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Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

bbc.com

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Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#12
post #8

Wow, that's a horrible headline. Did anyone actually read the letter? His position is far less extreme. All hes essentially advocating for is open protocols so that popular services aren't locked down to a single platform. It's an interesting question whether government should mandate interoperability.

That's not what he says:

  Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and
  use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or 
  Android users to download Apple’s iMessage messaging 
  service. Netflix, which has forcefully advocated for carrier 
  neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers
  by refusing to make its streaming movie service available 
  to them.

Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#14
post #12
post #8

Wow, that's a horrible headline. Did anyone actually read the letter? His position is far less extreme. All hes essentially advocating for is open protocols so that popular services aren't locked down to a single platform. It's an interesting question whether government should mandate interoperability.

That's not what he says: Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple’s iMessage messaging service. Netflix, which has forcefully advocated for carrier neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers by refusing to make its streaming movie service available to them.

His phrasing is clumsy because hes not a programmer. The issue is that its rather "impossible" to create BB apps for some services because they're locked down. If NetFlix and Apple were to open the API, that would be enough for anyone (including BB employees) to create the app themselves. I don't think BB is so poor that they couldn't hire a few devs to get the apps written.

Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#15
Developing on the BlackBerry 10 OS has actually been a pleasant experience, but that was for fun rather than profit, as the numbers do not add up in their store vs the rest of the market. Their android runtime is very good and most apps run well on it, with the confidence of a modicum more sandboxing than a native android phone. I think BlackBerry's only real hope now is to get the phone into the hands of people for little to no cost and hold developer events and contests. It will cost them to have a dev community, like Microsoft learnt, but without it, they will wither even more so.

Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#16
post #14
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what he says: Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple’s iMessage messaging service. Netflix, which has forcefully advocated for carrier neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers by refusing to make its streaming movie service available to them.

His phrasing is clumsy because hes not a programmer. The issue is that its rather "impossible" to create BB apps for some services because they're locked down. If NetFlix and Apple were to open the API, that would be enough for anyone (including BB employees) to create the app themselves. I don't think BB is so poor that they couldn't hire a few devs to get the apps written.

Netflix and Apple don't have to open up anything if they don't want to. It's their service and ultimately they can choose which platforms to support. This is just whining from BlackBerry.

Re: Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

#18
post #8

Wow, that's a horrible headline. Did anyone actually read the letter? His position is far less extreme. All hes essentially advocating for is open protocols so that popular services aren't locked down to a single platform. It's an interesting question whether government should mandate interoperability.

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