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I would not have bought Playbooks for my wife and myself if I had known that Blackberry would orphan the product eighteen months later. BB10 does not really matter to me. What does matter is that there will be no forward momentum at all for the Playbook. This is a very poor way to run a railroad and I will not be looking at any more Blackberry products. Too risky!
The PlayBook still does the things it did 18 months ago when you bought it......browsing, email, games, videos, etc. And it does them well. If you don't care about bb10 then just enjoy it. Tech companies don't support their devices forever, they all move on, BB is no different.
Umm they launched the Playbook April 2011. You are right tech companies dont support devices forever but 2.5years is just crap! iPad2 launch date was March 2011 and it's getting iOS7. It will still be supported you will still be able to download apps and people will still make new apps for it. Not a very smart business decision in mind for Blackberry. They pushed me away and they continue to do so constantly by their poor decisions and due to the company being deceitful. I understand you cant keep everybody happy...but I see a lot of negative comments on this forum from Blackberry users. When i visit some of the other forums it's not as bad, there are not as many complaints and negativity.
It seems like a lot of unhappy people and you have to take a step back and consider is it just luck of the draw? Is it a forum full of trolls? or are these people really that upset?
Seems to me that the common denominator here is BLACKBERRY. That should give you a clear indication of what the problem truly is.
Well Apple been making basicly the same phone / pad for years + some of their (upgrades) have actually made their older phones perform worse than needed be in order to get people to buy new products. So Apple is no better or worse than BB -. Their use different strategy, centered upon one evolution based product but that's all there is to it.
And I wouldn't like that from BlackBerry
@ Matador
Yup that's what you get when tens of millions of people pour their money at you. I believe iOS7 on the iPad 2 will be no different to iOS6 but with different look. Yippee. Enjoy your fancy upgrade. Whatever makes you feel better. Not like anything will actually change. It will just make your old device seem new again. That is, until the hardware fails because it's so old. BB10 is a completely different beast to PBOS and it was too difficult to do on a device that is not only 2.5 years old but also was a huge loss to the company in the first place and a legacy device from previous management. People have a right to be angry but it isn't that many people. Most don't care. Many got their money's worth in the 2 years they have used them. Many still use them myself included. Not getting BB10 did not render the PB useless. PBOS is still the better multi-tasker IMO.
People can get angry all they want but can't seem to face the fact that it happens in tech. When a minority of people support a device they could easily get left behind. When the majority support a device that company better keep putting lipstick on it or else all he1l breaks loose. Hence iOS7 for iPad 2 which sold 10x what playbook sold in total. Get my drift? Move on.
Traditionally, any hardware that you buy becomes rapidly, relatively less useful as it ages and becomes outdated. The ecosystem, however, can make your hardware more useful as time goes by. For example, if within the past year, your bank has released an app that allows you to deposit checks by snapping an image that makes your existing hardware a lot more useful.
Next time, don't look at the hardware in isolation. Look at the ecosystem and what it is bringing to users. That's where market share really matters. It's really the app ecosystem that can slow down or reverse the decline in utility that traditionally happens with technology over months to years.
Besides BB10, they promised fixes for checkerboarding browser and other ills with a supposed OS2+++++++++++++++. Those fixes were put on hold when they decided to move the PB to bb10. They also most likely swayed developers who might have created apps for OS2 that they should instead create those new Playbook apps for bb10, thereby killing most forward development of apps for the pb.
There are a slew of reasons to be angry with how rim/bbry went about killing the pb.
The PlayBook is still a good device. I know it has problems ( what device doesn't ). I purchased four of them and will use them until they die. What pizzes me off is that it will not be supported. BlackBerry was a great alternative for Apple and Android. With BB10 now we have Windows (not real excited about that). HOPEFULLY with BlackBerry having a new OS7 will help on the phone side but an afraid no hope for our Beloved PlayBook. It would be nice if BlackBerry changed the RAM in the PlayBook and offered a new table to people that want BB10 on it and support the current tablets. The table will be dead in five years so that will not happen ( everyone will look like there from the 1980's with a giant phablet ).
Each person will cope with this "loss" in a different way. All I ask is don't be greedy when you try to sell your now "worthless" device to someone who still believes that the Playbook is perfectly capable of doing some very useful things. Apart from the stock apps, I find these 3rd party apps to be very useful:
- Amazon Kindle app
- Advanced Camera app
- Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress and LinkedIn
- Photo Studio
- Blueprint Drafts
- rwColorPicker
- evernote
- DejaOffice
- Conqu
- Any.DO
- Presenter's Edge
- Business Analysis
- Business Card Scanner
- Wikipedia
- How Stuff Works
- Planets
- RIDGID Digital Level
I could lament what could have been or I could focus on how I can use the Playbook as a productivity tool "as is". That seems far more sensible than spending pointless minutes grieving over unkept promises. If this is difficult to accept, perhaps it's time to use some of your health care benefits to see a counselor.
I for one think the OP is trying to start something. Never posted to CB before but decides to get an acount now to say no more BB for them. Something smells fishy with that.
I must have bought a counterfeit PlayBook then because my email and browsing experience was less than ideal. The browser was relentless in always trying to load up this one site on its own -- from the looks of it, I guess it must have been called checkerboard.com.
I have 2 Playbooks, but myself don't fall into the camp of those upset at no BB10. That said, I think the arguments I've quoted fail as soon as one considers the crippling of the Bridge. That does diminish the usefulness of the product. So while it can browse (which everyone will admit is not the best experience) email, etc like it did before, it has lost some functionality. And for people like me, that's a big loss. And even if iPad "upgrades" are nothing more than "fresh lipstick on the pig", I'd rather that than have the functionality be reduced (which I realize was a result of OS10, not Playbook OS...a distinction which doesn't matter).
So I'm not upset at the lack of BB10 on the Playbook, but their abandonment of their own product did result in my making the move to Android; you see, my Android device works wth my Playbook every bit as good as a new Z10 would (which is to say, not really at all). So while it is correct to say that all tech companies abandon their products at some point, it's also correct to say that this is not done without certain consequences.
Whenever you make a purchase, ESPECIALLY a tech purchase, you should always follow this rule:
Buy the device based on what it does NOW, and NOT on what it MIGHT do LATER. If the device does not fully meet your needs on Day 1, it is the wrong device for you, no matter who makes it or what promises you've been given for the future.
The tech world is littered with devices that had lots of promise and had their manufacturer assure customers that features or updates would be coming, but it was not to be. Updates are nice to get, but should not be counted on.
Just another sheep who attacks the messenger rather than address the message. Bah-h-h-h-h to you!
Agree. Always purchase from a reputable company. Because it is much less likely that it will renege on it's promise. Is BB a reputable company?
Well, it's a message heard many times in the last four weeks, in many threads that were here first. Things were sorta doing OK right up until the door got closed with the snide comeback.