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Does RIM Want Palm?

theglobeandmail.com

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Re: Does RIM Want Palm?

#21
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reeks of "don't care". It's clunky in places, everybody has to roll their own gui toolkit to make anything that looks halfway decent, performance isn't that great (maybe the devices are slow), crap is buried in long lists of settings, I can use a microSD card with it but it's pointless because I can't install anything to that card, restarting the device is a pain since I have to approve a dozen security policy dia…

Really? This sounds pretty weak reasoning to buy a company for a half-decent OS. a) Performance is never bad on blackberries - what are you talking about? Always far better performance than my iphone. b) You are complaining about a 3rd party app's security settings? c) You can't install to a microSD card but is that a problem? There is good reason to not allow app installations on a hotswappable card obviously. They…

a) My 2008 era blackberry is routinely hung doing something. Apps take minutes to load. I/O on it seems like it's about half as fast as other modern smartphones on the same network. For example, by the time I get a nice app like google maps up (I'm not even talking loading a map), I may as well not even bother, I can just ask somebody the directions.

b) I'm complaining that I can't find the setting to change it...anywhere...

c) Yes, I have 2 MB of space left on the internal memory, but 1.8GB of space left on the hot swappable microSD. I actually can't install another app. The microSD card, from where it's at, is as about as hot swappable as the PCB of the device. It's like saying the system RAM of my laptop is hot swappable. It's about as accessible. Shouldn't being able to install to it be my business?

d) I have an 8310. Some time on my wife's 9700 seems to indicate none of the issues I have with mine are solved.

There are good parts, the keyboard is the best I've ever used on a device like this. I can tether relatively easily (if only the network connectivity didn't suck). The device has been beat to hell and back and still functions pretty well. It uses normal mini-USB connectors. Phone quality is good, speakerphone quality is far superior to an iPhone.

I don't hate it, I'd just like it to be better.

Re: Does RIM Want Palm?

#22
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I knew it was a quip, and with this half-truth biz (cf. Karl Kraus), there's a lot to it. Even with perfect fits, companies manage to screw up. They are hopping around one-legged, figure that a left leg would go nicely with their right one. Buy left leg, insist on it wearing right-handed shoes (lots in stock). Shoot left foot off to make it fit. (snapping sound, strained analogy's back breaking ;-)

Hahaha! Getting serious for a moment, I don't envy RIM if they buy Palm. Having bought QNX, a bunch of their engineers might have been disgruntled over the obvious message that their own stuff is junk and that the company doesn't trust them to fix it. Some will have bought into QNX, some will be resisting it. Then they buy Palm and all the engineers who bought into QNX suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them…

No, QNX and RIM actually came from the same birthplace - the University of Waterloo. I bet you the principles of each company even had beers with each other when they were in their salad days, debating technical decisions, or hashing over names for their respective products - So for RIM engineers, buying QNX is pretty much the equivalent of reuniting with your long lost twin brother. While they are in radically different industries, and have radically different products, the laser sharp focus on engineering is the same.

And I bet you any RIM engineer you ask will definitively state that QNX is a much better real time OS [focus being on real time] than anything RIM has ever put out - it's akin to asking whether your kid brother who competes in the Olympics is good at their sport or not.

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