1) I don't see this as an imitation of the iPhone—they even have a QWERTY keyboard on the device—just that cell phone manufacturers are finally stepping up their game.
A lot of big names in the cell phone market have already unveiled iPhone-like devices. IMO, RiM really does need to be careful not to be perceived as doing the same.
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
2) "To throw in the towel" means to admit defeat. I see no admitting of defeat here, only that they are gearing up for a big fight. ...So begins the phone wars.
Let's clarify. I don't mean "throw in the towel" in the big sense of giving up completely. That would be silly, especially for RiM. I meant it in the sense of admitting that their concepts and designs don't live up to the iPhone and trying to tack on some wanna-be iPhone-isms. When that happens, they run the risk of being perceived as an also-ran in a market where they are amongst the leaders. History has shown that when a company allows themselves to be perceived that way, it's the start of a long downward spiral.
I've already mentioned the Coke-vs-Pepsi thing, but also look at Microsoft. They've imitated the look of OS X to such an extent that they can't do anything without it being compared unfavorably to Macs--and they are way ahead of Apple in terms of market share. It doesn't make sense but MS is perpetually fighting the image that they are trying desperately to keep up with Apple. I suspect that image is one of the reasons Apple is seeing so many new users lately.
Judging from the way RIM share price is moving I believe some vulture funds will be shorting this stock in the future, all it needs is just one bad quarter, I just hope I am wrong.
Actually its not bad to develop for. Pretty easy. We use the BlackBerry IDE and Java APIs. But yes, the UI beyond the main home screen can be very DOS-ish. But that simplicity and performance is what many people like.
That's interesting that they do have some tools in place. They also have plugins for both Eclipse and Visual Studio, which are both pretty good IDEs.
I still remained to be convinced. People may like simplicity and performance, but when you combine simplicity and performance with great user experience it wins every time.
The Blackberry doesn't have Super Monkey Ball, which is kind of a deal-breaker among executives if you ask me.
After using iphone touch, keyboards just seem like such a hassle. Blackberry owners will probably upgrade to this because it's what they know but on a usability level, once the iphone SDK gets in motion, Blackberry is behind the times.
I love the Iphone but the Iphone was a copy of LG's Prada. It's just the Prada was never sold here.
The iPhone was demoed long before the Prada hit the streets. Also the Prada and its big brother the Viewty (Ku990) have a terrible touch screen that you have to press down on (similar to windows mobile pda's) Plus their interface is slow and clunky. And neither device features multi-touch!
I have the KU990 and it seemed ok till I got my iPhone now I hardly use the viewty the iPhone screen and interface make the LG products feel like cheap crap.
So far, the 3G iPhone has yet to be officially unveiled, so it's still a mythical device. (Though it's obviously coming very soon.) But, until it's officially unveiled, I believe RIM has the advantage with the Blackberry 9000. There are still many people out there who dislike touch screens and prefer keyboards. RIM has responded to this by providing an improved Blackberry with 3G support.
So the Blackberry people get 3G and the iPhone people will be getting 3G. See? We don't need to go to war over this, we can coexist peacefully. Everyone wins.
For all the talk* of RIM 'beating' Apple to the punch with 3G etc, let's not forget that there's still no launch date for this device, so it's highly likely we'll be browsing the web on our 3G iPhones a month or so before this Blackberry hits the streets.
There is nothing here that will attract an iPhone user to switch to a Blackberry. It does provide an alternative for someone who's looking to get a new phone, but wants a physical keyboard - but I really think that the vast majority of people would go for a sexed up iPhone over a RIM. This in reality is just a device for RIM to cling on to it's current customers who are thinking of switching to an iPhone, as as such it's something of a sign of desperation. The developer fund definitely is desperation.
* not in this thread, but it's been a headline elsewhere on the web.
The 3G Blackberry 8707 has been in existence for well over a year. Just not in the US. So this Blackberry is certainly not the first 3G Blackberry to be released. I know becasue last year I was using a 8707 on 3G in Australia. I only ditched it this year for the 8120 because I wanted a smaller phone as my new tiny Dell laptop has 3G.
Why do some people have a belief that in order to be an Apple fan you must automatically assume that anybody else's products are rubbish? What a really stupid way to live your life!
Blackberry is an excellent product, and it is going to be near impossible for the iPhone to even think about taking the enterprise business away from it. Most users do not have a say in what phone their employers give them, at the best they get a choice of which Blackberry. Your average IT Manager is not going to be allowed to buy iPhones for his fleet, on what grounds is he going to push a business case for it? It just aint gonna happen.
I sell mobile technology and apps for large corporates and enterprise for a living. I am telling you that for the foreseeable future it just aint going to happen. So come on folks be a little more serious in your expectations for the iPhone.
The iPhone is okay but there is no way I would swap it for my Blackberry 8120, not in a million years. It is brilliant, okay no 3G but has wifi and edge but suits my business needs perfectly. My tiny dell laptop has 3G and that is all I need for real corporate access.
At home I use a Mac Book Pro, my wife has a mac book, I have just about every Apple gadget under the sun in my house. It is great for home. But for Business it is Dell and Blackberry and I just cannot see that changing for a long time yet.
Which fool said this is iphones main rival? Iphone is a multimedia centric based device. A blackberrys main function is push email so is a business device. I must admit though for those who just need to make calls and do basic things it should be a great device.
Quote:
Originally Posted by parky
I have both the Prada phone and iPhone and there is no comparison!
While the style maybe similar the operation and use is not.
The Prada phone feels like a toy and operates like one.
Yeah true but the LG Viewty overtook iphone in terms of sales only a few weeks into launch. It must be way ahead of iphone now.
Also how was the Prada a copy of iphone? It was announced before iphone was lol
If the iPhone is making RIM work harder to create better phones, then that is good for the market, it will drive Apple to do the same. End result: far better phones all round. Apple will have a good all rounder, but many people will want something that Apple will never provide, such as a keyboard, and they will use an alternative.
The companies relying on a third party to provide the software enhancements will be out of luck, they don't have the ability to simply change the system - maybe a fancy interface layer is possible, but not much in the core system - so Windows Mobile phones just fall further and further behind. And that's the best thing that can happen to such an awful product.
The point is, it's way easier for Apple to add these little trinkets to the iPhone, ie - bigger camera, GPS chip etc, (from a development point of view it's not a major hassle) then it is for Apple's competitors to come up with an OS like OS-X (now that friends, is the task of the century) or a quality multitouch interface. You don't come up with that sort of stuff overnight or over a year, or over 10 years. There are still no G1 iPhone killers, and iPhone 2 is just around the corner. Watching how Apple have entered this market is like poetry in motion.
OSX: task of the century???
This is what makes me sick about this forum. OSX > DaVinci's helecopter, OSX > the green revolution, OSX > winning WWII, OSX > coding the human genome. For the sake of humanity, I sure hope OSX is not the task of the century.
All you apple fanboi's aren't remotely objective about the blackberry either. When some competitive company comes out w/ a device that uses a black&silver color scheme, all of AI and MacRumors says "hey, we invented the black and silver color scheme!?!?! And the black back plate too!!!"
Blackberry is awesome. It is essentially for all the people who say "I already have an ipod." You can guarantee that the yuppie hillites in DC will be using the BOLD cause thats what all their yuppie friends have.
This is what makes me sick about this forum. OSX > DaVinci's helecopter, OSX > the green revolution, OSX > winning WWII, OSX > coding the human genome. For the sake of humanity, I sure hope OSX is not the task of the century.
All you apple fanboi's aren't remotely objective about the blackberry either. When some competitive company comes out w/ a device that uses a black&silver color scheme, all of AI and MacRumors says "hey, we invented the black and silver color scheme!?!?! And the black back plate too!!!"
Blackberry is awesome. It is essentially for all the people who say "I already have an ipod." You can guarantee that the yuppie hillites in DC will be using the BOLD cause thats what all their yuppie friends have.
Well put. And I thought I was the only normal person on here. Kudos sir.
But, "Bold"? As much as I'm getting irritated by Apple's lame iCamelCase naming system, Bold sounds like an uppity energy drink that causes intestinal cramping.
And "Air" too- MacBook Air sounds like a low calorie desert treat.
This is what makes me sick about this forum. OSX > DaVinci's helecopter, OSX > the green revolution, OSX > winning WWII, OSX > coding the human genome. For the sake of humanity, I sure hope OSX is not the task of the century.
All you apple fanboi's aren't remotely objective about the blackberry either. When some competitive company comes out w/ a device that uses a black&silver color scheme, all of AI and MacRumors says "hey, we invented the black and silver color scheme!?!?! And the black back plate too!!!"
Blackberry is awesome. It is essentially for all the people who say "I already have an ipod." You can guarantee that the yuppie hillites in DC will be using the BOLD cause thats what all their yuppie friends have.
And the iPhone's OS hasn't been accepted by corporate America yet. It's really more geared to entertainment as it's "The Best iPod ever Made". A Blackberry is a serious corporate professional tool- not an MP3/movie player. Give it up- stop saying if it's not Apple it's not good already!
There will continue to be room in the marketplace for both competitors, just like MS and Apple. No one company has a one-size-fits-all solution.
Well-said. The black or white responses to this article remind me why I have a love/hate relationship with reading all the posts. No single device is right for everyone, nor can the whole market for either be encapsulated with a single statement of what it's consumers want.
I work for a competing wireless company to at&t, and yes I would love to have the iPhone as an option for us. But despite my growing Apple loyalty, the iPhone it's current state is not for me. A phone that big will never be in my pocket again. While I somehow used to stuff a Motorola 750 in my back pocket, my everyday phone needs to be smaller. And has been pointed out here several times, heavy email/texting with touch screen does not suit everyone. I happi9ly use my Touch to email when using WiFi, but as a daily option need a real set of keys.
Best thing to happen for the millions of people like me? Yes, all these companies finally feel the pressure to deliver better devices.
Just my 2 cents on it to help those feel need to talk in "battle is won" understand thinks are slightly more complex than that.
going to stay the same. form factor gets a tiny bit of a change, a little thicker to accommodate radios and battery, but the aluminum stays. have it on insider info from someone at a partner company who has seen it...
Comments
1) I don't see this as an imitation of the iPhone—they even have a QWERTY keyboard on the device—just that cell phone manufacturers are finally stepping up their game.
A lot of big names in the cell phone market have already unveiled iPhone-like devices. IMO, RiM really does need to be careful not to be perceived as doing the same.
2) "To throw in the towel" means to admit defeat. I see no admitting of defeat here, only that they are gearing up for a big fight. ...So begins the phone wars.
Let's clarify. I don't mean "throw in the towel" in the big sense of giving up completely. That would be silly, especially for RiM. I meant it in the sense of admitting that their concepts and designs don't live up to the iPhone and trying to tack on some wanna-be iPhone-isms. When that happens, they run the risk of being perceived as an also-ran in a market where they are amongst the leaders. History has shown that when a company allows themselves to be perceived that way, it's the start of a long downward spiral.
I've already mentioned the Coke-vs-Pepsi thing, but also look at Microsoft. They've imitated the look of OS X to such an extent that they can't do anything without it being compared unfavorably to Macs--and they are way ahead of Apple in terms of market share. It doesn't make sense but MS is perpetually fighting the image that they are trying desperately to keep up with Apple. I suspect that image is one of the reasons Apple is seeing so many new users lately.
There's a reason they didn't name it Beautiful.
Very good?
Actually its not bad to develop for. Pretty easy. We use the BlackBerry IDE and Java APIs. But yes, the UI beyond the main home screen can be very DOS-ish. But that simplicity and performance is what many people like.
That's interesting that they do have some tools in place. They also have plugins for both Eclipse and Visual Studio, which are both pretty good IDEs.
I still remained to be convinced. People may like simplicity and performance, but when you combine simplicity and performance with great user experience it wins every time.
After using iphone touch, keyboards just seem like such a hassle. Blackberry owners will probably upgrade to this because it's what they know but on a usability level, once the iphone SDK gets in motion, Blackberry is behind the times.
I love the Iphone but the Iphone was a copy of LG's Prada. It's just the Prada was never sold here.
The iPhone was demoed long before the Prada hit the streets. Also the Prada and its big brother the Viewty (Ku990) have a terrible touch screen that you have to press down on (similar to windows mobile pda's) Plus their interface is slow and clunky. And neither device features multi-touch!
I have the KU990 and it seemed ok till I got my iPhone now I hardly use the viewty the iPhone screen and interface make the LG products feel like cheap crap.
So the Blackberry people get 3G and the iPhone people will be getting 3G. See? We don't need to go to war over this, we can coexist peacefully. Everyone wins.
(RIM) Will most likely be bought by MS some time in the future.
You may have something there! Nice.
There is nothing here that will attract an iPhone user to switch to a Blackberry. It does provide an alternative for someone who's looking to get a new phone, but wants a physical keyboard - but I really think that the vast majority of people would go for a sexed up iPhone over a RIM. This in reality is just a device for RIM to cling on to it's current customers who are thinking of switching to an iPhone, as as such it's something of a sign of desperation. The developer fund definitely is desperation.
* not in this thread, but it's been a headline elsewhere on the web.
Why do some people have a belief that in order to be an Apple fan you must automatically assume that anybody else's products are rubbish? What a really stupid way to live your life!
Blackberry is an excellent product, and it is going to be near impossible for the iPhone to even think about taking the enterprise business away from it. Most users do not have a say in what phone their employers give them, at the best they get a choice of which Blackberry. Your average IT Manager is not going to be allowed to buy iPhones for his fleet, on what grounds is he going to push a business case for it? It just aint gonna happen.
I sell mobile technology and apps for large corporates and enterprise for a living. I am telling you that for the foreseeable future it just aint going to happen. So come on folks be a little more serious in your expectations for the iPhone.
The iPhone is okay but there is no way I would swap it for my Blackberry 8120, not in a million years. It is brilliant, okay no 3G but has wifi and edge but suits my business needs perfectly. My tiny dell laptop has 3G and that is all I need for real corporate access.
At home I use a Mac Book Pro, my wife has a mac book, I have just about every Apple gadget under the sun in my house. It is great for home. But for Business it is Dell and Blackberry and I just cannot see that changing for a long time yet.
I love the Iphone but the Iphone was a copy of LG's Prada. It's just the Prada was never sold here.
I have both the Prada phone and iPhone and there is no comparison!
While the style maybe similar the operation and use is not.
The Prada phone feels like a toy and operates like one.
I have both the Prada phone and iPhone and there is no comparison!
While the style maybe similar the operation and use is not.
The Prada phone feels like a toy and operates like one.
Yeah true but the LG Viewty overtook iphone in terms of sales only a few weeks into launch. It must be way ahead of iphone now.
Also how was the Prada a copy of iphone? It was announced before iphone was lol
Also how was the Prada a copy of iphone?
I don't remember anyone saying that. One person called the iphone a copy of the prada, but that's an equally ludicrous claim.
It's just fodder for an ignoramus to spout.
The companies relying on a third party to provide the software enhancements will be out of luck, they don't have the ability to simply change the system - maybe a fancy interface layer is possible, but not much in the core system - so Windows Mobile phones just fall further and further behind. And that's the best thing that can happen to such an awful product.
The point is, it's way easier for Apple to add these little trinkets to the iPhone, ie - bigger camera, GPS chip etc, (from a development point of view it's not a major hassle) then it is for Apple's competitors to come up with an OS like OS-X (now that friends, is the task of the century) or a quality multitouch interface. You don't come up with that sort of stuff overnight or over a year, or over 10 years. There are still no G1 iPhone killers, and iPhone 2 is just around the corner. Watching how Apple have entered this market is like poetry in motion.
OSX: task of the century???
This is what makes me sick about this forum. OSX > DaVinci's helecopter, OSX > the green revolution, OSX > winning WWII, OSX > coding the human genome. For the sake of humanity, I sure hope OSX is not the task of the century.
All you apple fanboi's aren't remotely objective about the blackberry either. When some competitive company comes out w/ a device that uses a black&silver color scheme, all of AI and MacRumors says "hey, we invented the black and silver color scheme!?!?! And the black back plate too!!!"
Blackberry is awesome. It is essentially for all the people who say "I already have an ipod." You can guarantee that the yuppie hillites in DC will be using the BOLD cause thats what all their yuppie friends have.
OSX: task of the century???
This is what makes me sick about this forum. OSX > DaVinci's helecopter, OSX > the green revolution, OSX > winning WWII, OSX > coding the human genome. For the sake of humanity, I sure hope OSX is not the task of the century.
All you apple fanboi's aren't remotely objective about the blackberry either. When some competitive company comes out w/ a device that uses a black&silver color scheme, all of AI and MacRumors says "hey, we invented the black and silver color scheme!?!?! And the black back plate too!!!"
Blackberry is awesome. It is essentially for all the people who say "I already have an ipod." You can guarantee that the yuppie hillites in DC will be using the BOLD cause thats what all their yuppie friends have.
Well put. And I thought I was the only normal person on here. Kudos sir.
.
But, "Bold"? As much as I'm getting irritated by Apple's lame iCamelCase naming system, Bold sounds like an uppity energy drink that causes intestinal cramping.
And "Air" too- MacBook Air sounds like a low calorie desert treat.
OSX: task of the century???
This is what makes me sick about this forum. OSX > DaVinci's helecopter, OSX > the green revolution, OSX > winning WWII, OSX > coding the human genome. For the sake of humanity, I sure hope OSX is not the task of the century.
All you apple fanboi's aren't remotely objective about the blackberry either. When some competitive company comes out w/ a device that uses a black&silver color scheme, all of AI and MacRumors says "hey, we invented the black and silver color scheme!?!?! And the black back plate too!!!"
Blackberry is awesome. It is essentially for all the people who say "I already have an ipod." You can guarantee that the yuppie hillites in DC will be using the BOLD cause thats what all their yuppie friends have.
And the iPhone's OS hasn't been accepted by corporate America yet. It's really more geared to entertainment as it's "The Best iPod ever Made". A Blackberry is a serious corporate professional tool- not an MP3/movie player. Give it up- stop saying if it's not Apple it's not good already!
There will continue to be room in the marketplace for both competitors, just like MS and Apple. No one company has a one-size-fits-all solution.
Well-said. The black or white responses to this article remind me why I have a love/hate relationship with reading all the posts. No single device is right for everyone, nor can the whole market for either be encapsulated with a single statement of what it's consumers want.
I work for a competing wireless company to at&t, and yes I would love to have the iPhone as an option for us. But despite my growing Apple loyalty, the iPhone it's current state is not for me. A phone that big will never be in my pocket again. While I somehow used to stuff a Motorola 750 in my back pocket, my everyday phone needs to be smaller. And has been pointed out here several times, heavy email/texting with touch screen does not suit everyone. I happi9ly use my Touch to email when using WiFi, but as a daily option need a real set of keys.
Best thing to happen for the millions of people like me? Yes, all these companies finally feel the pressure to deliver better devices.
Just my 2 cents on it to help those feel need to talk in "battle is won" understand thinks are slightly more complex than that.