[agolongo]

I'm sorry but some people are misconstruing what my thread starter was about. I'm not talking about a feature comparison between something made in the year 2001 vs. 2013. I'm referring to the competiveness and quality of the these OSs with respect in the time period they were released as 1.0 products in the marketplace. You were not a happy camper using OS X in 2001 neither were you ecstatic with Windows Vista in 2006. We all know that OS X grew up to be competitive and Vista turned into 7 another fine OS release, but they didn't start life that way.

We are privileged to be dealing with an OS like BB10 that is so solid from the get go.

[agolongo]

This would work if Blackberry was competing against the iPhone 1. I dont think you can say to potential customers..."We know our software is lacking, but just give us five years and we will be good to go".

I'm not comparing features of 2007 to that of 2013

[agolongo]

"Yes, I'm sorry, but this is a completely erroneous perspective in all relevant ways:

tech perspective - not comparable, as tech builds on itself - both the ideas and the manufacturing. To make any meaningful comparison of a tech aspect, for example (one of many) if one is to look at the feature set, it isn't appropriate to compare to a first release 1, 2, 5, 10, 100 years ago. It must be compared to it's current peers.

business perspective - completely non sequitur. The product isn't up against a 5 year old iphone or even winphone of 2 years ago....thinking this way, even a little, is absolute disaster, especially in fast moving tech

customer perspective - cannot be expected to give you brownie points for your first-try, and they would be foolish to bank on future improvements/release - especially vague unpromised ones - as even the ones explicitly promised have a history of going out the window in the tech field

I am sure when Chevy releases one of it's countless new rattle-box cars (forget the last 10 times we said this - THIS model is the one where we've reached new high standards), it's feature set will compare well to the first model Cavalier. In fact I'm sure it will compare well to a 1978 Honda Civic. That doesn't make it a good car.

What this is - to be very blunt - in an exercise in self-serving irrational thinking. It is patting oneself on the back by making clearly unfair, erroneous, and non-relevant comparisons. It is one thing for fanatics to do this....while I don't think it's good to encourage ill-reasoned thinking, it can't hurt the company, but I certainly hope this kind of thinking - even a heavily watered down version - is not occurring at any level within RIM. "

You didn't understand my statement. I'm not doing a product feature shootout on different products made in different era's. By-the-way new Chevy's don't rattle anymore Honda's do, did I just blow your mind?

[cckgz4]

I don't agree for the simple fact that nobody gave those phones a pass when they were in their infancy stages. You all ragged on them. So....

[FSeverino]

They were much less polished and problematic OSs by today's standards. Those OSs were also competitive "TODAY" ("today" being their respective launch dates). You probably don't remember 2007.

yes... but for iOS there was not competition, and for android there was only one competitor... so by default both would be in contention on release.

[FSeverino]

Actually no. Any implications come from the fanboy bubble many live in. Generally all's I point out are things that are factually incorrect and how Android does many things better (from my viewpoint). Of course, now with BB10 released, a lot of those discrepancies are smaller. Was I a fan of BBOS 7? No.. But judging from market share.. I'd say I wasn't alone.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

I didnt read the back and forth, but if his 'facts' are wrong and you reply with opinion how exactly does that solve anything...

[richardat]

I'm sorry but some people are misconstruing what my thread starter was about. I'm not talking about a feature comparison between something made in the year 2001 vs. 2013.

You didn't understand my statement. I'm not doing a product feature shootout on different products made in different era's. By-the-way new Chevy's don't rattle anymore Honda's do, did I just blow your mind?

I'm afraid that you didn't understand my statement. I was not making a feature comparison either. I used that as an example "for example (one of many)" of ONE aspect which could be compared in what I labeled the "tech perspective"

I'm referring to the competiveness and quality of the these OSs with respect in the time period they were released as 1.0 products in the marketplace.

OK, that's fine, and corresponds to what I called the "business perspective". First, let's eliminate a subjective term like "quality", unless you care to define it explicitly- along with the metrics to measure it. In terms of competitiveness, as I said, this MUST be measured against it's,,,,,,competitive peers - that's a no-brainer obviously. It isn't compared (in feature set, sales, or any other measure) to other historical first releases.

Where you err on this level in suggesting that ios was somehow behind BB10 in this way. Of course, it wasn't. In fact, I don't know if there has ever been a bigger leap in the phone industry - perhaps the first Blackberries! In any case, the fact is, ios could even be plausibly argued to have no peers in the industry - it was that innovative. If we were to compare it to the BB, Nokia, etc offerings of that time, I think the competitive advantage of the iphone dwarfs BB10 vs current smartphones. I think it fair to say that would be a nearly universal belief. In fact, RIM itself has said this, and that they expect a difficult road ahead. Without getting into argument about it, BB10 is generally competitive with what's out there. ( a little behind, on par, or a little ahead, depending on what is being compared, is the general consensus). That certainly wasn't the case with the iphone in my opinion, and that is quantifiable both in terms of tech/feature set, and now, in terms of sales/marketshare/profit etc.

You were not a happy camper using OS X in 2001 neither were you ecstatic with Windows Vista in 2006. We all know that OS X grew up to be competitive and Vista turned into 7 another fine OS release, but they didn't start life that way.

OK. Now you've lost the plot and are back into subjective and anecdotal personal opinions about products. The fact is, in the perspective you were just claiming to be talking about ie. competitiveness. Neither of those two products showed changes in marketshare analogous to what RIM is hoping for, and each quite arguably, reside in different markets entirely, with no direct competitive peers. (of course the paradigm of OS marketshare is a big topic to get into).

We are privileged to be dealing with an OS like BB10 that is so solid from the get go.

First,I think the word "privileged" is...distasteful in this context. We are not privileged to be offered wares from a corporation. THEY are privileged to have us as consumers, and potential customers. ( I think this comes from the horrible tendency here to....anthropomorphize corporations here) They are not bestowing any favor on us, they are, solely for the purpose of making money, producing goods, in the hopes that you will give them your money. It's as simple as that, and it is exactly the same for RIM, Apple, MS, Google, Samsung, etc. Thus I find this line rather nonsensical, and again, does not appear to have anything to do with your previous premise.

I did write many times in the preceding months that RIM would have to release a "relatively bug free" OS to even have a chance at being successful. That seems to be one thing you are also suggesting; in this we agree. That was their task, and their responsibility, in order to make money. I am not sure exactly how well they've succeeded (given a lot of little anecdotal complaints I'm reading...though I think they've done a relatively good job given the difficulty of the task), however, given the wildly varying technical demands, starting points, and development history, no meaningful comparison in merit can be made.

[richardat]

Apple and Google came to market at a much different time in the wireless industry. If they appeared for the first time today they would face the same challenges as BlackBerry although without the baggage of a tarnished public image. BlackBerry does not have years to reverse its fortunes; at most there are three fiscal quarters but realistically BlackBerry needed to knock it out of the park during 1Q2013 (January through March); the late availability of BlackBerry Z10 in the US market and BlackBerry Q10 globally could negatively impact overall sales. If BlackBerry Z10 sells out in every market, during the associated launch period, into which it is introduced, there will be reason to think the corner has been turned. As to your comment about BlackBerry building up services around the BlackBerry 10 smartphones you seem to forget the decision to drop BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) and its associated data compression and encrypted BBM communication for BlackBerry 10 users..

I am in rough agreement with you. This year is critical...in terms of momentum and profit. I'm not sure why some people would claim they have years.....they most certainly do not. That's why so many people got fired, that's why cost cutting has been critical, that's why the launch and every move is critical. This truly is the end-game for RIM to exist in something close to what it is now. Of course RIM is well aware of this obvious fact, which is why they are still investigating buyouts/mergers/partnerships etc.....or changing their fundamental nature. I suppose there must exist some odd middle ground where RIM just does well enough to limp along, maintaining autonomy, and current paradigm - it would be some mild growth pattern....slightly ahead of overall market growth, where they arrest the losses (at least largely). Odds are though that they will be somewhere above or below this.

[richardat]

Exactly.

When looking at a phone to buy, people aren't going to compare the Z10 to a phone released 5 or 3 years ago... they're going to compare it to their options TODAY.
This is part of the problem Blackberry has - it's tough to sway people away from an iPhone and Android device when that means having to give up monster ecosystems. Almost every review has stated this - and it's hard to argue.
No matter how much you like the Z10, Blackberry needed a game-changer and they couldn't provide it.

But at least now Blackberry has a competitive product - and that's a major victory for the company itself.
The Z10 will sway a small percentage of iPhone/Android users - mainly those who are bored with the UI or wants to concentrate on communications and less on apps. It'll be a small group, but every little bit helps.

Now the 80 million current Blackberry users out there, a larger percentage of them will jump on BB10 - but you can't count on a majority of them since the iOS/Android ecosystem is tough to ignore.

Right now... Blackberry REALLY needs to keep improving - they CANNOT stop.

By the time of the US release, there MUST already be a BB10 update in place to fix nagging issues, improving performance, adding features, etc. The US market is EXTREMELY important and it'll be a tough sell - so they need to put their best foot forward, especially since they have another month to improve and can use Canada and the UK as testers.
They also need to increase the amount of important apps that users expect where-ever they can.

They cannot treat this like the Playbook - this needs to be a constant work in progress without making it feel like we're all beta-testers to an incomplete product.
It needs to evolve into something solid to change the mindshare of the consumer.

Good post.

[cgk]

Are many consumers going into stores and asking "is this competitive relative to a phone from 2007?"

This is news to me.

[collinc93]

I dont believe there is a need to make excuses for what BB has accomplished with this great seamless OS. It is absolutely bonkers to think that ANY OS 1.0 or otherwise wont have issues that the gen users may point out immediately on release. All it simply needs are the tweaks to make it even more smooth. The Lumia 920 had camera issues even though now it seems to be the standard for camera phone. The niggles are things that can be tweaked and updated as more items are placed in the hands of the consumers....I frankly dont think there is a need to be apologetic about anything

[sinsin07]

snip...But at least now Blackberry has a competitive product - and that's a major victory for the company itself....

Victory is determined by net profit. Nothing else matters. Ask Palm.

[Moonbase0ne]

Rickroller,

In another thread you claimed to have RIM stock. Why is that if you think OS is so horrible?

To be realistic, if you were to invest in the stock market, you should probably be doing it for the potential to make a profit, even if you hate and would never use the product you're investing in.

I know people who HATE certain tech companies, but since they know that the stock is undervalued and will more than likely make them a profit after the next earnings call, they put their money into it.

It's nothing personal, it's business.

Of course, there are exceptions depending on our moral scale and personal beliefs.

[Moonbase0ne]

This is kinda like comparing the first xbox launch to the first ps3 launch.

[Bbnivende]

Many Apple products have had teething problems . The biggest hurdle that Apple has had to overcome was their corporate culture of not admitting problems and dealing with these problems. I have not seen from Blackberry the attitude of first admitting problems and then fixing them in a public way. Let's face it - Blackberry is not a company that keeps the public well informed.

It will be interesting to see how BB deals with the z10 battery issue. Apparently the battery life is not what it should be according to their own specs and the phone runs hot.
Do they just ignore the issue ? Is it untrue or true and if it is true then consumers need to know what BB plans to do about it. Then there has always been the lack of transparency concerning apps. Who is on board and who is not and if not why not ? The Map issue - a big problem for Apple - Consumers want to know why there is no Google maps on the Z10. Can't BB tells us in a news release that the Playbook is going to get BB10 and that the Bridge will work when it does? We shouldn't need to have to rely on Crackberry reporting a tweet from some executive. Consumers expect some secrecy regarding upcoming products but not with existing products.



So yes, every new phone and O/S has problems but not every company deals with these problems effectively. Blackberry needs to interacting with new owners to find out what the major problems are and to make plans to fix the most urgent ones and announce what they intend to do. They changed their name to Blackberry - a change in corporate culture may also be required.

[agolongo]

OK. Now you've lost the plot and are back into subjective and anecdotal personal opinions about products. The fact is, in the perspective you were just claiming to be talking about ie. competitiveness. Neither of those two products showed changes in marketshare analogous to what RIM is hoping for, and each quite arguably, reside in different markets entirely, with no direct competitive peers. (of course the paradigm of OS marketshare is a big topic to get into).
.

Okay, not subjective I think there is a pretty large consensus out there that Windows Vista was not even close to being fully baked OS until SP1 and OS X 10.0 shouldn't have ever shipped. Your argument is grounded by a consumer perspective, fine. Mine is grounded by the realities of complex software development, such as OS/Platform development.

Its fine for a consumer to want a Brand new OS comprised of millions of lines of code, to ship bug free and do their laundry for them while their at work on day 1. Historically however, this has NEVER happened. BB10 is very feature complete and baked for a 1.0 release, more so then many other OS's that came before it, including some recent releases such as Windows Phone 7, that was in development for 5 years and had oodles of Microsoft space cash to back it.

[lnichols]

If this were BlackBerry's first phone, your comparison would be valid as both the iPhone, and Android were both the first attempt of Apple and Google to make phones. BlackBerry has a long history of making phones, and even though this is a brand new OS, that in no way excuses features missing that were in the previous OS. This is still a BlackBerry, and their were 7 previous versions of BlackBerry OS before, and people shouldn't expect anything less than a 8.X capable OS at this point from RIM. Combine that with the fact that the PlayBook has been running the same kernel for almost two years and I have been beta testing this OS from RIM since the PlayBook's launch, and they are really at a 3.X level with QNX based BlackBerry devices in the market. I can't wait to get my BB10 device in the US, but I in no way expect a 1.X like device OS from BlackBerry given their history with radio stacks, and the amount of time that QNX BlackBerry devices have been available and live.

[Rickroller]

I didnt read the back and forth, but if his 'facts' are wrong and you reply with opinion how exactly does that solve anything...

When I said "my opinion", it was in reference to what I think Android does better than BB. They both do things that accomplish the same end goal, but if I feel one approach is better than the other, then that is considered opinion.

[hurds]

Actually no. Any implications come from the fanboy bubble many live in. Generally all's I point out are things that are factually incorrect and how Android does many things better (from my viewpoint). Of course, now with BB10 released, a lot of those discrepancies are smaller. Was I a fan of BBOS 7? No.. But judging from market share.. I'd say I wasn't alone.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Dude, take a step back and look at the stuff you say. You are getting in way too deep. Calling a 'fanboy bubble many live in'. You are on a freakin bb website, and yet you are the one that is in love with android and defending it non-stop on a BB fan site. You even say its from your viewpoint, guess what, that doesn't make it a fact and so you dont need to do it. Nice way to top it all off with a marketshare point. You are hilarious, cause thats a great way to make yourself feel better, talking about android marketshare, this is a huge fanboy point to make. "OH everyone has android! so its gotta be good!". You see, BB users know what a poor perception there is around bb, but we use it cuase we like it. Someone needs to wakeup. The android bubble you live in is going to burst and I dont see it being a good experience for you. Got a question, likely to go unanswered, if you give something away for free, do you think it will have a small or large marketshare?

[Rickroller]

Got a question, likely to go unanswered, if you give something away for free, do you think it will have a small or large marketshare?

Well judging by the somewhat growth of the PB recently, i'd say large. Because when they sold it for a price equivalent to the iPad, no one bought it. Now that it's virtually free, it's market share has risen. So B) - Final answer.

[hurds]

Well judging by the somewhat growth of the PB recently, i'd say large. Because when they sold it for a price equivalent to the iPad, no one bought it. Now that it's virtually free, it's market share has risen. So B) - Final answer.

Nice spin. Virtually free ~ 150 bucks. Good to know for future reference. I'm liking these logical leaps you are starting to take in defence of your beloved.

I'll make the big point here I think the OP is alluding to.

Product time of development. People complain RIMs is slow. They developed a tablet OS (here comes the email complaints) and several BB7 devices and the all new BB10 platform and two new devices in less time then iphone and Android have been out.

This is stunning. You have to be a huge fanboy of the other platforms to ignore this.

What this further points to is that if BB can do all this that fast, the duopoly better speed things up and actually start innovating or they are gonna get left behind. History repeats itself and its happening right now. Some people wont wake up till its over.

[Emu the Foo]

Great points and way to keep things positive. Well done

[ccbs]

Compare the first iPhone to the first Blackberry phone, one can easily see how much Apple changed the industry. Comparing the BB 10 to first iPhone, one can see that how people still follow the same trajectory that Apple set in 2007. BB fanboy or not, it is blatantly obvious that BBRY didn't do enough to bring the industry forward. Now the BB10 OS is out, it is just another also-run in the bunch with the Ubuntu and Mozilla firefox OS.

[brmiller1976]

BB10 is great. Reviewers agree it has a great experience. RIM just needs to get the BB10 devices out the door, worldwide, into enough hands to attract further developer interest.

[brmiller1976]

it is just another also-run in the bunch with the Ubuntu and Mozilla firefox OS.

Ummmm... except for that minor detail that you cannot buy the Ubuntu or Firefox phones anywhere, for any price.