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Ex-BlackBerry Co-CEO Talks Publicly

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Re: Ex-BlackBerry Co-CEO Talks Publicly

#41

Post by stephengillie »

raverbashing wrote: post #14
devopsproject wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, RIM failed because government, military, enterprise, and business users are also normal consumers when not working. Sure, they had great messaging, but apple and google had decent messaging with web browsers, games, and applications

Exactly this The reason MS made sure you could Windows at home "for free" is that it would carry to the business world (where the money is). I find it very hard to remember something that went from business to the home market successfully. Nobody wants their clunky office app/device to be used at home, what they want is to use their consumer app/device on the office which is usually better and easier to use.

> I find it very hard to remember something that went from business to the home market successfully.

The Personal Computer.

Remember that mainframe you have at work that can crunch right thru spreadsheet numbers? Now you can have that same convenience at home. And this one can play Frogger too.

Re: Ex-BlackBerry Co-CEO Talks Publicly

#43

Post by raverbashing »

stephengillie wrote: post #41
raverbashing wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this The reason MS made sure you could Windows at home "for free" is that it would carry to the business world (where the money is). I find it very hard to remember something that went from business to the home market successfully. Nobody wants their clunky office app/device to be used at home, what they want is to use their consumer app/device on the office which is usually better and easier to use.

> I find it very hard to remember something that went from business to the home market successfully. The Personal Computer. Remember that mainframe you have at work that can crunch right thru spreadsheet numbers? Now you can have that same convenience at home. And this one can play Frogger too.

A Personal Computer (which started with the Apple I/II and after that to work, with IBM) is different from a Mainframe

Re: Ex-BlackBerry Co-CEO Talks Publicly

#44

Post by BinaryIdiot »

BYOD has always been a huge thing but until the iPhone it was hard to justify because many phones simply contained your personal phone numbers and MAYBE email with no good way to keep company stuff separate (Windows Mobile was really the only one that did this...kinda).

When the iPhone came out it showed how more personal a phone could be; of course everyone is going to want to keep their personal assistant with them all the time!

Many seem to think RIM competing in the consumer market was a bad choice but I argue that no matter what direction BlackBerry went after the iPhone's release they had no choice but to compete in the consumer market. Nowadays there are plenty of holdouts but it's getting difficult to find a place where you can't use your personal phone and have your work stuff on it but separated.

Re: Ex-BlackBerry Co-CEO Talks Publicly

#45

Post by headgasket »

no wifi. Simple, very simple, bad business decision, to pander to the carriers.

By simply adding the HW and disabling by default they would have appealed to geeks and devs; instead in 2006 we were importing at top dollars grey market nokia e61s from europe. (canadian dev here)

Because the local carriers were offering a variant of those phones without the wifi here.

Iphone with wifi was the paradigm shift, carriers are still reeling from this one.

Re: Ex-BlackBerry Co-CEO Talks Publicly

#46

Post by emp »

If RIM's developer tools now are an indication of what they were like back when Apple released XCode for iOS, I am not surprised how things turned out. I had to do the tiniest of an app as a starting point for someone else recently. Horrible IDE, compile errors in sample code that mysteriously go away if you mash "run" a few times, need to install support components but what exactly isn't defined, documents where you aren't sure right away what version of BlackBerry they are for. And when you find the docs, you find the writer is in love with acronyms. I decided very quickly I would never touch the platform seriously, there is no joy there. Also, if Objective-C is deemed 'too hard', what is C++ + Qt considered?

It's as if RIM consists of hard core business people and hard core engineers, both wearing blinders while cheering each other on. There are no 'normals' to care about how one feels about developing on the platform, to care about initial experiences, documentation that doesn't frustrate. If it's like this at the developer level, who is there is care about the end user? If I was a developer on BlackBerry back then, I would have jumped on the iOS opportunity. Today, you can't even pay previous BB developers to work on BB, they have moved on and want to enjoy their work. The few sticking it out know they can charge pretty much whatever rate they want. A smart phone without apps is a dumb phone.

Re: Ex-BlackBerry Co-CEO Talks Publicly

#48

Post by stephengillie »

raverbashing wrote: post #43
stephengillie wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it very hard to remember something that went from business to the home market successfully. The Personal Computer. Remember that mainframe you have at work that can crunch right thru spreadsheet numbers? Now you can have that same convenience at home. And this one can play Frogger too.

A Personal Computer (which started with the Apple I/II and after that to work, with IBM) is different from a Mainframe

Yeah, it's a personal mainframe. That's how they were marketed - it does the same things, but it's small enough to have in your home.

Re: Ex-BlackBerry Co-CEO Talks Publicly

#49

Post by fcp »

colinbartlett wrote: post #4

Did I miss something or is that "article" two paragraphs with a single quote which amounts to “With Storm we tried to do too much."?

This article makes a much better read:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-rise-and-fall-of-blac...

A link to get around the paywall: https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Inside+Story+of+How+the+...

Re: Ex-BlackBerry Co-CEO Talks Publicly

#50

Post by dang »

ars wrote: post #28
dang wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, we changed the URL to that from http://time.com/3916434/blackberry-storm/ .

Change the URL again to this: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CN_TEC_BLACKBERRY_FAI... The current URL makes you pick your city, etc, first.

Ok, sure. Does it work now?
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