[extisis]

They needed a new platform. A new foundation. They didn't need to create a completely new and alien experience. Newer OS releases seem to show a move back to what users liked about the old BBOS. Too bad it took them this long to realize it.

i'm sorry you feel the BlackBerry 10 experience as "alien". kinda weird, but to each his own. BB10 was never meant to re-live the old BBOS days, hence missing BBOS features. not a huge deal for me though, i am very productive with my Z10

[badiyee]

I just read about supporting BB7 indefintely, and it makes me wonder, why did BB need to change OS's at all? I mean, there are a lot of things I like about bb10, but when I look at my 9900, I don't really see why they couldnt have modified the OS instead of creating a whole new one and burning a whole 2-3 years doing so.

For those of you that know a bit more of what would be involved, would it have been easier to:

introduce the peek and flow concepts to BBOS,
make BBOS crash less
and upgrade the ram and cpu to work at an acceptable speed?

I love BB10, but when I loook at my 9900, I think all it needed was a LOT more speed (ram and cpu), some more stability, a non crappy camera, and a lot more apps. How hard would it have been for them to do this instead of building a whole new os?

Or did they really just hit a wall with the OS and they couldnt improve it anymore? It seems unfortunate for BB to have two OS's to support.

Flashback to the second iPhone, then iPhone 3G and 3GS, that time.


If I recall correctly, The BlackBerry 9800 (Torch) was just released around the same time as the iPhone 4 (that iPhone 4 was a real head turner back then), and depending on who's side on you're on, you may want to argue whether it was necessary or not to have an upgraded OS or not.

If you were just another BlackBerry customer who wanted a communication device, it was "okay". The OS7 came in about 1 year later, with much needed improvements, tweaks, and hardware upgrades. If you remember the "Liquid graphics" broohaha on OS6 that made its way ONLY into OS7 devices, you'll get the picture. This was the point that the RIM management was emphaszing on, tools not toys agenda. They were "politically" correct that phones are tools not toys, but the market doesn't believe that.

If you were a developer, chances were you did not want to develop for BlackBerry legacy OS due to the difficult nature of programming for the BB6/7 OS, versus the (growing and still growing) market of iOS and Android, and the much open-ness in developing for the 2 ecosystems (I was also informed it was much easier to program for the iOS and Android OS back then compared to the ones in BB legacy devices).


If you were the hipster crowd, you'll want a handheld device that could do as much as possible, irregardless whether its practical or not. (let's face it, people have been modding android phones into every imaginable form of controller / lightweight client, even since 2.3 days), and BBOs does not fit into that, at all. When I say hipster, I meant as in people who knew that the device they were carrying is a phone, primarily a communication tool, but want to shove in as much functionality into the device). If you can fit a media player, you tried. if you can fit a camera, you tried. If you can remote control your car, house, girlfriends, wives, dogs, cocroaches, consoles, anything via the phone, you tried. And back then it was cool to wow others like that.

If you're the management, you've got all the employees screaming "let us do BYOD! I can bring my own device, receive your communication on my own device, and I want to bring my own device to work!". I suspect for a big portion of the BYOD movement, was all about playing games, Facebook, etc more than about receiving emails on your own device that you bring to work, but then that's another argument for another place and another time. But with people wanting BYOD, they want to bring in devices that can do MORE than just communicating (for whatever purposes intended at work). You're hard pressed to keep your workers happy, but you also want some form of control if anything happens to the device if its stolen. Remember, for RIM's BES5, it was just impossible to do a multi-device-cross platform MDM. (except, maybe, some Nokia devices).

Somewhere around that time, if I remember correctly,it was still in 2010 when all these happened, RIM (back then) announced they acquired QNX.

They probably were late in panicking, but they did something.


But fast-forwarding to the present, there were some things that they did that did not turned out, and things they did that probably people want / don't want them to.


a) they jumped from Qualcomm to Texas Instruments. Then shortly after T.I says "sorry we're not doing semiconductors anymore, we're going embedded" and kicks RIM right in the gonuds. RIM goes back to Qualcomm and forever gets screwed by Qualcomm.

b) They could have grafted the entire Java BBOS into PlayBook OS and BB10, but for whatever political reasons they made, they opted not to use Java. I'm not so sure today, but if memory serves me right Java functionality is still crippled, not entirely devoid of.

c) They choose not to adopt the "hack and grow" strategy that Google initially deployed for Android. For political reasons. If they had chosen that, I'm not so sure. Probably go down south like WebOS (its not exactly dead, revived by LG, nice thing though) or go up, though maybe not becoming number 1.

d) Somewhere in the middle they found that the BBOS's infrastructure is not entirely compatible for the needs of the BB10. If I recall correctly, from GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSUPA, HSDPA, RIM had re-wrote the stacks ground up, providing for the much needed compression on hardware and software that was one of the core of the tech in legacy OS. What i'm not so sure is if they had done the same for the 4G, since when RIM and BlackBerry developed BB10 from scratch without grafting BBOS 7 code (ala copy pasta) into BB10.


bottom line: it was circumstances that forced RIM to develop a new OS.

[KermEd]

I just read about supporting BB7 indefintely, and it makes me wonder, why did BB need to change OS's at all? I mean, there are a lot of things I like about bb10, but when I look at my 9900, I don't really see why they couldnt have modified the OS instead of creating a whole new one and burning a whole 2-3 years doing so.

introduce the peek and flow concepts to BBOS,
make BBOS crash less
and upgrade the ram and cpu to work at an acceptable speed?

No, BBOS was already running on bandaid and ductape. The OS, as a developer, was practically unusable. And the only fix was to completely and thankfully kill Java like the ugly beast it is and bury it somewhere shallow.

If Bb10 was not released, as a developer, I would have left the platform.

Posted via CB from my LE

[trroystory]

That's fantastic.. why didn't they think of that?

I mean it's not like it crashed and froze because it was pushed to the peak of its capability or anything. They just forgot to program it to crash less!

Man.. if only they had thought of telling it not to do crash millions could have been saved!






Sorry OP.. I had to.. lmao



Posted via CB10

Lmfao lololololololololololololololololol your so wrong! But made the best comment ever lol... sorry OP

Posted via CB10

[hanexs]

That's ok, I actually laughed too, but that doesn't change it from being a moronic and childish response (sorry just_luc).

"Telling your program to crash less" is core component of programming, catching your errors and ensuring your program doesn't crash is what quality programming is all about. This can be done properly in machine code, C, Ruby and even Java, it could also be done improperly and it seems that is exactly what RIM allowed their programmers to do. It can be done with small projects and with huge projects. I know "They just forgot to program it to crash less!" does not sound elegant, but that is exactly what they forgot, quality assurance can be done in any language and on any project.

Now the people who had informed responses who mentioned how much of a mess BBOS was, and therefore how hard it would be to fix/uprgade may have a point. But lets not pretend it was a small task to make BB10, seemed to be about 3+ years of development and even then it lost a lot of features and apps.


I don't want to come off as anti BB10, I was actually pretty pumped to get a Q10 until I noticed it didn't have an app I need (it may have it now, SOTI to control my screen off my pc?). So I have ended up using my 9900 for a little longer while I wait and see if they can get their mess sorted out, or whether I should be looking at android. The ease of using android apks on the new leak sound pretty neat.

[hanexs]

There was no need to replace the OS. It was a boneheaded decision by Lazaridis & Co. that ruined BlackBerry.

There's no reason why any software could not be rewritten to accommodate new features, new hardware, new performance requirements. Microsoft Windows when it first appeared was not designed for modern computers, for Internet, etc. Yet it was rewritten multiple times, rearchitected and redesigned, and features were added so it was able to successfully compete for decades. It was never fully replaced - it always was backwards compatible with old applications and retained the key UI features over the years (until Windows 8, but that's another sad story).

The core of BBOS is C++; Java was added later. The BlackBerry 950 and subsequent models were pure C++ devices, and they were fast! After Java was added, it all went downhill from there.

The key problem was that at RIM, mostly due to mismanagement of software teams and bad hires, the device code was becoming more and more of an unfixable mess. RIM was never anywhere near in software productivity and quality of Google and Apple. Many of the senior and middle management in software teams had no clue about software development, and were more interested in turf wars and career advancement. Senior executives installed their friends (many coming from Nortel and AT&T) as new managers, who hired entirely new teams of bad developers, without asking a single technical questions. There were a lot of really smart people at RIM, but there were even more bad people.

By 2010-2011, teams barely had time to fix bugs and performance issues. Device software could not compete on features with Apple or Google. So Mike L, instead of figuring out how to fix the software, decided to start from scratch and bought QNX to replace current OS.

After QNX acquisition, RIM divided into two camps, and senior management started internal fight that lasted over a year; it was between 'legacy' camp (BIS/BES/BBOS) and 'new guys' (QNX). There was an idea of developing two systems in parallel; then teams tried to port JVM from BBOS to QNX (sic!), which was actually demoed during BlackBerry World 2011 (eventually this was a miserable failure due to mounting technical difficulties and was abandoned, after hundreds of developers spent months on this). Then Apple came with iPad and management geniuses rushed to release a Playbook, on QNX, with no software whatsoever. Nobody internally had a clue what a strategy is and where the company is headed.

After JVM port failed, a second boneheaded decision was made. QNX - based devices would not support legacy BIS/BES protocols. IMAP and ICAL had to be implemented on top of QNX. BIS would be superfluous now. QNX would not connect to old BES so new BES would have to be written. From scratch. Old apps would not run on QNX so new ones would have to be written. Massive layoffs started; managers would now fight to death to stay relevant. Teams would not collaborate to ensure they are not obsoleted by the QNX camp and are not the next ones out the door. Projects were delayed. Mixed signals and resource reallocations led to nothing being spent on BBOS, which was pretty much frozen after (much delayed) BB7. Lack of new devices led to legacy sales falling off the cliff. From a platform of the future, BB10 now became the one and only savior.

Were the problems with BBOS? Sure. Could they be fixed? IMO, yes. There was nothing that could not be changed in the old OS. It's software. At a fraction of time and resources, if right people could have been brought in to manage software teams and make the right hires (and fires), RIM could have fixed BBOS in a year or so, while making several small, bugfix level releases like BB7, with better hardware, smaller # of device models, while preserving BIS/BES and app compatibility. Torch browser was great and was getting better and better; app situation should have been addressed by giving out $$$ to developers, and much earlier; platform and app development should have been migrated towards C++; the rest are features where RIM should have been able to catch up. It would not have stopped the decline, but decline would be much less steep if RIM would (a) avoid the uncertainty associated with new OS and financial situation, (b) maintain compatibility with old apps and features, (c) maintain connectivity with old BIS/BES and (d) regularly release devices with newer hardware and features.

Disclaimer: I used to work for RIM but I was not on BBOS. If any former RIM folks are reading this and could shed more light on BBOS story, please post. It's a sad tale of company decline and it would be good to learn its lessons.

Some of this was evident, and predictable but other parts of your reply were really informative, thanks a lot for writing it.

[KermEd]

You like to see your text I think. I didn't read the posts - its a bit long.

BBOS was on its last breath and deserved to die. It was a fundamentally flawed system, unsustainable and in the midst of death.

Could they have kept it alive for another year, and slowly kept bleeding to death until they vanished overnight? Sure they could, and then they would be building BB10 while in an even worse state.

BBOS is dead, it belongs dead, and was the first critical step in changing the company. The biggest mistake they made was keeping with it so long. Now, they need time and to reduce operating expenses to profitable levels.

Your assuming BBRY wants you as a consumer right now - they do not. They want businesses to get on board with BB10, which will catch the 'one' missing app on your BB10 devices that is clearly replaceable with a hundred other (better) apps, when and if they return to consumers.

Addendum: As for old devices running faster - yes C was a factor. But the fact the OS was significantly simpler, functions were limited, was missing the piles of bandaid and ductape - it made a much bigger difference. When a platform becomes unstable and generates system critical failures (and no - that's not always catchable and the fault of app developers) it's time to either abandon or rebuild. And thank god they abandoned when they did. An OS as a platform should not last forever. It needs to adapt or die, and companies need to put that plan to paper as part of their yearly analysis.

Posted via CB from my LE

[extisis]

I don't want to come off as anti BB10, I was actually pretty pumped to get a Q10 until I noticed it didn't have an app I need (it may have it now, SOTI to control my screen off my pc?).

that's... the only reason you're not pumped to get a Q10? Typically it's used in your hands... would like to know more why you would want to use it contrarily?

[belfastdispatcher]

that's... the only reason you're not pumped to get a Q10? Typically it's used in your hands... would like to know more why you would want to use it contrarily?

Ever her people asking for BBM for the desktop? SOTI basically does that and more.

[extisis]

Ever her people asking for BBM for the desktop? SOTI basically does that and more.

i haven't really... but i don't see how the absence of that would leave someone not hyped about getting a Q10. I have a Z10 and would kill for a Q10, just to have the qwerty.

[belfastdispatcher]

i haven't really... but i don't see how the absence of that would leave someone not hyped about getting a Q10. I have a Z10 and would kill for a Q10, just to have the qwerty.

You don't have to understand his particular reasons, but surely you can understand that it's yet another feature missing from BB10 when moving from BBOS.

[extisis]

You don't have to understand his particular reasons, but surely you can understand that it's yet another feature missing from BB10 when moving from BBOS.

the thing that gets me is that it's just 1 reason. that's definitely not a popular one but i can understand you two guys feeling it's a must-have feature.

edit: but wait... are talking about a feature? or an app? if it's an app.. can't really hate BB for not having it on BB10 right?

[belfastdispatcher]

the thing that gets me is that it's just 1 reason. that's definitely not a popular one but i can understand you two guys feeling it's a must-have feature.

edit: but wait... are talking about a feature? or an app? if it's an app.. can't really hate BB for not having it on BB10 right?

Does it matter? If it's not there it's not there. There a re plenty BB own apps that didn't make it to BB10 like BB News and Social Feeds, other made it but are badly crippled like BB Protect.

Just a few examples why Legacy users are skipping BB10.

[johnnyuk]

At the same time apps were never crashing, they would slow down the OS and you'd know it would need a reboot but after seeing how on Bb10 and iphone 5 apps can crush and quit so randomly it makes BBOS lol stable.

I haven't had a day where both my Q10 and iphone 5 haven't crashed an app.

And what doesn't happen on BB10 or iOS is that app crashing and taking down the whole OS with it. That's what could and did happen with BBOS because of the way it's kernel was designed back in the very early 2000's.

Apps will crash. It's a fact. They are made by people. People stuff things up and make mistakes. What matters is how the OS deals with an app crashing. It most certainly shouldn't allow one to take the OS down and require a hard reset or "battery pull" (BBOS).

Posted via CB10

[johnnyuk]

BB7 could use BIS and the carrier network directly, for example while watching YouTube, on BB6 and before once you clicked on the YouTube video the BIS would disconnect, starting with BB7 it didn't.

So you didn't have to use BIS for everything and it didn't have anything to do with the OS, the speed limit was not in the OS.

It was the huge latency of connecting with a browser to anything over the NOC using BIS (or BES) that gave the 'user experience' of poor performance on 3G compared to other smartphone. Once the connection had been established the throughput was ok.

That latency was just another nail in the coffin for BIS when it came to seeing if it was up to the job of giving people a modern smartphone experience with LTE networks.

I think with BBOS6 you were maybe suffering from the YouTube problems that seemed to hit different people at random back then. It worked ok for some but not others, either due to bugs in OS6 on different hardware, the conversion/playing of YouTube streams or both:

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...os-6-a-549370/


Posted via CB10

[johnnyuk]

I was pretty pissed off the other day when the eBay app crashed when I was just about to list something. Had to start all over again. You would be too I'm sure.

That's a horrible Android app from EBay, the mobile site works beautifully in the excellent BB10 browser however. I doubt Ebay will be bothering to make a native BB10 app unfortunately.

Posted via CB10

[johnnyuk]

If QNX was so good and it's the future for BB how come nobody thought of turning it into a real OS in the last 30 years?

Plenty of people have thought about using QNX for their Operating Systems over the years. In the late 90's it was going to be the replacement kernel for the Amiga desktop computers until whoever owned the company that year ran out of money and sold them on again. It's been considered and selected before but just never got to go-live stage.

Sure it's perfect as an imbedded OS but as a mobile OS? It was all every obvious in the PB OS where no apps can talk together, they all work separate.

Sorry what do you mean by "no apps can talk together"?

If it's what I think you mean on the PlayBook whereby you can't open a photo for example in the stock picture app and the tell it "I want to open this in a full Photo Editor app I downloaded from BlackBerry World" that's not a limitations of QNX. That's just BlackBerry and their lack of coding an invokation system in PBOS.

Surely you noticed the excellent and seamless invokation system in BB10? Open some media or a native app that deals with media and content and tap the overflow menu where you can "Open in..." and "Share" to anything that is written to support the invokation system?

Posted via CB10

[belfastdispatcher]

And what doesn't happen on BB10 or iOS is that app crashing and taking down the whole OS with it. That's what could and did happen with BBOS because of the way it's kernel was designed back in the very early 2000's.

Apps will crash. It's a fact. They are made by people. People stuff things up and make mistakes. What matters is how the OS deals with an app crashing. It most certainly shouldn't allow one to take the OS down and require a hard reset or "battery pull" (BBOS).

Posted via CB10

Obviously you didn't bother reading the post I was replying to otherwise you wouldn't be repeating the same thing again.

[belfastdispatcher]

That's a horrible Android app from EBay, the mobile site works beautifully in the excellent BB10 browser however. I doubt Ebay will be bothering to make a native BB10 all unfortunately.

Posted via CB10

Actually it was the eBay app on the iPhone.

[belfastdispatcher]

Plenty of people have thought about using QNX for their Operating Systems over the years. In the late 90's it was going to be the replacement kernel for the Amiga desktop computers until whoever owned the company that year ran out of money and sold them on again. It's been considered and selected before but just never got to go-live stage.



Sorry what do you mean by "no apps can talk together"?

If it's what I think you mean on the PlayBook whereby you can't open a photo for example in the stock picture app and the tell it "I want to open this in a full Photo Editor app I downloaded from BlackBerry World" that's not a limitations of QNX. That's just BlackBerry and their lack of coding an invokation system in PBOS.

Surely you noticed the excellent and seamless invokation system in BB10? Open some media or a native app that deals with media and content and tap the overflow menu where you can "Open in..." and "Share" to anything that is written to support the invokation system?

Posted via CB10

Sure it's excellent and seamless now but still a long way from BBOS, Social Feeds was amazing for example and BBOS didn't need separate setups for Hub and app for social networks. Notice how you reed notifications in the Hub but they don't actually sync with the app to mark them as read?

Still a long way from BBOS integration of apps my friend. Why do you think many if us loved it so much?

[rthonpm]

This is an odd argument as NT is an example of what I am proposing/inquiring about. I thought the core/kernel of NT is part of windows 8 as well at windows phone 8? Isn't this a successful example of upgrading an os rather then starting from scratch?

Using a ten year old OS isn't what I was inquiring about, rather I am just wondering if the considerable amount of work poured into BB10, could it have been better redirected at improving/modernizing BBOS.

And my point was that BBOS is a ten year old OS, so throwing new hardware at it wouldn't do any good.

Even Microsoft dumped DOS as its core system for NT years ago, and eventually The NT kernel will be replaced too.

BBOS was made as a pager interface. No matter what magic pixie dust you throw at it, you can't make a compelling argument for continuing it's use for modern smartphones. Expectations of functionality have well exceeded what it will ever be able to manage.

A very compelling argument can be made that the underwhelming performance of the operating system is what drove people to iOS and Android. BlackBerry only had the option to dump the bloated and laggy OS it had built in favour of something more extensible. Look at the changes in BB10 just from its introduction a year ago: that kind of development pace would be unheard of with BBOS.

The delays on top of delays did more damage to BB10 so that by the time it was released the market was already soured against it. I have yet to see an argument in favour of BBOS that couldn't have been cut and paste from the Luddites who want XP support to continue forever. Time and technology have moved past you.

Posted via CB10

[belfastdispatcher]

And my point was that BBOS is a ten year old OS, so throwing new hardware at it wouldn't do any good.

Even Microsoft dumped DOS as its core system for NT years ago, and eventually The NT kernel will be replaced too.

BBOS was made as a pager interface. No matter what magic pixie dust you throw at it, you can't make a compelling argument for continuing it's use for modern smartphones. Expectations of functionality have well exceeded what it will ever be able to manage.

A very compelling argument can be made that the underwhelming performance of the operating system is what drove people to iOS and Android. BlackBerry only had the option to dump the bloated and laggy OS it had built in favour of something more extensible. Look at the changes in BB10 just from its introduction a year ago: that kind of development pace would be unheard of with BBOS.

The delays on top of delays did more damage to BB10 so that by the time it was released the market was already soured against it. I have yet to see an argument in favour of BBOS that couldn't have been cut and paste from the Luddites who want XP support to continue forever. Time and technology have moved past you.

Posted via CB10

For the last year or so it has been those BBOS Luddites that kept BlackBerry alive by continuing to buy legacy devices. Without them BB would be now dead.

[lnichols]

For the last year or so it has been those BBOS Luddites that kept BlackBerry alive by continuing to buy legacy devices. Without them BB would be now dead.

I would say it is more businesses/government replacing broke BBOS devices or devices for new hires still using BES5 and the emerging markets buying cheap BBOS phones (that BlackBerry loses money on the hardware sale). Their isn't a huge, loyal BBOS base out there buying high end BBOS phones (Bold 9900, 9810, 9850/60). Understandable since BES10 wasn't Enterprise ready until 7 months ago. Will be interesting to see how things look this year as businesses either migrate to BES10 or away from BES all together.

Posted via CB10

[ubizmo]

I think there's an important distinction to be made between an OS and its features. The OS itself includes the underlying architecture and UI features. BBOS has many UI features that BB10 lacks, and legacy users are right to complain about this, since these features made the legacy experience as satisfying as it was for many people. These features include seamless app integration and fine-grained control over notifications, as well as some very polished native apps (Not everybody used BBOS's native "To Do" app, but even with all the resources of Google Play it's hard to find one that's as good).

The underlying architecture of BBOS, however, is what made the legacy experience as unsatisfying as it was for many people, with hourglassing, memory leaks, and general sluggishness.

Personally, I'm persuaded (by those who seem to know what they're talking about) that a new OS was needed, both for the issues just mentioned and for the platform to have a future. But I don't question the point that the many UI features from BBOS that are missing in BB10 are problematic.

I'm not going to pretend to know why so many legacy UI features are missing from BB10. It could have been organizational dysfunction or it could have been just the inherent difficulties of getting BB10 out the door. More likely, it was both.

I take the view that they really did need a new OS, but they also needed, and still need, to retain more of the distinctive legacy BlackBerry experience, in terms of features and functionality.

[belfastdispatcher]

I would say it is more businesses/government replacing broke BBOS devices or devices for new hires still using BES5 and the emerging markets buying cheap BBOS phones (that BlackBerry loses money on the hardware sale). Their isn't a huge, loyal BBOS base out there buying high end BBOS phones (Bold 9900, 9810, 9850/60). Understandable since BES10 wasn't Enterprise ready until 7 months ago. Will be interesting to see how things look this year as businesses either migrate to BES10 or away from BES all together.

Posted via CB10

Well, enterprises can be and probably are Luddites too