[DrBoomBotz]

It did come later.

IIRC, there was a rush to get the OS2.0 Beta because it, for the first time, contained the Android RT. I can't recall what version of Android was in the ART now, but it wasn't the "current" (at the time) Android.

And here was me thinking that I would never again read another micro-kernel thread ...

OS2.0 arrived in February 2012.
Near enough to a year before BB10.
I never claimed it was there for the launch.
I feel so defensive .

[BerrySoul]

BB10 is simply the best and far superior than any other smartphone Os. It works awesome, fast and productive on my Passport SE.

Posted via CB10

[JeepBB]

OS2.0 arrived in February 2012.
Near enough to a year before BB10.
I never claimed it was there for the launch.
I feel so defensive .

It's OK. My easy-going and forgiving nature will allow me to excuse your transgression. It was a long time ago...

[togarika]

The failure of Playbook OS and BB10 aren't in the nuts and bolts of the operating system but in walking away from a already mature ecosystem BB7 and trying to start a new ecosystem from scratch which was suicide. RIM realized this much too late which why they added the android runtime to try to piggy back Google's ecosystem . Google started to require android apps deeper dependency on google services which essentially killed BlackBerrys strategy. In 2011 when the playbook came out Blackberrys brand was starting to become toxic . In 2013 when BB10 launched Blackberrys brand was Ebola level toxic. BB10 was dead on arrival

It's true that it switch from BB7 to BB10 was not done properly. The reason why BlackBerry is in this mess it is in, is that they abandoned everything from the previous OS. They dumped developers on BBOS and did it again with PlayBook OS. Lazaridis made the mistake of not wanting any Java on the new OS. Instead of an Android runtime they should have made a runtime that could run apps for BBOS on the PlayBook OS and continued with the support on BB10. Switching from Java to cascades could have been done over time with support from BlackBerry. They would still have had developers developing for them up to now had they done that.

BlackBerry BB10 forever

[co4nd]

If QNX had as much value as stated on this forum Apple, Google, or Microsoft would be trying to buy Blackberry get it. The fact that none of them are interested speaks volumes.

[DonHB]

I won't, because they (almost certainly) won't. But that's a separate issue from your thesis, that BB10 is preferable to Android for the company's phone production. In fact, BB10 was a proven market failure from Day 1. With Android, they at least have a thin chance. Though as with nuclear war, sometimes the only winning move is not to play.

Providing an Android run-time that properly supports Flow and integrates with any future native applications (using Qt or some other cross platform framework) while avoiding GMS is picking an alternative playground. BlackBerry, even with the market position it had when developing BB10, was the only company in a position to shift the market dynamics of Android. To suggest that BB10 was a market failure on day one implies that neither time nor salesmanship are required for a product to succeed.

[DonHB]

So Linux in the terms of Jolla and the others are also failures because of the Linux OS and Windows 10 is a failure too? The OS isn't a factor in a success or failures of a phone.

But with the appropriate features in the OS, the OS could be a factor in a devices success. It is part of the overall design of a platform.

[DonHB]

Symbian is RTOS and it was quite successful in its time.

Good point.

In the grand scheme of things though I doubt the kernel matters much, at least as far as sales and marketshare go.

When the architectural advantages of the operating system are not leveraged into features that are used by the device your correct.

[DonHB]

The failure of Playbook OS and BB10 aren't in the nuts and bolts of the operating system but in walking away from a already mature ecosystem BB7 and trying to start a new ecosystem from scratch which was suicide. RIM realized this much too late which why they added the android runtime to try to piggy back Google's ecosystem . Google started to require android apps deeper dependency on google services which essentially killed BlackBerrys strategy. In 2011 when the playbook came out Blackberrys brand was starting to become toxic . In 2013 when BB10 launched Blackberrys brand was Ebola level toxic. BB10 was dead on arrival

Actually, if the first apps on BB10 were Flow enabled Android apps it would have allowed developers to use their existing software assets and minimized the technology deficit developers were facing with Cascades. And BlackBerry could have done the embrace and extend of Android in a way that had been alien to Microsoft--maintaining compatibility with what was originally embraced. Helping to ensure that Android remained non-proprietary.

[DonHB]

It's true that it switch from BB7 to BB10 was not done properly. The reason why BlackBerry is in this mess it is in, is that they abandoned everything from the previous OS. They dumped developers on BBOS and did it again with PlayBook OS. Lazaridis made the mistake of not wanting any Java on the new OS. Instead of an Android runtime they should have made a runtime that could run apps for BBOS on the PlayBook OS and continued with the support on BB10. Switching from Java to cascades could have been done over time with support from BlackBerry. They would still have had developers developing for them up to now had they done that.

Android uses Java for development. It would have made sense to utilize the Android runtime and provide it as the first development tool. It would have been a gesture to BlackBerry's existing developers and Android developers as well. This may have brought BB10 to market earlier and I agree native development tools could have followed.

[DonHB]

If QNX had as much value as stated on this forum Apple, Google, or Microsoft would be trying to buy Blackberry get it. The fact that none of them are interested speaks volumes.

The companies you speak of all had in house experience with the platforms they chose to use. BlackBerry bought the experience with the purchase of QNX.

[PygmySurfer]

No

No what? Are you suggesting it's the scheduler that does make the RTOS "real-time"? Or that an RTOS is not defined as an OS capable of processing data immediately without buffering?

[app_Developer]

No what? Are you suggesting it's the scheduler that does make the RTOS "real-time"? Or that an RTOS is not defined as an OS capable of processing data immediately without buffering?

Two sides of the same coin, right? The intended outcome is processing a signal in real time (min delay). How the OS actually achieves this (the actual implementation) is by having/using a scheduler which is optimized for this particular requirement.

For example the radios in most phones (Priv included) use an RTOS because that is an application where you have a small embedded system which must be able to keep up with the incoming and outgoing radio traffic with minimal delay and minimum jitter. The way that it is actually achieved is by managing the radio tasks with a real time scheduler.

[DonHB]

No what? Are you suggesting it's the scheduler that does make the RTOS "real-time"? Or that an RTOS is not defined as an OS capable of processing data immediately without buffering?

The latter.

[Bluenoser63]

If QNX had as much value as stated on this forum Apple, Google, or Microsoft would be trying to buy Blackberry get it. The fact that none of them are interested speaks volumes.

No. It means that they have made their platform and sticking with it. We are simply refuting the point that QNX was the wrong decision for a platform and wrong for a phone OS. Both of which are wrong statements.

[Bluenoser63]

But with the appropriate features in the OS, the OS could be a factor in a devices success. It is part of the overall design of a platform.

Most appropriate features can be designed for any OS. It is just a feature of the platform UX and functionality, not the OS.

[DonHB]

Most appropriate features can be designed for any OS. It is just a feature of the platform UX and functionality, not the OS.

The architecture of the QNX operating system bridges more than thirty years of operating system history. The POSIX support dates back to beginnings of *nix and the microkernel and messaging foundation date back to the '80s while Neutrino itself dates back to 2001. The *nix underpinnings of POSIX are approaching 50 years old. If you parallel the development of cars' engines with the commercialization of operating systems we are stuck with the combustion engine and never progressed to hybrid engines let alone electric (like Tesla).

A lot of promising operating systems research in the '90s (distributed computing among them) were abandoned because of what I believe were problems in the choice of OS as the foundation of this research. Mach a failed microkernel design, tried to utilize many of the concepts used in QNX 4 and and the SMP additions in Neutrino, but couldn't get performance competitive with monolithic kernels. Much distributed computing research was tied to the Unix OS and failed, while piecemeal operating system changes of other research did not produce the benefits at the level desired.

Neutrino has a feature called Transparent Distributed Processing (TDP), but it doesn't incorporate security protections that would be needed to utilize it across an unprotected internet. If TDP would incorporate a new security model it could be foundational in both IoE and embedded focused IoT and create an "ecosystem" (there has to be a better word) that BlackBerry is missing.

Think of a scenario where the UX is separated conceptually from the compute infrastructure and all the devices you, I or a business owns can be used for the most effective delivery of services. In a sense the OS links devices closer to the hardware level and they appear as a unified compute resource to applications. This is different than how Apple implements Continuity and how Microsoft implements Continuum. Both rely heavily on cloud infrastructure while this would be peer-to-peer. Think how Information sharing of both software and data would work in such a computing model. Further think how these distributed systems would interact with each other over the Internet and preserve security and privacy. It makes the concept of transparent DRM a necessity and changes how the cloud would be utilized making it more secure.

If you consider the companies that BBRY purchased you realize that the understanding the people at these companies have are uniquely suited to build such a system. WatchDox has a system to distribute yet restrict access to information between individuals employed by a single entity and among many entities that could solve the information sharing in a network of distributed systems. Good along with the developers of BES and AtHoc could incorporate autonomous computing as functional replacements for BES and Good software that would become part of the OS. AtHoc's expertise along with WatchDox's could design the hierarchy of a distributed network of networks.

Can Android be extended to do this? While a Linux project is trying to copy the messaging features of Neutrino, because the messaging infrastructure is intrinsic to Neutrino's architecture the Linux project is not likely to scale from sensor networks to networks of large scale systems as would QNX's OS. BlackBerry would continue to sell their software for iOS and Android but would be unnecessary on for this future OS.

.02

[co4nd]

No. It means that they have made their platform and sticking with it. We are simply refuting the point that QNX was the wrong decision for a platform and wrong for a phone OS. Both of which are wrong statements.

I can understand your point on the Phone OS, since they already have their mobile platforms, however if the QNX platform had an clear cut monetary value outside of the Phone OS, the big three would be in a bidding war for blackberry. The non Phone OS market for QNX has always been overstated on this forum.

[Bluenoser63]

I can understand your point on the Phone OS, since they already have their mobile platforms, however if the QNX platform had an clear cut monetary value outside of the Phone OS, the big three would be in a bidding war for blackberry. The non Phone OS market for QNX has always been overstated on this forum.

Paying for the price for BlackBerry for a product that only makes you 4 dollars a unit to a total of 100 million dollars isn't a smart business decision. Everyone thinks that they have a platform for the future. Apple doesn't care about IOT, Google can't push ads to a car, Google has it's own IOT with it's Alphabet companies. (NEST is an IOT device) and MS has it's own systems for IOT so why would anyone want QNX?

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

Paying for the price for BlackBerry for a product that only makes you 4 dollars a unit to a total of 100 million dollars isn't a smart business decision. Everyone thinks that they have a platform for the future. Apple doesn't care about IOT, Google can't push ads to a car, Google has it's own IOT with it's Alphabet companies. (NEST is an IOT device) and MS has it's own systems for IOT so why would anyone want QNX?

Harmon didn't want QNX more than they wanted $200Million..... and QNX was the big deal in automotive even back then.

Software is cheap... outside of computers and smartphones most people don't know what software is running their TV, Car or enver their smart thermostat.

[co4nd]

Harmon didn't want QNX more than they wanted $200Million..... and QNX was the big deal in automotive even back then.

Software is cheap... outside of computers and smartphones most people don't know what software is running their TV, Car or enver their smart thermostat.

Not sure how cheap an OS is.

HP paid $1 billion for Palm and then let it die. But HP has been a corporate moron for a while.

Apple paid $400 million for NeXT and the got OS X, iOS and Steve Jobs out of it. That turned out to be an exceptionally good investment. But at the time $400 million was a lot of money for Apple.

I wonder how much Microsoft has pissed away developing Windows Phone, doubt they think software is cheap.

[Jerry A]

I can understand your point on the Phone OS, since they already have their mobile platforms, however if the QNX platform had an clear cut monetary value outside of the Phone OS, the big three would be in a bidding war for blackberry. The non Phone OS market for QNX has always been overstated on this forum.

The big three didn't need to buy an updated OS. They already had working and scalable bases.

BlackBerry on the other hand needed something scalable without starting from scratch.

[DonHB]

Apple purchased NEXT in 1996 whose OS is the basis of iOS (and OS X). Google purchased Android in 2005 based on Linux which they had been customizing for their computer clusters. BlackBerry purchased QNX in 2010. Android was introduced to the market in 2007 and BB10 was introduced in 2013. Both had similar time frames from company purchase to product introduction.

[keliew]

It sounds as if it could be the turning point of something great for BlackBerry, compared to Apple's history.

BlackBerry Passport via CB10

[sorinv]

Digging through troy post lol found one from a few about his post regards RTOS

I am sorry but none of that Troy's post about RTOS for phones makes sense to me.

A smartphone SHOULD be a mobile laptop plus a phone, not a dummy device used by people who don't know or care what a file manager is.

But Apple Google, Microsoft, have other agendas. They do not want to butcher their laptop/tablet or data mining businesses, so they don't care about the consumer.

They care only about how to strip the consumer of as much money or data (i.e. money) as possible.

Blackberry had no laptop or data mining business... so a mobile laptop made a lot of sense. That idea was killed early by Chen.

At least that's how it looks from a hardware engineer's perspective who wants to carry only one device which performs the phone, tablet and laptop functions and does not want others to have access to his data.
Having heard Lazaridis talk on these issues in 2011 on BBC World News, I am pretty convinced that that is how he saw things, too.