Of course today Slashdot was posting an article about the inevitable demise of RIM.
RIP, RIM | ITworld
Yes, I know only one article and because it says it doesn't make it true....
Of course today Slashdot was posting an article about the inevitable demise of RIM.
RIP, RIM | ITworld
Yes, I know only one article and because it says it doesn't make it true....
Like any other prediction, it has a 50% chance of being right, and a 50% chance of being wrong.
I wouldn't credit it worth anything more than the paper it's written on (metaphorically speaking).
I'm one of those users who went from Blackberry to iPhone, and will then be going back when my contract is up (who, according to the article, don't exist). For work purposes, I think the best combo at this point is a Blackberry with a touch tablet. Honestly, I barely even use the e-mail capabilities of the iPhone because they lack critical capabilities that my Bold had (and that I used every day). I really wasn't expecting that. When I bought the iPhone, I was so excited by all the neat things it could do, and the touch interface, that by the the time I realized all the features I'd lost, I'd passed the 30 minute talk time window that my phone company gives before you're stuck with the device. That was my bad, and my responsibility as a consumer. But it doesn't take away from the fact that I've experienced buyer's remorse since then.
And I'm not the only one I know who's experienced that. I've talked to several people who either moved back to Blackberry, or ended up keeping a Blackberry for work and messaging, and an iPhone for their personal phone/toy.
My big concern with the iPhone was worry that I couldn't type as fast as on the Blackberry. I've adapted, and can pretty much type as fast. But the errors.....the errors! Both from just accidentally touching the wrong key, having no tactile feedback, and Apple's terrible auto correct technology, it takes far longer. Simple stuff like....I don't know.......if the server sends me e-mails as they arrive in my e-mail account, how about you let me review the e-mail and if I respond then delete it, give me a choice about whether to delete it just from my mobile device or also from the server? But no......I delete an e-mail and it's gone from the e-mail server as well. This was an expensive error, when I accidentally deleted 2 weeks of client e-mails, thinking I was just clearing them from my phone, and getting back to the office and realizing they were all gone from my computer.
I still chuckle at the confusion and worry that resulted when auto correct "fixed" a message I was sending my wife when I was leaving the gym, from "getting changed, on way home" to "getting hanged on way home".....needless to say, that worried her.
And it wasn't a typo, because the little auto correct window popped up (this was early on, before I realized how it worked).
How about if I book a client meeting into my calendar, including my address, and in the notes field, I add the client's phone number. You'd think that, if I'm on the road, and I'm caught in traffic and am going to be a few minutes late, I could simply go to the calendar, click on the phone number in the notes, and have it call the client? Of course not. I have to look at the notes, then go back to the home screen, then go to my phone and type in the number. Not convenient at all when on the run. With the Blackberry, all you do is go into your calendar, see the phone number, click on it, and it calls. Easy.
I've been too scared to try the banking apps, not knowing whether the phone is secure enough to do it safely.
When I play music on it, it doesn't *sound* better than music being played on my Blackberry. Because the device is locked down, I can't seem to trade files between two devices via Bluetooth. With my Blackberry, it's easy. Make the connection, click, send, and the files are moving right over.
For that matter, the Bluetooth on the 9700 just worked. Period. With everything (with everything I tried to connect it to, that is....3 headsets, 3 or 4 models of phones from different manufacturers, the Ford Sync system). No muss, not fuss. With the iPhone, it's hit and miss. It can be sitting right beside a headset that worked yesterday and refuse to form a connection. And the manner in which it works with Sync is miserable.
It's better at playing movies due to the bigger screen. But.......I was using a Bold 9700, which had a very small screen. I'm sure things would be different with a device like the Torch. Admittedly, more websites have versions of their videos that work through the browser through the iPhone. With the Blackberry, it was harder to find website videos that worked correctly.
Lots of things with the iPhone 4 browser were better....but with the latest OS updates, the WebKit browser on the 9700 was really not bad at all. Pages are laid out correctly, you can click to zoom, scroll with the track pad to where you want to go, and click. With the iPhone.....yeah, it's pretty, you see websites display very well. But how often do I end up going off to another page, because I was pinching to zoom, and inadvertently I hit a link I hadn't seen, when I was trying to zoom in. Then I have to hit back, which sometimes works, and sometimes skips the page I was on, and sometimes goes back two pages.
And really. Steve. Steve. How difficult is it to put "find text in page" into your browser? Really. Blackberry, the "infererior" device, has been doing this for years. And it works. Very well. There have been 4 generations of iPhone, and that feature still isn't there, unless you go and buy a clumsy add-on app, or download a new browser such as Mercury.
Copy/paste is another weakness. Yes, it's now supported....but it takes me 3 times as long to do as it did before.
There are more apps.........but given I don't play a lot of games on the device, how many fart apps, or magic 8 ball apps, or any of those kinds of things do I need? Several of the business apps just tend to work better on the Blackberry...like ones for tracking mileage driven on sales calls.
There are definitely some cool ones. The app store has great variety. As a portable computer, the iPhone hands down beats the iPhone. But....with the advent of tablets, I think I'd prefer the bigger screen of a tablet. So, in the next round, I suspect I'd use a Blackberry as my work communication device, and a tablet for my personal computer (for sales calls).
Both my iPhone and Blackberry crash. So it's not like either device is perfect there. Both of them have locked up at times.
The GPS on the big screen of the iPhone works much better than that on the Blackberry. MUCH better. It just works. Which is really nice. With my Blackberry, maybe something was wrong with it, but sitting outside my office, it could sometimes take 10 minutes to pick up a GPS signal, and I'm in a city of a million people. It's not that we lack coverage.
I'm not going to get into how much I hate iTunes. I'm using it on Windows 7, an OS that has been flawless for me in the last year. No crashes, runs fast etc. Every bloody iTunes update I download from Apple turns into a headache, because it never seems to update correctly, always generates errors, and the last time I updated it, three weeks ago, it corrupted my Windows Installer utility, and I had to do a repair install of Windows. This hasn't happened with any other program and I'm installing and uninstalling stuff all the time. Unfortunately, I don't have a choice about using it, because Apple shoves it down our throats. RiM, and (I think) Google, allow us to load files onto our phones using Windows Explorer, which is way easier and faster.
My business partner is a Mac fanboy.....but as much as he trashes PC technology, and makes fun of my big 17" Toshiba Satellite laptop that I use during meetings, when we had a client meeting yesterday, about 200' away and down a floor from the wireless access point, I had 5 bars of signal strength, and his iPad 2 he brought for the meeting had....zero. And it was a Mac Time Capsule being used as the access point. So you'd think he'd have the advantage.
I got excited when the iPhone 4 came out. Friends bought the iPhone 4. My sister and her fiance bought the iPhone 4. My business partner bought the iPhone 4. My wife bought the iPhone 4. I thought at first that I would get an iPod Touch 4th Gen, and keep my Blackberry....so I did....tried the iPod Touch, realized I could type pretty quick in the tests I did, realized all the "toy" things it could do were pretty cool, but it was annoying that it lost connectivity any place there wasn't a WiFi hotspot, and deciced to return it, and change phones. Having been using it for 6 or 7 months now, my relationship with my iPhone 4 is a love/hate thing.
For everything it does that's cool, there's basic functionality it doesn't provide, that, IMO, is necessary for anyone who wants to call it a work device.
It's prettier. It's shinier. There's a better choice of games. It's got Facetime.....which I've used maybe 4 times since I bought the phone, and haven't touched since.
Anyways, I don't think that Blackberry is the bestest ever. But for hardcore work and communications, I find it a much better *tool*. I haven't used an Android device yet, so I'm not going to complain about Android. From everything I've heard, Android devices are actually pretty good. All the hardcore technical people I know (network admins, server administrators, security technicians etc.) seem to prefer Android, saying it's the best mobile OS out there, and the devices are superior to Blackberry and iOS. I don't know, given I haven't tried them. But I might give it a try in the future.
I'm not even saying the iPhone sucks. There are several things I like about my iPhone. But I do get annoyed by articles that seem to have very one sided takes on these devices or the companies making them. They've all got their purposes, they've all got their advantages, and they've all got their problems. Pick your poison. I think if I wasn't in a situation where I had to use the device so much for messaging with clients, I'd probably like it better.
I'd be interested in knowing if there were figures on the real growth of iPhone usage. Since moving to the iPhone, and talking to other owners, I've become exposed to a whole community of people who in many cases replace their old iPhone every time the next one comes out. So if X million iPhones are sold in a year, how many of those are new customers, and how many are existing iPhone users upgrading to the new phone? Previously, I've usually gone 2-3 years between upgrades.
The iPhone may be the most popular device.....but from a technical perspective, I don't personally feel that it's always the *best* device for *all* users and all situations.
Banshee
P.S. Janx....I went from a BB original to a BB Curve to a BB Bold.....and the devices *did* change from one to the other. The browser on the Bold was head and shoulders above that on the Curve. Still didn't display things as nicely as on the iPhone, but it was way better than previous Blackberries, and perfectly useable..the browser on the Curve was just terrible.
I suspect the lack of an e-mail client (webmail services still work) on the Playbook was due to the need to get the device to the market sooner rather than later, and the fact that the whole thing had to be rebuilt, given the change in OS to QNX. RiM is excellent about supporting their products with updates, so if they say the e-mail is coming, well, the e-mail is coming. Unfortunately, it doesn't help that some people focus on the negative that it's not there on launch day. And yes, it's less than optimal. But so is taking the chance that interest in the device would diminish if they waited another 4 months to launch it, once e-mail and calendar were available, and it was now in competition with like 4 other new Honeycomb tablets, plus the iPad (and however many other devices there will be at that time).
Banshee
