View Poll Results: Do you like to see BB10 Dev Beta on PB before Christmas?

Voters
127. You may not vote on this poll
  • Great idea because it strengthen BB10 presence in holiday season!

    67 52.76%
  • Yes if it doesn't pull too much resource from main line f development on BB10 phones

    40 31.50%
  • No need for extra distraction, RIM should be laser focusing on BB10 phone development

    25 19.69%
  • Bad idea, period.

    6 4.72%
Multiple Choice Poll.
  1. chesterhall's Avatar
    I can wait. When everything drops, i want it to be "perfect." There's no reason for a company to release a Beta of an upcoming product, even at the positive feedback that this poll and others have shown. Most of the consumer world doesn't know the difference between Beta, Alpha, Final, may possibly take the pre-release as the Final, look to tear it apart, criticize, and find EVERY single bug, glitch, and gap. With this new found information, instead of helping the company with the errors would go run to the papers. RIM needs no bad press, and I personally think that if they release anything that isn't the "cat's meow" they will come under so much media fire that they will have no other choice but to take their business overseas. We as BB users don't need to give the media, naysayers, iLovers, Borgs, or any others out there any ammunition to fire with! Let's just wait...absence makes the heart grow fonder!
    10-23-12 08:22 AM
  2. chesterhall's Avatar
    And I chose option 3.
    10-23-12 08:25 AM
  3. walcolm's Avatar
    the BB10 is more about the OS than the hardware..so when the big launch comes in Q1 2013, it will be more about the OS than the hardware.

    BB10 is supposed to be a mobile computing platform that 'revolutionizes' the way we interact with our mobile devices so i expect the final product will continue to stay under wraps till that big launch and only get to the PB maybe a week to BB10 device sale
    10-23-12 10:38 AM
  4. peter9477's Avatar
    I think it means it's in RIM's plan but they don't want to promise anything. Hence the tweet and then the deleting.
    The "before launch" part is referring to the launch of BB10 on the PlayBook, not the launch of BB10 on the phones.

    They just meant BB10 will be available on the PlayBook in a beta form prior to it being available in final form. In other words, yes, there will be a beta of BB10 on the PlayBook.

    It will not happen prior to launch on the phones.
    10-23-12 11:01 AM
  5. Chrysalis1156's Avatar
    I have no expectation of seeing anything for the PB until BB10 phones are out. My pb is working great, does what I need it to, so I'm in no hurry...guess I'm one of the lucky ones.
    10-23-12 11:04 AM
  6. anon(2757538)'s Avatar
    I wanna see a beta AFTER BB10 launches on phones
    10-23-12 01:18 PM
  7. jlma03's Avatar
    The beta version release could go a long way since in keeping current PB users satisfied and create a positive buzz around the full launch.
    aha likes this.
    10-23-12 09:21 PM
  8. aha's Avatar
    I5, IPAD4 and IPAD mini, Win Surface, Lumia, Galaxy Note II ... so it begins
    10-23-12 09:26 PM
  9. timmy t's Avatar
    I think they want the release of BB10 to coincide with the new phones. That means no early release for the Playbook, in any form I assume.
    I wonder how much effort it will take to port the BB10 OS to the Playbook. The QNX kernel is already ported, isn't it?
    How much more porting would be required?
    10-23-12 09:38 PM
  10. aha's Avatar
    I think they want the release of BB10 to coincide with the new phones. That means no early release for the Playbook, in any form I assume.
    I wonder how much effort it will take to port the BB10 OS to the Playbook. The QNX kernel is already ported, isn't it?
    How much more porting would be required?
    On HTML5test site they already have test records for browsers from BB10 OS on Playbook. So they have it on PB already, it's a matter whether it's good enough for a beta release.
    10-23-12 11:39 PM
  11. peter9477's Avatar
    I think they want the release of BB10 to coincide with the new phones. That means no early release for the Playbook, in any form I assume.
    I wonder how much effort it will take to port the BB10 OS to the Playbook. The QNX kernel is already ported, isn't it?
    How much more porting would be required?
    As people have said in numerous posts, the porting effort is largely around the user interface, specifically Cascades and Navigator (the home screen and all that stuff), and all the system apps. The lower layers themselves will run just fine (ignoring some optimization issues), so it's certainly not about the kernel. This is all about the huge effort required to adapt what they've developed for the default-portrait-mode, higher resolution, higher density, physically much smaller, targetting-one-handed-use phone, for a tablet that's lower-res, physically larger, held in landscape mode and generally in two hands. Don't make the mistake of underestimating the effort required... it's certainly large enough that if they were to try doing it right now, before they've even finished all the features for the phone version, they would absolutely fail to miss any reasonable release date for the phones. They cannot do that, so they will not undertake the bulk of the PlayBook effort until the phones are basically done, and that probably includes the keyboard model which itself has a rather large effort associated with it.

    Note also that the fact the browser is shown on html5test.com running on a PlayBook is pretty meaningless. They can do that without the slightest effort because that site doesn't care about the size of the screen, where the browser "chrome" is, how usable it is, or for that matter what any of the other system apps or UI elements actually look like.
    10-24-12 07:44 AM
  12. aha's Avatar
    Peter9477, I am with you that the major effort is in user interface, what we disagree is, I am talking about a beta release of whatever they have sometime before Christmas, like the first a couple of OS 2 beta, while you are talking about an official release or near finish beta release.

    I admit that I don't know where they are in the branch for PB platform. But I won't underestimate the meaning of testing browser app from PB platform on html5test site. The browser is just another app, lots of the problem you stated in user interface will have to be solved before the browser can render the webpages successfully. Besides, if the official release on PB is trailling the official release of BB10 phones, then PB branch just can't fall behind too much from the trunk.

    There is no such thing as the resource will be released from trunk to branch development because the trunk developement will not cease to exist after launch, anyone with some SW dev experience knows that. The team supporting PB will be smaller and will reuse more codes from the trunk team and contribute mainly on handling the user interface differences, but that work should have started the moment they decided to support BB10 on PB, not after BB10 launch on phones. If it is latter, then either their managers should be fired or we should all leave BB ecosystem because there is no hope here.
    10-24-12 10:04 AM
  13. mapsonburt's Avatar
    Folks, give your heads a shake. WHY would RIM give away all the features that are coming in BB10 for a device they've sold 2M of when they want to save the snap for the launch of a device intended for >80M users. Just doesn't make ANY sense at all. Release BB10, get the rave reviews and then release a beta on PB for a release later in the year... I love my PlayBooks but they HAVE to concentrate on BB10 phones.
    howarmat and peter9477 like this.
    10-24-12 10:33 AM
  14. aha's Avatar
    Folks, give your heads a shake. WHY would RIM give away all the features that are coming in BB10 for a device they've sold 2M of when they want to save the snap for the launch of a device intended for >80M users. Just doesn't make ANY sense at all. Release BB10, get the rave reviews and then release a beta on PB for a release later in the year... I love my PlayBooks but they HAVE to concentrate on BB10 phones.
    It's about staying relevant. Do you know how many companies are working on their budget for 2013 right now? And how many families are starting to plan for holiday gifts now? Our company uses BB mostly, but when I talk with them, they know nothing about BB10 or potential BES upgrade needed for supporting BB10, therefore they were not going to budget for it. That is why RIM should raise the awareness of BB10 before Christmas. After all RIM only wants to write off the holiday season, not the whole year.
    Last edited by aha; 10-27-12 at 07:59 AM.
    10-24-12 08:23 PM
  15. aha's Avatar
    It's amazing how much money the big 3 are throwing into this market place and how much money they are making off it, RIM's option is really limited now. I really hope RIM can give all they got to fight for their last chance and succeed.
    10-24-12 09:47 PM
  16. peter9477's Avatar
    I admit that I don't know where they are in the branch for PB platform. But I won't underestimate the meaning of testing browser app from PB platform on html5test site. The browser is just another app, lots of the problem you stated in user interface will have to be solved before the browser can render the webpages successfully.
    I'm afraid you're certainly wrong on this point. The Browser is not just another app. Unlike any of the other system apps which are (we hear) basically all Cascades apps, the Browser in BB10 is entirely a WebWorks apps. There's not a single thing about it which is dependent on the Cascades framework or the rest of the BB10 user interface. (Except insofar as they will keep WebWorks looking similar to those things... i.e. if they change how the "peek" feature works, they'll make some changes in WebWorks and, thus, the Browser, to continuing matching it.)

    In effect, the Browser stands alone and is in most respects developed independently, or at least one can treat it as such even if they have it more tightly integrated in the development for other reasons.
    10-24-12 10:32 PM
  17. timmy t's Avatar
    So the difference in screen sizes is that hard to overcome? You can't just add some multiplying factor or something. I find it hard to believe that all of that stuff is hardcoded.
    Either that or there should be some automated way to handle the porting from one screen resolution to another, otherwise it does not bode well for app developers.
    10-26-12 12:32 PM
  18. timmy t's Avatar
    "... Don't make the mistake of underestimating the effort required..."

    You are trying to tell me all of those U of Waterloo geniuses can't write code that is easy to port between screen resolutions?
    10-26-12 12:34 PM
  19. shermantenor's Avatar
    Using the new iPad mini as an example, Apple purposefully kept the resolution the same as the iPad 2 mostly for ease of development. Screen resolution certainly does matter.
    10-26-12 01:48 PM
  20. anon(4216152)'s Avatar
    Stupid question, you know the answer! No,

    sorry, those are the best questions, actually. Kinda like do you agree with party X that taxes should be lowered. Love those.
    10-26-12 02:17 PM
  21. aha's Avatar
    Stupid question, you know the answer! No,

    sorry, those are the best questions, actually. Kinda like do you agree with party X that taxes should be lowered. Love those.
    Thanks for the intelligent response and please close the door on the way out.


    sent from my BlackBerry 9810 using Tapatalk
    10-26-12 09:05 PM
  22. peter9477's Avatar
    So the difference in screen sizes is that hard to overcome? You can't just add some multiplying factor or something. I find it hard to believe that all of that stuff is hardcoded.
    Either that or there should be some automated way to handle the porting from one screen resolution to another, otherwise it does not bode well for app developers.
    You're doing what I said not to... under-estimating the effort required. You seem to think it's just a simple matter of "screen sizes are different, scale something". It's not, it's way more than that, but I'm afraid I'm not going to try writing a tutorial on user interface design and development issues. How about I simply point out that, as one very minor part of this, even if it were as simple as changing some scaling somewhere, you'd still need to take a few weeks to rebuild all the system apps and re-test them. Unless you thought you could simply change some hard-coded parameter, blindly rebuild, and ship. The real world doesn't work that way, sorry...
    10-26-12 10:45 PM
  23. aha's Avatar
    You're doing what I said not to... under-estimating the effort required. You seem to think it's just a simple matter of "screen sizes are different, scale something". It's not, it's way more than that, but I'm afraid I'm not going to try writing a tutorial on user interface design and development issues. How about I simply point out that, as one very minor part of this, even if it were as simple as changing some scaling somewhere, you'd still need to take a few weeks to rebuild all the system apps and re-test them. Unless you thought you could simply change some hard-coded parameter, blindly rebuild, and ship. The real world doesn't work that way, sorry...
    Cascade was origionally developed on playbook, apps like scrapbook was built using an older version of Cascade APIs. Are you saying Cascade team are deleting codes that supports PB resolutions when they are adding supports for new BB10 phone resolutions?

    Some bad SW architectures like iOS were not built with different screen resolutions in mind so it takes great effort to support a different screen resolution as it origionally intended to. While other OSs natually support various screen resolutions in their genes, such as windows, linux, QNX, etc. It wouldn't take too much of an effort to port apps to a different screen size.

    You can't base your argument on what you read about how painfully apple developers supported different screen sizes, that's different. Even android apps can support so many different screen sizes without recompile, think about it.
    10-27-12 06:39 AM
  24. aha's Avatar
    RIM looks to be ready to release Dev beta on PB before Christmas to me
    11-02-12 09:23 PM
  25. smartie88's Avatar
    I only use pb for surf online, watch video,so os2 actually is enough for me. I would like more apps instead of OS.
    11-02-12 09:30 PM
59 123

Similar Threads

  1. What features do you want to see in BB10?
    By Speedygi in forum BlackBerry 10 OS
    Replies: 113
    Last Post: 12-21-12, 06:29 PM
  2. Themes: What do you like to see on your landscape homescreen?
    By russnash in forum BlackBerry Torch Series
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 04-08-11, 09:37 PM
  3. Themes: What do you like to see on your landscape homescreen?
    By russnash in forum BlackBerry Storm Series
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 04-08-11, 03:20 PM
  4. Themes: What do you like to see on your landscape homescreen?
    By russnash in forum BlackBerry Storm Series
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 04-08-11, 02:33 PM
  5. What would you like to see your phone do?
    By BeyondTheBox in forum BlackBerry Bold Series
    Replies: 15
    Last Post: 02-20-11, 01:25 PM
LINK TO POST COPIED TO CLIPBOARD