[BuzzStarField]

Sorry but this is an interplay of supply (app developers) and demand (end users). Developers also should know when to expect the release of OS 2.0. Otherwise, with all the wonderful tools they've been presented and no official commitment to release the update (at least by a certain date or within certain period), they won't have any incentives to invest their time and effort in developing apps in the first place. Developers also need to plan according to some timeline, don't they?

RIM has never worried about developers' timelines. All we ever know is that a SDK is available and so is a beta OS for testing our code. If we're really lucky we even have a real device and just not a simulator on which to perfect our code. While firm release dates would be welcome, we are used to the current vague timelines offered by RIM. Not happy with the situation but we reluctantly accept it as a fact of life.

[Dapper37]

Haha! Bla1ze smoking during the podcast....priceless!

it kinda looked like Blaze was smoking something before the show. its all good.

[ferganer]

RIM has never worried about developers' timelines. All we ever know is that a SDK is available and so is a beta OS for testing our code. If we're really lucky we even have a real device and just not a simulator on which to perfect our code. While firm release dates would be welcome, we are used to the current vague timelines offered by RIM. Not happy with the situation but we reluctantly accept it as a fact of life.

Thanks. Is this also the case with other OSs/platforms?

[mapsonburt]

I'm with Blaze on the strike 2... and may even be at Strike 2 with 2 balls. The first strike to me was shipping BB7 almost a year late - i.e. not having competitive handhelds against more powerful / sexy competition. This cost them huge in marketshare/revenues as evidenced by earnings. The first ball was the miss of the PlayBook on basic features/functions. The second ball was over-promising and under-delivering to customers AND analysts. This second strike is DevCon (and proving that they still can't deliver upon their promises - Mike L is still talking about leap-frogging the competition with NOTHING to back it up).

Strike 3 will be if they can't deliver a version of BBX that has AT LEAST AS MUCH functionality as BB7.

I really hope they can pull this through but based on what I've seen from what little they did show at DevCon, I'm no longer holding my breath - although to be fair, the developer messaging was fairly good... FOR LAST YEAR. It's the screwing around with the UI and Android player while they still don't have a fully functional device that has me discouraged - and I LOVE bridge/PlayBook.... but come on... can they really think that a consumer device will sell without spell check. bluetooth, a properly working GPS, native PIM/email, and language support? Fix the basics... then we'll listen about this other stuff. Batter up!

[UrbanGlowCam]

I'm with Blaze on the strike 2... and may even be at Strike 2 with 2 balls. The first strike to me was shipping BB7 almost a year late - i.e. not having competitive handhelds against more powerful / sexy competition. This cost them huge in marketshare/revenues as evidenced by earnings. The first ball was the miss of the PlayBook on basic features/functions. The second ball was over-promising and under-delivering to customers AND analysts. This second strike is DevCon (and proving that they still can't deliver upon their promises - Mike L is still talking about leap-frogging the competition with NOTHING to back it up).

Strike 3 will be if they can't deliver a version of BBX that has AT LEAST AS MUCH functionality as BB7.

I really hope they can pull this through but based on what I've seen from what little they did show at DevCon, I'm no longer holding my breath - although to be fair, the developer messaging was fairly good... FOR LAST YEAR. It's the screwing around with the UI and Android player while they still don't have a fully functional device that has me discouraged - and I LOVE bridge/PlayBook.... but come on... can they really think that a consumer device will sell without spell check. bluetooth, a properly working GPS, native PIM/email, and language support? Fix the basics... then we'll listen about this other stuff. Batter up!

Right. They need to at least catchup to BB7 with QNX for core features. Things like native e-mail, calendar, contacts, universal search, radio stacks, auto correct, auto punctuation, native social networking apps (besides facebook) integrated throughout the os, etc. are a must. But I am not worried about RIM incorporating these features and doing it well.

Then we also need to see them expand on 4G/LTE capabilities which is obvious they have been working on for years. This is where they could rejoin the race and catch Android/iOS. I commend the Android devices that are utilizing it but still hearing complaints of things like the phone being too large or battery consumption being too high. I'm betting Apple and RIM are being more careful with how they incorporate it.

Features like front facing cameras, hardware accelerated apps/games through the ndk, and NFC I'm sure will be big ones for RIM which we are already seeing them get into with BB7/QNX.

[chrism_scotland]

Not to mention how many resources it uses. 1.0.7 was probably the most stable OS I've used in terms of reliability, but after installing 2.0 I've been seeing a huge number of crashes and app quits. I've even got the message "out of graphical memory" a number of times. The android player is basically a 200mb chunk out of the RAM that we can't choose to get rid of. Great.

Think about all the time, effort, and cash that RIM has put into making the app player work. Now think about if they put all of those resources into coding native apps instead, or paying developers to do so. It's honestly sad.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

I agree with this, I'm finding the beta to be very crashy, I know its a beta but if the Android Player is going to take 200MB of RAM all the time its something I tihnk I could do without.

[Chrisy]

It was a great, and fair, podcast. Good job guys!

[kb5zht]

Spot on.. I even noted that to Kevin before that post went up, that I felt this (being devcon) was strike two.

Kevin described himself in the prior podcast as "the eternal optimist", and i respect his love for the company's products and i believe that is why he has been so lenient so as to say devcon was their first real blunder.. i had to agree with you that RIM's blunder with launch or perhaps further back than that is when they began fumbling. With regards to the playbook, i would call missing the q1 release deadline a "foul tip", but the state of this device at launch was definitely a screw up.

With a declining number of attendants at devcon, you are left to conclude only one thing... enthusiasm and trust in rim's products is waning. I really thought devcon was going to blow us a way; i still had trust that Balsillie had something special up his sleave.. having not one but TWO very enticing comments to follow up on. He did on neither, and Kevin's remark about constantly waiting for the "big announcements" and suddenly seeing the teleprompter packed up and Mike exiting left him with the same feeling i had at the end of devcon day 1... "um, what? Thats it???

When the eternal optimist makes remarks that parallels what i am seeing, well, Hello Houston. We have a problem...

[Chrisy]

Kevin described himself in the prior podcast as "the eternal optimist", and i respect his love for the company's products and i believe that is why he has been so lenient so as to say devcon was their first real blunder.. i had to agree with you that RIM's blunder with launch or perhaps further back than that is when they began fumbling. With regards to the playbook, i would call missing the q1 release deadline a "foul tip", but the state of this device at launch was definitely a screw up.

With a declining number of attendants at devcon, you are left to conclude only one thing... enthusiasm and trust in rim's products is waning. I really thought devcon was going to blow us a way; i still had trust that Balsillie had something special up his sleave.. having not one but TWO very enticing comments to follow up on. He did on neither, and Kevin's remark about constantly waiting for the "big announcements" and suddenly seeing the teleprompter packed up and Mike exiting left him with the same feeling i had at the end of devcon day 1... "um, what? Thats it???

When the eternal optimist makes remarks that parallels what i am seeing, well, Hello Houston. We have a problem...

They should make you a guest speaker on the podcast! Or have a new show called superfansor from the forums. I'd listen to that too.

[kb5zht]

They should make you a guest speaker on the podcast! Or have a new show called superfansor from the forums. I'd listen to that too.

Heh, no, for one i already do my own political podcast and they take a lot of time to do properly, and secondly, i have nothing at this point to contribute meaningfully. I am eagerly waiting the day that my now dim view of rim is shredded and i see signs that they have regained theit former glory.

Guys, QNX makes software that runs on combat aircraft. The perspective here that counts is that rim bought them and we have a tablet that has been under construction for ten months and its still in a half-baked state.

What made this even more evident was the fact they showed off the Android Player -- yet, never once showed off native email or BBM on the PlayBook. Dev conference or not -- who in their right mind decided they not show off one of the most anticipated portions of the PlayBook OS 2.0 update?

This is what i will continuously return to as my justification of calling Devcon a fail... Craig once called the launch of the playbook a fail and i call this Fail II: The sequel. Developer conference or not, Balsillie already said the anticipated features of the playbook were going to be demonstrated at Devcon and i kinda get the feeling that Bal was shuffling his feet and shifting his eyes about hoping he wouldnt be called out on the statement. We can only conclude that these features are a long way off from being released.

This group can deny it all they want but they may as well get use to the playbook as it is now... improvement is not on the near term horizon.

[lawguyman]

What Devcon was or was not will only become apparent with some hindsight.

It is clear that there are feature complete betas out there. We have seen pictures and heard reports. Right up to Devcon, the Playbook project manager was posting on the Beta Zone that there would be various new features on the Playbooks that were on the floor at Devcon. He was trying to track down a list of what features were being displayed (and which were not). Clearly, someone made the decision not to demonstrate any of the features of 2.0. But, clearly, RIM was in a position to do it.

The question is why?

The main thing on my mind is not when 2.0 will be demonstrated. Instead, the question is when willl it be released?

The developer version of 2.0 is pretty good overall. The browser is a really big improvement. I think that this build was thrown together at the last minute because a last minute decision was made to strip the new features from 2.0. It is a little buggy in some ways because of that.

[lawguyman]

I fail to see how having one of the best Android runtimes in the Market is in anyway helpful to their own platform other then to bait developers into BlackBerry -- thus far, Android on PlayBook is pretty useless.

You can spin it however you like but fact is, Android apps on PlayBook are running quite poorly, if they run at all. You see all these people with a TON of Android apps loaded up on their PlayBook and think "Wow, that's cool.. that's a lot of apps"..

Reality is, half of them don't work as intended because they can't access the Android functions as they need to.

RIM shouldn't be applauded for emulating Android, I'd rather be applauding for something they did right on their own. Instead, they've managed to take QNX -- a great platform and bastardize it by making Android the key, consumer facing addition.

What made this even more evident was the fact they showed off the Android Player -- yet, never once showed off native email or BBM on the PlayBook. Dev conference or not -- who in their right mind decided they not show off one of the most anticipated portions of the PlayBook OS 2.0 update?

If RIM did Android well, it would be worth doing. Frankly, we should not be concerned about how are apps are written. We should be concerned about how they run. I don't care if the App is java , flash, native or android. I just want a good App.

Unfortunately, what we are seeing of the Android Player so far is a bad experience overall that does not run very many good apps. This kind of Android Player is not worth doing.

[kevinnugent]

-- who in their right mind

I think I've spotted the problem, Bla1ze....

[togardergrosse]

Let's see on DevCon Asia (in a couple month) and DevCon Europe (first Q in 2012).

[kevinnugent]

i kinda get the feeling that Bal was shuffling his feet and shifting his eyes about hoping he wouldnt be called out on the statement. We can only conclude that these features are a long way off from being released.

I keep wondering why they don't get called out more often. I've never seen CEO's of a company so evasive and underhanded. Why do they constantly get away with it? If they were a privately owned company who didn't owe anything to anyone I'd say "great, have a nice life" but these guys are running a company with other people's money.

I know they get bad press, but honestly they deserve more than just that as it seems they don't listen to anything.

[kb5zht]

I keep wondering why they don't get called out more often. I've never seen CEO's of a company so evasive and underhanded. Why do they constantly get away with it? If they were a privately owned company who didn't owe anything to anyone I'd say "great, have a nice life" but these guys are running a company with other people's money.

I know they get bad press, but honestly they deserve more than just that as it seems they don't listen to anything.

Well, the bad press is sorta some of their deserved karma... The negative reviews and coverage affects them in the long run because there are many, many people who read them and plan on how they spend their money by them.

I feel your frustration and let me respond by what i see in the "big picture"... What allows a company to float during times.of screw ups and blunders and errors is what Warren Buffett calls "economic goodwill". I see it as somewhat of a "trust bank account". Good business decisions and success makes deposits to the account.. f-ups make withdrawals.

Rim has been "gliding" on years of business success but over the last 2-3 years, they have definitely been making withdrawals. As they near the zero balance or as some would argue pass it into deficit, guess what has been happening. Their fanatic die hard fanbase has been eroding; once enthusiasts like myself have become skeptics.

In these forums- a microcosm of the real consumer world to be sure- I have been seeing this erosion until i can count on two hands the number of "defend rim no matter what" crowd. Their arguments have devolved down to petty levels (scheduled does not mean promised, etc) and with Devcon... well, huge trust withdrawals have taken place. We were all put off anf put off after broken promise after broken promise and told "all will be made clear at devcon".

What did we get at devcon? Like CB Kevin remarked, a scripted (fake) dialogue between Balsillie and a VP where rim patted itself on the back?

Really?

At this point i dare say the easter bunny and santa claus have more credibility than Mike and Jim because the chocolate and eeggs show up when the are suppose to... and the christmas tree sits atop a pile of presents on Dec 25 when kids are told they will...

Mike and Jim, especially when it comes to the playbook, have set out the basket and erected the tree (that we paid for) but the eggs and presents havent showed up... and given they were promised before as a condition for sale, customers do not feel they have received what they paid for.

Withdrawal, big time....

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[peter9477]

This seems like a good place for me to add a few notes.

At DevCon on Wednesday (day after keynotes), I heard reports of a rumour that they had absolutely planned to demo the BBX phones but nuked that part of the keynote at the last minute. I have no idea why, though of course we could speculate endlessly (and probably will). I could also imagine that cancelling any real mention of 2.0 was tied to that situation, whatever it was. Of course we could argue endlessly about whether it would have made more sense to do the 2.0 demo anyway, even without the phones, and we probably will...

I was highly disappointed as well. I did have some remaining faith, now completely gone, that when these CEOs promise things in interviews and earnings calls, they intend to and will actually deliver, come **** or high water. I would, but that's just me... clearly these guys are willing to ruin whatever value their own word used to have, and that's sad. (Even if unforeseen events made a demo impossible, there's no excuse at that point for not just telling us and apologizing, and we cut them some slack and stay tuned for more in the near future. Big disappointment, yes, but at least people retain some trust in your word.)

Anyway, fortunately I've been poking around in the bowels of the beta, below the covers (the UI). I've now found signs of many different things, any of which may be in 2.0, or any of which may not be... don't count on it just based on this post.

There are still the drivers for the missing hardware (compass and gyro). These were added back in 1.0.7 but unused so far (and, again, may still be unused in 2.0... but I'll stop pointing that out for the rest).

There are indications that work continues on various types of USB host mode (i.e. "On The Go" or OTG). I think we may have mass-storage device support in there this time.

There's the new MKV support which others noticed already, as well as others I don't recognize, including AMR. Also A2DP (some sort of Bluetooth audio profile... not my area of expertise).

I see lots of things relating to DRM support, so there's hope that will leverage more than just the video store, possibly some third-party services (Netflix?).

Most critically from my point of view, the "PIM" stuff is mostly there, with very significant chunks of code relating to email, contacts, tasks, calendar, notifications, and standalone BBM with groups. You've got your ActiveSync, POP and IMAP. There's Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (not just apps for it... but integration into the PIM). Tungle and Gist integrated in some fashion.

I really think they ought to have kept their commitment to demonstrate or describe at least some portions of this, but maybe this will restore a tiny bit of hope to those who lost the last shreds of it during DevCon. I can tell you I was pretty bummed out about it, though I wrote it off to too little sleep... I think it was more depression than lack of sleep though.

After finding all this stuff, I'm much happier, and have restored my hopes enough to handle a month or so of further delay before I just give up on this strange company. It's sad they are driving people to this point, because I think this will probably all kick some very serious a** by the time it comes out.

[kbz1960]

So you all are saying that the way every tom **** and harry are porting android apps to the playbook right now is the same way devs will be porting their own apps with no tweeking etc. for the playbook. If that is the case why bother with devs at all if anyone can just port any app and be done with it?

[kb5zht]

So you all are saying that the way every tom **** and harry are porting android apps to the playbook right now is the same way devs will be porting their own apps with no tweeking etc. for the playbook. If that is the case why bother with devs at all if anyone can just port any app and be done with it?

Thats a good question. Seems the whole android affair is still dark and murky. Kevin did cover it a bit, and very well, in the podcast but he still seems to think its not ready... for a few reasons.

I kinda feel uneasy when he commented that, he feels, rim is got its hands stuck in the tar with implementing the android player and would rather drop the enterprise all together but knows it cant now. I know the android player was suppose to be the playbook's quick and easy answer for a lack of apps.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[peter9477]

It's also possible that the Oracle lawsuit over Java and Android is causing some concern... I haven't been following that closely, but could imagine it might nix the whole idea at some point...

[chasvs]

This is pretty devastating from a user perspective. Understand that these guys are diehard RIM fans and even they have a hard time defending some of what went on. My biggest take away was that RIM is on the brink and Mike L needs to stop showing up at these things!

[kb5zht]

This is pretty devastating from a user perspective. Understand that these guys are diehard RIM fans and even they have a hard time defending some of what went on. My biggest take away was that RIM is on the brink and Mike L needs to stop showing up at these things!

Well, that is one interpretation. Kevin himself said that the reduced attendance was "scary" (his actual words), and it needs to be a warning to rim that they need to work their a**es off to, basically, get back into consumer's good graces. I also agreed with Kevin that the large press presence there needs to be discontinued if rim isnt going to announce or show anything. Cameras were rolling and reporters were taking notes and they were left in the blowing tumbleweeds and hearing crickets as Laz left with the telepromoter without having announced anything but what we already new... about bbx.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[chasvs]

Well, that is one interpretation. Kevin himself said that the reduced attendance was "scary" (his actual words), and it needs to be a warning to rim that they need to work their a**es off to, basically, get back into consumer's good graces. I also agreed with Kevin that the large press presence there needs to be discontinued if rim isnt going to announce or show anything. Cameras were rolling and reporters were taking notes and they were left in the blowing tumbleweeds and hearing crickets as Laz left with the telepromoter without having announced anything but what we already new... about bbx.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

So, I believe you just EXPANDED on my summary of the impact of the Podcast...

[lawguyman]

I have to give credit to all of those guys for telling it like they see it and resisting the urge to whitewash what is going on. This is pleasantly unexpected behavior from people who run a Blackberry fan site. They have alot of credibility in my eyes because of things like this.

[asherwiin]

Well, that is one interpretation. Kevin himself said that the reduced attendance was "scary" (his actual words), and it needs to be a warning to rim that they need to work their a**es off to, basically, get back into consumer's good graces. I also agreed with Kevin that the large press presence there needs to be discontinued if rim isnt going to announce or show anything. Cameras were rolling and reporters were taking notes and they were left in the blowing tumbleweeds and hearing crickets as Laz left with the telepromoter without having announced anything but what we already new... about bbx.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Could be other reasons why attendence is down - like the economy?? Many organisations that run large conferences and tradeshows see a material drop in attendence when times are tough, as people cut back on discretionary expenses like travel, etc.....