[Irritated User]

honestly the issue is going to be with BB at this point IMO. They have to get bb10 on the PB and give the devs the bb10/playbook tools. I dont blame the devs for not keeping up with their apps on the PB when BB themselves are treating it like they are.

Does that mean that once BB10 releases on Playbook we could see lots more apps and games?

[ThaSwapMeetPimp]

Try it. I think you'll find out how irrelevant Playbook owners are.
We have some very good app developers working on a dying platform.

Blackberry told the world that BB10 was coming to the Playbook. Developers believed that.
Just because you see an update doesn't mean that it applies to you. Some updates to an app are just the ability to run in BB10. This has no bearing on the older version of the app.

Actually the app was for both BB10 and PB from the beginning, a new one was released on the tenth for both the next iteration was released yesterday only for BB10. What caused the frustration.

[ThaSwapMeetPimp]

See, this is how cool xSacha is, not only did he not forget us, he actually explained what is going on. He is taking PB support out because it is the only platform still stuck on an old compiler, but if there is no BB10 within two months or by the time the app reaches v0.8 he will compile it for PB again.

xSacha is an awesome human being, because he respects people enough to communicate.

[kasedillz]

The only thing I'm going to boycott is this thread.
OP: Let us know when your infantile tantrums are said and done.

[MiSsY_]

I got Angry Birds Star Ward for free.
Just throwing it out there. Maybe it was only in select locations?

Posted via CB10 from my Z10

[PFman]

Boycotting apps on the pb is easy.

I haven't found a single new app for months that I'd buy or even download for free.

I'm not convinced that I'll invest in new apps for my PB when (if - as I don't think it'll launch at all) os10 comes as my PB is old and almost at the end of life for me.....

Nexus 10 purchase on horizon here



Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

[blueberrymerry]

The sad thing about Playbook apps is the lack of variety. There are much better Android file browsers or media players, for example, but few developers want to natively target BB10 or PBOS. I think the few developers left do it because they love the platform, despite Blackberry crippling PBOS and leaving most of it unfinished.

If Blackberry don't get the BB10 SDK for Playbook out soon, I think most developers will shy away from QNX entirely. Why target a platform with one form factor and a single device (discounting the unreleased Q10 and R10), when with the same amount of effort, they can target both smartphone and tablet devices with many more users? Android, iOS and WinPhone are more mature ecosystems from a developer's point of view. Make development and distribution easy and developers will come - conversely, make it hard and nobody will bother, and you're left with a ghost town with tumbleweeds rolling on main street...

[Angus_CB]

The sad thing about Playbook apps is the lack of variety. There are much better Android file browsers or media players, for example,
...

Those were two bad examples. I have never seen an Android file browser better than Files & Folders or a media player better than Kalemsoft.

You don't need as much variety if the app is right to begin with.

[blueberrymerry]

Those were two bad examples. I have never seen an Android file browser better than Files & Folders or a media player better than Kalemsoft.

You don't need as much variety if the app is right to begin with.

True F&F and Kalemsoft are excellent apps but they're the best out of a small handful and they're restricted by the OS itself.

F&F still can't view SMB shares or set file associations for different apps, which ES File Explorer can. Kalemsoft has a nice DLNA client mode but it can't play files over a network file share, which ES File Explorer and a whole bunch of other Android media players can. It's even more ironic that those capabilities are in the Android player runtime that BB built but not in PBOS. Those Android apps have access to more native functions than native apps themselves.

As for browsers, I love Fast Browser but it's nowhere near as good as Dolphin, Opera Mobile, Firefox or Aurora on Android. Each app can't do everything so having a variety of apps, each with its own different feature set, is good.

One more PBOS howler: the OS can expose the filesystem as an SMB share but it can't read SMB shares. Un-freaking-believable.

[daglesj]

"Hey developers you NEED us Playbook owners!!!!"

Yes like a cripple needs woodworm in their crutches.

Angry minority is angry syndrome.

[xamdam]

Ok I will forget the Dev's right now cause you said we all should.

Ummm who is it that makes apps for playbook...... damn I forget who they are now, must be brainwashed or something.

Can anyone help me out as I forgot who does this, damn it I hate when my mind wanders and forgets things cause I was told to do so by someone..... that I actually forget who told us all, but if I remember I will some how forget again anyways.

[Angus_CB]

According to the OP no one is writing apps for the Playbook.

[Angus_CB]

True F&F and Kalemsoft are excellent apps but they're the best out of a small handful and they're restricted by the OS itself.
...

I agree that there is a lack of apps I just found it funny that the two areas you chose were probably the best for Playbook and the main reasons I have one.

For the money I have in my Playbooks they are a great Web Browser, Media Player and Remote Desktop Viewer.
At the original full price, not so much of a great deal.

[ThaSwapMeetPimp]

According to the OP no one is writing apps for the Playbook.

Nope just a lot of them that have stopped. Which bothered me. I was being absurd anyways. Which I already admitted.

I am not gonna pay for Angry Birds Star Wars (because it was free for BB10 when BB10 came out) though, or repay for any of the apps I already bought. I already bought that intellectual property, and I don't believe in paying for 1's and 0's that float in the aether the first time if I can get away it, I'm sure not gonna pay for them the second time, dag nabbit . I'll just live without that apps functionality or find a decent alternative.

[BuzzStarField]

Nope just a lot of them that have stopped. Which bothered me. I was being absurd anyways. Which I already admitted.

I am not gonna pay for Angry Birds Star Wars (because it was free for BB10 when BB10 came out) though, or repay for any of the apps I already bought. I already bought that intellectual property, and I don't believe in paying for 1's and 0's that float in the aether the first time if I can get away it, I'm sure not gonna pay for them the second time, dag nabbit . I'll just live without that apps functionality or find a decent alternative.

Not to put too fine a point on it, when you pay for an app, you are not paying for 1's and 0's that float in the aether. Rather, you are paying for how those 1's and 0's interact with you after you download them to your device. The beauty of technology is that If I do some work, then my ideas can translated into 1's and 0's that can be distributed via a digital store. The beauty of the well-regulated free enterprise system is that I get to control how I get paid for the work that I do; that is, I get to chose the circumstances under which my ideas are realized on your device(s). The other side of free enterprise is that you are free to decide if you are willing to pay the price that I am asking. This is as it should be.

By the way, there is another side to your call for a boycott. As it happens, I am one of those developers who decided to capitalize on my customers' good will by offering a version of my app on the Z10 for no additional charge if you had already purchased a licence to use it on your playbook. I did not make this decision because I am a nice guy, I did it to get "free" advertising for my app. I naively assumed that potential customers on the Z10 would see the hundreds of reviews that people had left for the PB version.

Alas, this being a free enterprise system, BBRY decided that reviews would not be carried forward. Am I disappointed? You bet. Am I trashing the thousands of PB users who downloaded the Z10 version and did not leave a new review? Of course not, because free advertising was not implied in my contract with them..

In your case, there was no contract to give you a free Z10 licence so you have no basis for complaining about the developers' marketing decisions. The free enterprise system is working as it should.

[ThaSwapMeetPimp]

Not to put too fine a point on it, when you pay for an app, you are not paying for 1's and 0's that float in the aether. Rather, you are paying for how those 1's and 0's interact with you after you download them to your device. The beauty of technology is that If I do some work, then my ideas can translated into 1's and 0's that can be distributed via a digital store. The beauty of the well-regulated free enterprise system is that I get to control how I get paid for the work that I do; that is, I get to chose the circumstances under which my ideas are realized on your device(s). The other side of free enterprise is that you are free to decide if you are willing to pay the price that I am asking. This is as it should be.

By the way, there is another side to your call for a boycott. As it happens, I am one of those developers who decided to capitalize on my customers' good will by offering a version of my app on the Z10 for no additional charge if you had already purchased a licence to use it on your playbook. I did not make this decision because I am a nice guy, I did it to get "free" advertising for my app. I naively assumed that potential customers on the Z10 would see the hundreds of reviews that people had left for the PB version.

Alas, this being a free enterprise system, BBRY decided that reviews would not be carried forward. Am I disappointed? You bet. Am I trashing the thousands of PB users who downloaded the Z10 version and did not leave a new review? Of course not, because free advertising was not implied in my contract with them..

In your case, there was no contract to give you a free Z10 licence so you have no basis for complaining about the developers' marketing decisions. The free enterprise system is working as it should.

Hey when I pay for an app, what is that app, essentially? Is it data? Is it ultimately 1's and 0's? I bought Galaxy on Fire 2 HD for PB, I can buy that on Steam too for my computer, but I won't, because if it's getting the same game, I object to paying for the story, graphics, interface, etc a second time....I already paid 10 bucks for that, the intellectual property that those 1's and 0's represent, the graphics that a machine interprets from them and displays on my screen, the music coming out of the speakers....I paid for that once already. Why would I ever pay for that again if I can help it? Rather just live without then constantly have to pay for things over and over and over, so some a-hole can continuosly profit off of me.

By the way, love What's Up, one of the first apps I bought for my PB. But I would not pay for it again when BB10 comes to my PB. I already paid for it once, it is not enlightened self-interest for me to pay you for it again. Even if it interacts with me differently, it's the same general idea I already paid for. That's this consumers perspective, completely different than your producer perspective.

Ahh....Perspective....Mine is different than yours, because I stand in a different spot than you do, so I see things differently. You see different device iterations interacting with data in different ways as the demarcation, I see the fact that it's ultimately 1's and 0's as the demarcation. It's still data. I pay for the machine that interacts with the data. So I already paid for the method of interaction when I bought the machine. Why should I pay for the data more than once, just because the iteration interacts differently? Incentive for you to develop? You have that already in the fact that you are entering a new market where you can gain new customers, the incentive shouldn't be to profit again off the same material from the same people you already profited off of before. (Not that it's been brought up, but before it is, I would not pay BB for a BB10 upgrade (a question brought up in the forums before), the software to run the machine should be mine free and clear as long as they continue to make software that will work for the machine, because the incentive to develop that software should already be there in the need to sell devices).

You exhibited enlightened self-interest by offering a free license for the BB10 version of your app for previous customers even though, ultimately, the reviews were not carried forward. Is it enlightened self-interest to not alienate previous customers for new ones? Especially if the previous customers are entering your new market at some point in the near future? I would think that it would be.

My real opinion? F capitalism and the free market system. It breeds too much corruption, and has been used to concentrate too much power into too few hands. Also, it's not truly free, nor has it ever been. If it was ever truly free, then no human government/sovereign/power would have ever meddled in it (it would just expand markets, governments only true role in laissez-faire capitalism), the elite business owners would have imposed such horrible working conditions upon the lower class workers (they were doing so too, read your history and learn from it) that the lower class workers would have already risen as a whole and destroyed the system, imposing true Marxism upon its collective body (not these half a**ed Leninist, Stalinist, or Maoist iterations that have cropped up over the last 90 years or so, which started in agrarian societies, not from a capitalist-industrial base (which is necessary to separate the masses into rich and poor, have and have nots, which is also necessary for the ideas and values of True Marxism to be born in the heart of the people, and the will to impose it upon oneself as well as ones fellow human)). The markets you have grown up in have given you the illusion that they are free, but they are not. They are controlled stop gaps to keep you from realizing that, as a human born free and unencumbered, unable to be sold before your birth, you have been enslaved for generations, to line the pockets of families of bankers by servicing debts imposed upon the whole social body.
And the only thing keeping you, your children, your grandchildren, and your grandchildren's children in perpetuity, from being born free and unencumbered is that you believe in the illusion, because it's pretty and comfortable and known. It's not scary at all. It's not free. (I don't mean you specifically, but humans in general, so myself included).

[Angus_CB]

Holy crap that was long winded.
"I bought it once and don't feel I should have to buy it again." would have sufficed.

If you had a PC and bought Microsoft Office then decided to switch to Mac you would have to purchase MS Office again. Microsoft doesn't care that you've already bought a copy.
Admittedly that situation is different than BB10 on the Playbook. Usually an OS update doesn't kill the software that you already purchased.
Something similar is hardware drivers that no longer work with an updated OS. When I upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7 I discovered that my scanner was no longer supported.

By the way, calling software nothing more than 0s and 1s is like saying a car is nothing more than metal and plastic. You aren't paying for 0s and 1s, you are paying for the labor that was involved in getting those 0s and 1s to work in a way you found appealing or useful.

[blueberrymerry]

With software, you never purchase the product itself, you merely get a license to use it. That is bound to the licensing agreement which most people skip reading - stuff like the license being bound to one device, one owner, or even allowing the manufacturer to revoke the license if they don't like you.

BB10 on Playbook will be an update that kills compatibility. Older PBOS apps won't work properly so they'll need to be upgraded by the developers, an effort they should be compensated for. I think the best way forward for maintaining goodwill between developers and users is to offer updated BB10 apps for free for existing PBOS purchases, within a short time period. I don't know if BB World can handle this though.

Some users might have over a hundred dollars worth of apps purchased on PBOS. Having to pay the same amount again for the same functionality on BB10 doesn't sound right.

And to ThaSwapMeetPimp's condemnation of capitalism, I totally agree. Copyleft FTW The means of production for, by, and of the masses...

[Bbnivende]

Personally I think this whole Playbook section of Crackberry should be transferred to the legacy device area . My 9900 is a legacy device and it is still being sold.

[ThaSwapMeetPimp]

With software, you never purchase the product itself, you merely get a license to use it. That is bound to the licensing agreement which most people skip reading - stuff like the license being bound to one device, one owner, or even allowing the manufacturer to revoke the license if they don't like you.

BB10 on Playbook will be an update that kills compatibility. Older PBOS apps won't work properly so they'll need to be upgraded by the developers, an effort they should be compensated for. I think the best way forward for maintaining goodwill between developers and users is to offer updated BB10 apps for free for existing PBOS purchases, within a short time period. I don't know if BB World can handle this though.

Some users might have over a hundred dollars worth of apps purchased on PBOS. Having to pay the same amount again for the same functionality on BB10 doesn't sound right.

And to ThaSwapMeetPimp's condemnation of capitalism, I totally agree. Copyleft FTW The means of production for, by, and of the masses...

Hypothetically, the person could always revoke the license, but can they ensure I don't have a copy somewhere that I am still using? I know that in the eyes of someone who has licensed software to me I don't own it. I do own it though. It's in my possession and I could store it somewhere and as long as I have a means to access and interpret the data I can still use it. If I really felt like it I could sit for a couple weeks and study each line of code and memorize it (which I am completely capable of, we all are technically capable of, but who really wants to do that?), so that I seriously never lose it. Then it's mine forever to use as long as I have the tools and skills to put it into a machine that can interpret it. It might be illegal if I do so, but that's only a concern for people who haven't been forced to consistently break the law to live the life they choose to. After a couple months that feeling like your hair is standing on the back of your neck all the time goes away, and you become comfortable with the fact that you have repeatedly and unashamedly broken the law (cannabis user from Washington here, until recently my choice to continue the 6000+ year mental/spiritual/physical evolutionary relationship with this plant was illegal, so the last 16 years of my life have been breaking the law literally every day until last December).

I don't know how much I have spent on apps, but as a person who isn't in a position to spend all kinds of money buying/re-buying apps, having to re-buy any of them would suck. I mainly buy apps when I get my tax return or have some kind of unexpected cash come in on a card that I can spend. For example I got my return this year and bought Splashtop, The Bards Tale, Galaxy on Fire 2 HD, BeWeather HD, and PewPew2. If I hadn't had like 600 bucks I wouldn't have felt like I could buy any of those, because none of the cash would have been expendable.

I kinda got a little nervous, posting a rant about capitalism 2 days after the Boston bombings, what with the obvious revolutionary symbolism, but I mean really I live in Washington State and never leave my home so any government entity that read that and looked at me would have to be just plain stupid. I don't know though, I'm kinda feeling seriously on edge since Sunday morning like something far worse than a bombing is gonna occur soon. Like I wanna leave all of this and go find a secluded spot somewhere and just fall off the grid cause it will be safer or something. Just very uneasy for some reason.

I had never heard of copyleft before you mentioned it, I just looked it up and from the summaries I read yeah that's basically how I feel.

[jpash549]

Ain't it the truth. There's always someone telling us masses what to do and trying to force us into servitude and steal the fruits of our labor. All we need is a good leader to get our just rewards.

[ThaSwapMeetPimp]

Holy crap that was long winded.
"I bought it once and don't feel I should have to buy it again." would have sufficed.

If you had a PC and bought Microsoft Office then decided to switch to Mac you would have to purchase MS Office again. Microsoft doesn't care that you've already bought a copy.
Admittedly that situation is different than BB10 on the Playbook. Usually an OS update doesn't kill the software that you already purchased.
Something similar is hardware drivers that no longer work with an updated OS. When I upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7 I discovered that my scanner was no longer supported.

By the way, calling software nothing more than 0s and 1s is like saying a car is nothing more than metal and plastic. You aren't paying for 0s and 1s, you are paying for the labor that was involved in getting those 0s and 1s to work in a way you found appealing or useful.

To me a car is nothing more than functional metal and plastic. The two cars I have bought cost me 75 dollars (an 1987 Oldsmobile Firenza I bought off a good friend) and 200 dollars (a 1987 Mercedes-Benz 420 SEL I bought off some junkie kid who was gonna donate it to charity). And they ran for longer than a 75 dollar and 200 dollar car should. They are not worth 20,000 or 40,000 dollars to me, they hold no status, they are just functional items, worth a few hundred dollars of material at most, maybe a grand or two, but definitely not 10's of thousands of dollars. To me as a person. Now yes a lot of labor goes into that and those people need paid, because that's the system we are in, where we don't work because it's good for us mentally and spiritually to have something productive to do, but because we need money to survive. At least in serfdom and slavery, they had to feed and house us (besides the many indignities and much violence associated with such states, of course) if they expected us to work, in this system the owners of capital and property don't have to care for us, we are owned by the wage, not by the holders of the money who pay the wage. But it doesn't have to be that way, and I don't have to live by the ideals that say I have to spend my life servicing debts so that I can have a car or a house or all those nice things that living a life of debt service can get you, so other people can make money to service debts to maintain status, and ultimately bankers can collect all the real property and resource in fewer and fewer hands. It's a crappy way to live, even if it does have its perks.

I would never buy a Mac. Just saying, I know what you said was a hypothetical, but I wouldn't.

And I tend to be rather verbose

[ThaSwapMeetPimp]

Ain't it the truth. There's always someone telling us masses what to do and trying to force us into servitude and steal the fruits of our labor. All we need is a good leader to get our just rewards.

Do 100 humans of wealth and power own the human race, or does the race own them? Or do they actually stand on equal footing, balanced by the weight of the 100's wealth and the rests mass, in a precarious balance that doesn't have to be? Can the race instead own the capital, the resources, while retaining equal rights to the fruits of that capital? And still have their own personal property based on their needs and desires? I think that's the best option for us. Cooperation and mutual prosperity. These other paths lead to ruin. And it's completely possible. But you have to instill the values in the children, in the next generation, and erect a strong barrier against the degrading forces of society to protect those values.

[blueberrymerry]

Free software is a good start, free as in the freedom to use, tinker and give out, not so much the free beer

Most tribal and indigenous societies have mutual ownership of common resources. Taking it a step further, ownership of these resources should transcend racial or ethnic bounds and encompass all who live there. It's just us enlightened fools who think individuals (or even worse, legal fictions like corporations) can own air, land and water.

[Wongsky]

F&F still can't view SMB shares

Ghost Commander can connect to SMB shares (and in effect, another PlayBook if you have one). Admittedly, Ghost Commander looks like a quick and dirty port of an Android app, and personally, on Android, I really like ES File Explorer. And MX Video Player on Android is very capable.

One more PBOS howler: the OS can expose the filesystem as an SMB share but it can't read SMB shares. Un-freaking-believable.

When you say can't read shares? Do you mean simply there's no native provision? In which case, probably true of at least some native file browsers on other tablets?

I very much suspect BlackBerry choosing to expose the filesystem in the way they do was more about other aspects, than truly / overtly going SAMBA / cifs in terms of file sharing.