There's a lot of anger at BlackBerry here and everywhere you find Playbook owners over the fact that the company has apparently abandoned Playbook owners and moved on to greater things. I was one of those people who paid full price for the Playbook shortly after its release and kept waiting for that one last update that would make it really sizzle.
So I feel everyone's pain.
However...
I've been shopping around for a tablet to replace my now-useless Playbook (everyone knows that, right?), and I've finally decided that the best tablet on the market for me is...the BlackBerry Playbook. Seriously.
Allow me to explain. I've been using an iPad 3 and a Playbook for about the last year and have concluded that the 7 inch form factor is definitely the one for me. I also prefer the 16X9 aspect ratio.
I'd like to have more utility than the Playbook in the way of app accessibility, but I really don't like the "flow" of iOS (okay, it drives me crazy), plus...aspect ratio. Windows tabs ... meh, except for Windows 8 Pro, which I find very exciting. However, I don't see that working in a 7 inch form factor.
So we're down to the Android tabs. Let's face it, they are all pretty much the same. I could get any of them and finally have Netflix, Hulu Plus, Audible, and Kindle. But...and this goes for all of them...I'd have to either add another device to my wireless plan or put my smartphone into hotspot mode whenever I wanted to use the tablet. Not convenient. I'd lose the ability to open an email on my phone and then send the attachment over to my tablet, a feature of BlackBerry Bridge that I think was a stroke of genius and for which the company gets far too little credit from all the people in the press who like to throw around the term "ecosystem." And if I want to set up my work email account on the tablet, I'd have to lock the entire tablet with a password, and then once the kids unlocked it to start playing games, they would also have access to my work email, contacts, documents, and so on. I honestly don't trust those crumb-grabbers and suspect they'd get me fired if they could.
So, my shopping is done. I'm not going to buy anything. Now, my situation is not everyone's, but it is pretty remarkable that a device I bought 2 years ago is still, for me at least, a better fit for my needs than anything a competitor is offering today. And over those two years, I've gotten a lot of utility out of it. Not as much as I wanted to, but nevertheless a lot.
Given all the anger vented at BlackBerry by so many, including me, over the company's treatment of Playbook owners, I thought I would share this. Take a deep breath.
Haters, the comment area is found below.
Posted via CB10