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Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

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Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#91

Post by eropple »

freehunter wrote: post #57
druiid wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'd say that's a bit sad. As someone whom uses the WP platform I have to say as far as software goes, MS really developed a great product. Everything just WORKS, whereas with my Android phone it ends up being the platform to 'tinker' with because things randomly crash, or run slow, etc. In my experience WP has been well integrated and there's not really any need to tinker with anything (which I suppose some don't…

That's been my experience with WP7 and WP8. It's the platform where you don't need any apps. Everything you expect a smartphone to do comes baked in. The default featureset is quite impressive. Any extra apps are just that, extras. The problem is in getting people to give it a fair go. I hear a lot of iOS and Android complaints that don't exist on WP, and when I bring it up people just laugh.

Honestly? I'd like to like Windows Phone. I really would. I'm not much of a partisan--I switched from iOS to Android not that long ago and still write code for both.

But I laugh at Windows Phone 8 because of Windows Phone 7. I simply do not trust Microsoft to not abandon its users again (and as a former XNA user, I distrust them there too).

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#92

Post by tcdowney »

I just found out about their 10k Developer Commitment last Friday and a few close friends and I are scrambling to get a Blackberry native app finished in time for the upcoming submissions deadline. Never having done this before all I can say is that it's been fun! :)

BlackBerry 10 is much nicer than I had anticipated and, although I won't be moving away from Android, I am excited for BlackBerry to make a serious effort at returning to the market. :)

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#93

Post by freehunter »

eropple wrote: post #91
freehunter wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been my experience with WP7 and WP8. It's the platform where you don't need any apps. Everything you expect a smartphone to do comes baked in. The default featureset is quite impressive. Any extra apps are just that, extras. The problem is in getting people to give it a fair go. I hear a lot of iOS and Android complaints that don't exist on WP, and when I bring it up people just laugh.

Honestly? I'd like to like Windows Phone. I really would. I'm not much of a partisan--I switched from iOS to Android not that long ago and still write code for both. But I laugh at Windows Phone 8 because of Windows Phone 7. I simply do not trust Microsoft to not abandon its users again (and as a former XNA user, I distrust them there too).

You honestly can't understand the reason for switching from CE to NT? You honestly expect them to abandon NT for Windows Phone 9?

Even still, it's not like Windows Phone 7 users are just up and fucked, they're still receiving updates (like WP7.8). That's good for people who bought into the platform less than two years before WP8 came out; they're not left in the cold. Their apps still work, they can still install many of the new apps coming out, and when they do upgrade (almost all of) their already-purchased apps still work. It's not that Microsoft made a hard cut off and left WP7 users for dead, they're just not providing an OS upgrade from WP7 to WP8. Everything else still works like an incremental upgrade.

Windows Phone 7 still works, it's still being updated, and there are still just as many apps being released. And when you get a new phone with WP8, it will work just like WP7 did, and your apps carry over. There's no need to throw a tantrum; no one has been abandoned.

This is exactly what I'm talking about: people laugh at the platform with uneducated opinions they tout as fact and spread their "facts" to other people. It ends up being a game of telephone/Chinese whispers where the truth gets more distorted the more its repeated. If you'd really like to like Windows Phone as you say, as a developer or as a user, you might want to think about what you're saying about it first. That app you wrote in 2010 still runs on WP8, and the app you wrote in 2013 works just fine on a WP7 launch device.

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#94

Post by kunai »

wvenable wrote: post #74
kunai wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real time task scheduling, a much better keyboard, an excellent multitasking UI, full push email support, a better web browser and better benchmarks, to name a few. The reasons I listed above are directed at BB's biggest userbase: businesses. That doesn't mean that the average consumer won't be able to take advantage of these features, though. QNX is real-time. That is huge. The performance of the OS should be unmatc…

You said the BB10 can do so much more but then provided a list of fairly insignificant features and the mention of potential . If you were a sales person, you would have lost the sale. QNX being real-time has little to do with real world performance. While the Z10 does have good performance but it also has a pretty high clocked processor and double the RAM of competitor devices.

It may not be much of a boost in performance, but RTOS systems do enhance stability. First off, there are no memory leaks, so the performance of the phone won't degrade over time requiring a reboot as is often the case with my Nexus 4. The system will still stay just as fast as it was from day one without needing a reboot. Second, QNX is a microkernel in contrast to Android's monolithic style kernel or WP8 and iOS' hybrid kernel, so one process gone awry won't bring down the entire system. Again, a big stability boost, which is key in a business environment. Third, process scheduling is unmatched by any conventional OS compared to a real-time operating system, so multitasking is improved and is more rich compared to the crippled implementations that iOS and Android use.

I'm sure the average Joe would appreciate speed, functionality, and stability, don't you think?

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#95

Post by wvenable »

kunai wrote: post #94
wvenable wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said the BB10 can do so much more but then provided a list of fairly insignificant features and the mention of potential . If you were a sales person, you would have lost the sale. QNX being real-time has little to do with real world performance. While the Z10 does have good performance but it also has a pretty high clocked processor and double the RAM of competitor devices.

It may not be much of a boost in performance, but RTOS systems do enhance stability. First off, there are no memory leaks, so the performance of the phone won't degrade over time requiring a reboot as is often the case with my Nexus 4. The system will still stay just as fast as it was from day one without needing a reboot. Second, QNX is a microkernel in contrast to Android's monolithic style kernel or WP8 and iOS' h…

First of all, how does a real time kernel have anything to do with memory leaks in applications or services? It's not as if modern Linux or Windows kernels leak kernel memory.

Secondly, unless you go all the way back to DOS or Mac classic you won't find an OS where a process can bring down the entire system. I can't remember the last time I had a full system crash on any OS on any device (that wasn't caused by faulty hardware).

I haven't heard anything that suggests that a real-time kernel has any effect on the multitasking performance of a GUI operating system. It's not as if iOS or Android have crippled implementations, as you said. They just make a different trade off and they should, in fact, more suited to this kind of work.

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#96

Post by eropple »

freehunter wrote: post #93
eropple wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly? I'd like to like Windows Phone. I really would. I'm not much of a partisan--I switched from iOS to Android not that long ago and still write code for both. But I laugh at Windows Phone 8 because of Windows Phone 7. I simply do not trust Microsoft to not abandon its users again (and as a former XNA user, I distrust them there too).

You honestly can't understand the reason for switching from CE to NT? You honestly expect them to abandon NT for Windows Phone 9? Even still, it's not like Windows Phone 7 users are just up and fucked, they're still receiving updates (like WP7.8). That's good for people who bought into the platform less than two years before WP8 came out; they're not left in the cold. Their apps still work, they can still install man…

You misunderstand me. I understand why they did it. I don't care. I'm a consumer here, not a developer, and I want to be the guy who has a phone with an upgrade path. If I can't get updates to my phone for at least a couple years--and save the "but but WP7.8," I do define "updates" as latest-and-greatest, and that's WP8--I consider it abandonment. Samsung does it. LG does it. HTC does it. Google's Nexus devices don't, and neither does Apple, and that's why they're on my radar and the others are not. WP7.8 is a joke for PR purposes--they are leaving people out in the cold because they can't get WP8. That's the important upgrade. Not WP7.8. And people who got on board with Windows Phone, the early adopters who Microsoft should be thanking their lucky stars doesn't consider them a joke (or didn't, maybe they do now!), are the ones getting burned. That's unacceptable behavior and I won't reward it with my money.

I have no assurances, none whatsoever, that WP9 won't leave me with an un-upgradeable doorstop even if there isn't a kernel transition. They've showed that they'll be assholes even to their early adopters, so why wouldn't they be an asshole to me? And Microsoft's word is dirt to me, so I don't even believe them if they say it's the case. If they release WP9 and WP10 without fucking over their customers, I will consider them no longer radioactive. Until then, I refuse to be make P.T. Barnum more correct.

(Microsoft's penchant for abandoning technology is also why I won't write code for Microsoft platforms anymore except for ports of my C++ games because that's still where a worthwhile percentage of the market is and I can't not target it. Which sucks, because I really like C#, but they made that bed, not me.)

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#97

Post by compilercreator »

papsosouid wrote: post #56
compilercreator wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got my Z10 yesterday and I can confirm that the phone (and all the gestures) are completely usable with just one hand. The phone size was selected pretty intelligently. I don't think the UI design would have worked with a bigger phone.

Sorry to single you out for this question, but you're the first person I've seen who actually has one. Does the unified inbox thing support RSS? The concept seems great, but without RSS support it isn't that useful to me.

I don't think it does out-of-the-box, but applications can hook into the Hub (the unified inbox) so it is possible to write an app to do that.

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#98

Post by freehunter »

eropple wrote: post #96
freehunter wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You honestly can't understand the reason for switching from CE to NT? You honestly expect them to abandon NT for Windows Phone 9? Even still, it's not like Windows Phone 7 users are just up and fucked, they're still receiving updates (like WP7.8). That's good for people who bought into the platform less than two years before WP8 came out; they're not left in the cold. Their apps still work, they can still install man…

You misunderstand me. I understand why they did it. I don't care . I'm a consumer here, not a developer, and I want to be the guy who has a phone with an upgrade path. If I can't get updates to my phone for at least a couple years--and save the "but but WP7.8," I do define "updates" as latest-and-greatest, and that's WP8--I consider it abandonment. Samsung does it. LG does it. HTC does it. Google's Nexus devices don'…

Again, I don't understand why you're repeating your "truths". You're asking for updates. You got one. How is anyone getting burned?

Again I'm going to repeat: Software from WP7 works on WP8. A majority of software from WP8 will work on WP7. What are you missing out on by not getting WP8? A couple features only made possible by the new hardware released with WP8. Let's go with your Apple example: if you bought an iPhone 4 right before the release of the iPhone 4S, yeah, you "got" the update to the latest software version, for certain definitions of "got". What didn't you get? The biggest part of the update, basically the whole reason for the new phone: Siri. Without Siri, you've got a minor software update to last generation's phone.

So Microsoft is calling a spade a spade, where Apple is hiding behind a bigger version number. Apple leaves out big features from their software upgrades for users on last year's phone, but it's okay because the version number is one higher? That's not leaving their users out in the cold? You don't feel burned for not getting Siri on your iPhone 4? Because on both iOS and Windows Phone, you're getting updates for an old phone, and on both iOS and Windows Phone you're only getting the parts of the update your phone will support. Whether you buy that the phone support is the issue or not, that's how it goes. The only difference is the major version number, and if they're lying to you about it or not.

I guess I don't understand how it's acceptable for Apple to fuck you over and lie to you about it, but not for Microsoft to just release an update for an old phone.

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#99

Post by eropple »

freehunter wrote: post #98
eropple wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand me. I understand why they did it. I don't care . I'm a consumer here, not a developer, and I want to be the guy who has a phone with an upgrade path. If I can't get updates to my phone for at least a couple years--and save the "but but WP7.8," I do define "updates" as latest-and-greatest, and that's WP8--I consider it abandonment. Samsung does it. LG does it. HTC does it. Google's Nexus devices don'…

Again, I don't understand why you're repeating your "truths". You're asking for updates. You got one. How is anyone getting burned? Again I'm going to repeat: Software from WP7 works on WP8. A majority of software from WP8 will work on WP7. What are you missing out on by not getting WP8? A couple features only made possible by the new hardware released with WP8. Let's go with your Apple example: if you bought an iPho…

WP7.8 is not the update that I demand for me to consider Microsoft credible. Simple as that. You can continue railing fanboyishly if you want, but it doesn't impress. I expect to get the newest--and that's not a point release for a dead OS, that's the new OS--for at least two years after I buy a phone. Don't bother quibbling about this: it is simply not up for discussion and you are wasting your time trying to claim that I am wrong for it.

Apple restricts some features from OS updates in ways I do not appreciate, sure. And it was a factor in me going to Google's Nexus device line. But it was a small factor because, in practice, Apple doing so was not a significant issue--I didn't care about Siri and Apple's messaging toward third-party development meant that I still got third-party applications that interested me that could run on my iPhone 4. Microsoft is not encouraging people to develop for WP7. It is a second-class citizen at best because WP8 is out, it is the new hotness, and no, WP7 loyalists, you can't have it. And there is nothing to indicate that they won't do the same for WP9. Or WP10. So when they get a couple of iterations under their belts where they have treated the customer in a way I am willing to pay money for, I will consider them.

Of course, they'll in all likelihood be pretty much dead in the water by then and it'll all be moot.

Re: Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

#100

Post by freehunter »

eropple wrote: post #99
freehunter wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I don't understand why you're repeating your "truths". You're asking for updates. You got one. How is anyone getting burned? Again I'm going to repeat: Software from WP7 works on WP8. A majority of software from WP8 will work on WP7. What are you missing out on by not getting WP8? A couple features only made possible by the new hardware released with WP8. Let's go with your Apple example: if you bought an iPho…

WP7.8 is not the update that I demand for me to consider Microsoft credible. Simple as that. You can continue railing fanboyishly if you want, but it doesn't impress. I expect to get the newest --and that's not a point release for a dead OS, that's the new OS --for at least two years after I buy a phone. Don't bother quibbling about this: it is simply not up for discussion and you are wasting your time trying to clai…

I'm not trying to impress you, I'm trying to make you (and anyone else reading who might trust you) see how ridiculous you are sounding. If Microsoft gave you what is included in 7.8 but called it 8, you would be happy. That's what you're saying. No arguments, that's literally what you're saying.

What you want is for Microsoft to lie to you just like Apple does. And until they do, you won't consider them credible.

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