The PlayBook is DEAD. Yes, really.
Hey there, you may remember me from this little escapade.
I saw the Playbook update this morning and decided to come back to the old crackberry Playbook forums, which I haven't been checking regularly since last fall. It seems as though nothing has changed. Despite now official confirmation from Blackberry to Kevin that .1917 is the absolute last update we should ever expect, people are still deluding themselves that BB10 or another PBOS update is coming to Playbook, and what's worse, roping unsuspecting fools into their delusions.
Listen very carefully: Playbook development is DEAD, EOL'ed. How do I know this with absolute and total certainty? Why, I'm glad you asked. You see, this .1917 update itself is proof that all development on the Playbook is over.
1) If Blackberry were to upgrade the Playbooks to BB10, they wouldn't have released an update to a few measly runtimes, as they just did. What's the point of updating runtimes to an OS you're about to swap out? Instead, they would have just released a version of BB10 for Playbook, which already would have included all the latest runtimes, and much much more. Chen has had six months to reverse the EOL decision; he hasn't, and he won't. BB10 is not coming to Playbook, in any manner whatsoever.
2) The Playbook OS was officially EOL'ed last June. Now, let's say a new PBOS update was in some stage of development when the Playbook was killed. Since then, some 9 months have passed. A new CEO has been in charge for half a year. And after all this time, all we get are some runtime updates? What that means is that NOTHING was in the pipe on PBOS. No further meaningful development work on the PBOS was performed since the 2.1 update. Otherwise, Chen would have just released it in the last update the Playbook will ever have. There would simply have been no point in holding on to anything at this point.
Let's review:
1) No BB10 (or any part of it, nothing) is coming to Playbook, ever. (otherwise, the 1917 would not have been made)
2) No updates exist for the PBOS to even be pushed out. (otherwise, we would have just gotten them)
3) Blackberry management just washed its hands of the Playbook, forever.
I know, I know, even with this unambiguous and logical proof, you want to believe. I did too. Even nine months later, it still hurts. I have never been as disappointed in a company as I was in Blackberry. The death of the Playbook was an event that really, truly, changed the way I relate with technology and technology companies.
1) I will never again purchase a product based on promises of improvements, no matter how high up those promises come from.
2) I will never emotionally relate to a technology company again, or be invested in promoting its products.
Having now owned an LG Optimus G Pro for 6 months, my first android phone, think I can speak with some objectivity. I might buy Blackberry products in the future, but on craigslist or firesales, never at anything even close to full retail. I can't imagine ever being an early adopter for them again. I do see some value in the keyboard to my ability to communicate. If I owned a business in a regulated industry, like healthcare, I might have considered them for the security features. However, as a consumer, nothing about Blackberry's hardware or the BB10 as a platform is particularly interesting or compelling to me. All the operating systems have made such progress in the last few years. All the special features of QNX we once raved about are now mostly equaled by iOS and Android. Even BBM... it's just one of a dozen messaging services that all do just about everything just about well enough. I don't expect Blackberry to ever truly innovate in the mobile space again, and that's ok.
As for the Playbook, the Blackberry Fan's eternal Moby ****, I still use it, for all that it is, and for all that it could have been (BUT NEVER WILL BE).