps were something users wanted and fixed that massive oversight.)
BlackBerry has always been a multi-purpose tool. What on earth are you talking about?
When the original iPhone came out, Blackberry never responded (and still has not, 5 years later) and that's why they are suffering.
Wow, that's terribly uninformed. Go see what RIM has done since 2008.
First, the headline is a lie. They're laying off senior staff (think VP level) and threatening to shake-up their marketing department. They're not laying off (nearly) everybody.
Too true. This is a prime example of what happens when you fail to innovate in the face of a changing competitive landscape.
What are you talking about? RIM was innovating constantly and made efforts to break into the consumer market years before the iPhone.
You might remember the Pearl (one of their earliest "consumer" phones) from way back in 2006 and the Style (a "flip" smartphone) among others. Really, they've never been afraid to try dramatically different styles than their core product line -- and have even been known to radically change that on occasion :)
Some of their more recent innovations include BlackBerry Balance (which keeps personal and work use on the phone separate, letting users have a full consumer experience while keeping the business side locked down), BlackBerry Bridge (now with slick "remote control" features, including a presentation mode), and let's not forget about Cascades and Fusion.
It's ridiculous to say that RIM wasn't innovating -- they've done more of that than Apple over the past four years. The real problem was that they stuck to low-end hardware (to maintain their legendary battery life) for far too long.
Of course, that's all in the past. RIM's latest products are fantastic (the 9900 is just a joy to use) and the next generation running QNX (if their tablet is any indication) will put RIM ahead of the competition (from a technical and UI perspective anyhow).
Slashdot has a extreme anti-Apple bias
What version of Slashdot are you reading?
Unless everyone unfailingly defends Apple, the site has an extreme anti-Apple bias.
That's how it works, apparently.
How much was Apple doing to improve the lives of people making their products before they started getting negative press?
And if we do the latter, do you really think the million or so people out of work at Foxconn would *thank us* for sending them back to working as subsistence farmers in third world poverty?
You're right. It's much better to work long hours in an unsafe manufacturing environment while living in third world poverty.
An example would be end to end encryption on messages, which would need not be different from the users perspective than the same message sent as plain text.
The bit I didn't understand was "then the device would be a fucking pain to use!!" I don't really see how good security would significantly impact the user experience. Sure, in your example entering a password is a roadblock getting started, but it otherwise doesn't impact usability from that point forward. Just to take my earlier point a bit further, if you replaced the slide to unlock on your phone with a slide over a fingerprint-scanner you'd gain security without adding additional complexity.
You say that like it's not significantly easier for governments to spy on other platforms.
Of course, if you used BES, RIM can't give the keys away to governments because they don't have them.
So, if you want to keep the governments prying eyes off of your data, BlackBerry is the only way to go.
That's your fault, isn't it? If your staff can't maintain a BES server, that's not a failure on RIM's part.
There are zillions of BES servers running around the world without problems likely serving many more users that yours.
For a car analogy, it's like saying that Ford brand cars are unreliable because you destroyed two of them driving drunk!
IIRC, the media card attack only worked if you picked "device password" under the "mode" option under media card encryption. If you picked the stronger "device key + password" you were still safe against the attack (also if you picked device key only, I believe.)
In short, you got less security if you opted for less security :)
It's "Read messages with help from RIM" vs "Read anything we want OTA"
Besides, if you're on BES, RIM can't "give the keys away" because they don't have them. If you want to keep the government from reading your messages, BlackBerry is the only way to go.
If you're on BES, RIM can't give the keys away because they don't have them.
Maybe you should learn a little more about the platform before you shout nonsense.
This is old, but you may want to take a look at Foxit Reader
I haven't had to suffer Adobe Reader since I found it!
If my phone had to be secure enough so that it'd couldn't be cracked if I lost it or it got stolen, then the device would be a fucking pain to use!!
Why? Good security doesn't have to get in the users way.
It's far better than the alternatives, and has a proven track-record. It's also the only brand that consistently achieves the highest level of FIPS certification (on both phones and tablets) to say nothing of other security related certifications.
The question here is about the most secure mobile phone. BlackBerry is, without question, the answer.
My post was about usability vs. security. I was asserting that, from my experience, the legendary security that RIM provides does not hinder usability.
Science is Bayesian. If you understand that you can drop all your nonsense about "models"
I love that you claim that "science is Bayesian" considering the known limits of Bayesianism as far as the young field of model selection is concerned. In a bit of fun, making such an assertion actually supports my post!
I'm still trying to work out what you mean by "pseudo-Cartesian gibberish" -- perhaps you can elucidate further. So far, your assertions have be rather helpful to my case. :)
Science doesn't deal in truth -- and arguably, despite the name, deals only practically in knowledge -- science deals with understanding.
From science we build models of the natural world that are explanatory, but need not be true in any meaningful sense of the word. To declare something "true" is to make an unscientific statement as such a declaration denies falsifiability.
Consequently, science does not lead iteratively toward truth -- a popular misunderstanding. Such a goal is decidedly anti-science.
A corporate-based phone (Blackberry) is going to make corporate security more of a priority than usability
I haven't noticed any problems with usability. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Security doesn't "get in the way" at all on the platform.