The REO Speedwagon Song RIM Should Have Used For Developers

Roll With The Changes

As soon as you are able, devs, to begin winnin’
You make that break that you have been denying
It’s getting hard to have faith in the tales we’re spinnin’
And we can tell that you’re no longer buying

So if you’re tired of the same Blackberry, oh, swipe some pages
We’ll stay here while you move on, and roll with the changes

We didn’t see it coming, saw no tables turnin’
Thought iPhones were just a pain in the ass
We couldn’t understand it, and didn’t end up learnin’
Users can really type on a piece of glass

So if you’re tired of the same Blackberry, oh, swipe some pages
We’ll stay here while you move on, and roll with the changes

It seems our time is over, we don’t have much comin’
And you need to make money now, we guess
Our brains are really straining, but yeah, we got nothin’
We understand your flight to iOS

So if you’re tired of the same Blackberry, oh, swipe some pages
We’ll stay here while you move on, and roll with the changes

Keep on rolling, keep on rolling, keep on rolling…

Five Stars, When Nobody Else Could Garner Four

via jdpower.com

While the competition peaks at “about average”, Apple passes “better than most” to be “among the best”.

Not sure the word “among” is even necessary.

The Answer Is No.

 

Samsung Galaxy Tab:

Sales not as fast as expected… a Samsung executive revealed those figures don’t represent actual sales to consumers. Instead, they are the number of Galaxy Tab devices that Samsung has shipped to wireless companies and retailers

HP Touchpad: 

According to one source who’s seen internal HP reports, Best Buy has taken delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has so far managed to sell only 25,000, or less than 10 percent of the units in its inventory.

RIM PlayBook: 

RIM has quietly cut its sales expectations for the BlackBerry PlayBook after its disappointing sales from the spring

Motorola Xoom: 

New estimates for sales of Motorola’s Xoom tablet–available since late February–are in, but even the most optimistic predictions are scarily small and pale next to the iPad 2’s first-weekend sales numbers.

Now all they need is a hardware overhaul, a touch screen and a modern OS.

The change partly addresses one of the most common complaints of navigation on BlackBerries.

via electronista.com

RIM Publishes Non-Denial Denial.

Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation. RIM is a global leader in antenna design and has been successfully designing industry-leading wireless data products with efficient and effective radio performance for over 20 years. During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage. One thing is for certain, RIM’s customers don’t need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity. Apple clearly made certain design decisions and it should take responsibility for these decisions rather than trying to draw RIM and others into a situation that relates specifically to Apple.

via crackberry.com

Above is the full statement from RIM Co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie.

Sounds harsh, yet nowhere in that torrent of words do they deny the Blackberry Bold has a death grip issue. Good thing, too, because it most certainly has one.

I have an iPhone 4 and can reproduce the death grip; once I knew how to hold it, it was easy. But I also own a BlackBerry Bold 9700. Guess what? Now that I know how to hold it, I can reproduce the issue with it, too. In fact, my tweet about it came many hours before the Co-CEOs published their non-denial denial. 

But what about the Bold owners who swear they can’t reproduce it? I guess we pay as much attention to them as the iPhone 4 owners who say they can’t reproduce it, either. Fair’s fair, right? I’d like to point out that I’ve never dropped a call on my iPhone 4 or Bold, both sans cases, so the real world counts for something.

It’s a shame that even with two CEOs RIM weren’t smart enough to let this go, choosing instead to get all puffed up while not even denying what they presumably got puffed up about in the first place.

Meanwhile, the reason RIM “has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4” is because Blackberrys are relics from a half-decade ago. The most “innovative” thing RIM’s tried to do in five years is add a touch-screen to a track-ball based OS, and they failed miserably. Both times. This is why they’ve been giving their phones away—buy one, get one free—for nearly a year. 

The good news for RIM is that people are so disinterested in their out-of-touch (pun intended) relic that the Bold won’t get near the attention Apple’s innovative iPhone has. This is one time where RIM’s inferior product will actually help them. 

Dear Verizon and Sprint Customers: Welcome to Hell

The Bold 9650 is the successor to the BlackBerry Tour that is currently on Verizon and Sprint. It adds Wi-Fi and RIM’s new optical track pad, which has been seen on newer BlackBerrys, like the Bold2 and Curve 8520.

via thecreativeone.tv

I’ve been using the Bold 9700 (aka the Bold2) for over a month. It’s crap. Yes, I know it’s RIM’s flagship QWERTY model — and even better than what they announced for Verizon and Sprint — but it’s still crap.

Honestly, in the age of modern smartphones (iPhone, Nexus One, Droid, Palm Pre, etc.) it’s hard to imagine anything as out of place as a Blackberry. It’s like buying a brand new PC with Windows 98 on it.

Adobe Flash doesn’t run on the iPhone, iPad, or anywhere mobile.

That said, many major websites still do not support HTML 5 fully, so iPhone and iPad users will contine to have a broken experience when it comes to the Web.

via technologizer.com

And so will every other mobile platform user.

With the possible exception of a Nokia device only 50 people have heard of, there’s nothing that has a Flash experience like the desktop (i.e., the kind Adobe likes to brag about). And Adobe has already stated smartphones pre-installed with this alleged support have been pushed back to the last half of the year.

Meanwhile, the JooJoo (with better hardware than the average smartphone), runs the infamous Flash 10.1 — allegedly the saving grace of Flash on mobile devices — and the results are horrendous. Adobe distanced themselves from the JooJoo as fast as they could, but shortly thereafter pushed back the date as mentioned above.

I have no issue with everybody pointing out that Flash doesn’t run on the iPad/iPhone. I do have an issue with those people not mentioning in the same breath that neither does anybody else to speak of.

Adobe can’t get Flash to work on mobiles, and have delivered nothing but promises. How about taking them to task for that instead of pointing out that today’s devices don’t run what doesn’t exist?

This might be the worst case of denial I’ve ever seen.

[RIM co-chief Mike Lazaridis] claimed that most of the people who bought touchscreen-only phones in the past two years were going back to phones with hardware QWERTY keyboards, whether touch-enabled or otherwise. It’s those keyboards that made RIM “famous,” he said.

via electronista.com

Really? Is this why RIM continues “Buy One Get One” deals on their traditional QWERTY Blackberry models while working furiously to get a modern phone built with the Storm, then Storm 2?

I’ve had Blackberry’s flagship QWERTY phone (Bold 9700) for nearly a month now. It may have been something before electricity, but compared to a modern smartphone it’s crap.