Originally Posted by
Thunderbuck Businesses have to change direction occasionally. It happens. Barnes & Noble just cancelled the whole LINE of Nook devices a couple of weeks ago with no notice whatsoever (imagine how THOSE customers feel!). I'm sure Avro didn't just design and develop the Arrow for their health, either; the full, honest intention was to bring it to market, but they were overtaken by circumstances beyond their control.
BB made a commitment that would have made sense under many circumstances, particularly if the PlayBook was selling well enough to justify a successor device. Conditions changed, and they had to react. They had to make the best decision they could in the face of shareholders.
I will again make the point: there was an extensive, good-faith effort to make this happen. They spent millions on it, and we saw leaked internal images that suggest the effort was quite advanced. I do think the experience would have been compromised in some way that would have degraded the PlayBook for some users (not as many apps available to keep open, possibly, and that's just one example), and I think business issues would have interfered with apps, and that could have resulted in some users not being able to use all the apps they had on PBOS.
In retrospect, I'm sure Heins wishes he hadn't made the commitment, but that doesn't mean it was reckless or irresponsible. We've all made commitments in the course of our lives that we've had to withdraw.