Would BlackBerry have been better off with BBOS 8 instead?
- Interesting question. One thing that comes to mind is that BlackBerry had the reputation of being the phone for business people. In my opinion, it took a step backwards with os10. As much as I loved the new os, things like no longer being able to synch with Outlook, losing business related apps that never updated to os10, and the loss of BIS, actually made it less productive for business. I think a good argument could be made that they would have been better off upgrading the old OS and incorporating better hardware (top of the line cameras etc). I think the final answer is that sales and marketing sucks and it didn't matter how good the product was.
BIS was too limited to be useful in the business markets BlackBerry was targeting.
If you weren't using BES and licensing a few hundred seats BlackBerry considered you a commercial/retail customer.03-04-16 07:16 AMLike 0 - Outlook sync was a feature left over from the days of POP email. Having native Exchange available on BB10 made it unnecessary for almost any business of size. As for apps, if the developers didn't want to convert from BBOS to BB10 there wasn't much BlackBerry could do about it, and likely any company relying on BBOS that heavily for their app audience is long gone now anyway. BIS was also a legacy product, and helped the downfall of BlackBerry. They were caught flatfooted by the adoption of LTE since BIS all but assumed a 2G data connection. Carriers also didn't want to pay the added fees, especially with market share dropping for the devices.
There was nowhere left to build out BBOS. The memory limitations of the platform were all but obvious to anyone who saw what a comparable iOS or Android device of the time were capable of, especially since they were built on modern frameworks and platforms as opposed to a core OS long since pulled and kludged to offer more features.
BlackBerry made the nearly fatal mistake of not dumping BBOS soon enough. All of this has been covered time and again here. This whole thread is more of the wrong headed thinking that previous success correlates to future success by staying the course. It doesn't work in technology, or any field.
Posted via CB1003-04-16 07:21 AMLike 0 - The problem is BBOS is java based. It can handle small run routines pretty well but it gets out of control in much bigger rolls such as complex apps. Java was only able to handle one string of information at a time. If the program expected a return line and didn't receive one, it would hang. Pretty much freezing the app or OS. You can build an error handler around it but it only takes more time, more code and debugging and no app was ever truly bug proof. Java was never able to guarantee support future media sockets like flash. And the apps that did took more than usually needed power to run them. It simply wasn't efficient at more complex rolls.
Posted via CB1003-04-16 08:34 AMLike 0 - The problem is BBOS is java based. It can handle small run routines pretty well but it gets out of control in much bigger rolls such as complex apps. Java was only able to handle one string of information at a time. If the program expected a return line and didn't receive one, it would hang. Pretty much freezing the app or OS. You can build an error handler around it but it only takes more time, more code and debugging and no app was ever truly bug proof. Java was never able to guarantee support future media sockets like flash. And the apps that did took more than usually needed power to run them. It simply wasn't efficient at more complex rolls.
Posted via CB10
Its was the architectural decisions made/not made by BlackBerry.
This article and especially the corresponding comments are interesting reading. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/black...ntent_res_namePantherBlitz and terminatorx like this.03-04-16 09:20 AMLike 2 - It wasn't Java's fault.
Its was the architectural decisions made/not made by BlackBerry.
This article and especially the corresponding comments are interesting reading. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/black...ntent_res_name
Now I feel bad about the smartring comment.03-04-16 10:08 AMLike 0 - It wasn't Java's fault.
Its was the architectural decisions made/not made by BlackBerry.
This article and especially the corresponding comments are interesting reading. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/black...ntent_res_name03-04-16 04:45 PMLike 0 -
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I liked Web OS, but Palm was in awful financial shape by the time it launched. There's a reason why BlackBerry was able to release devices over several years as an independent company and Palm was quickly acquired by HP.
For their flaws, one of Mike and Jim's strengths was fiscal responsibility. It's probably why there's even still a BlackBerry to talk about in 2016.
The rumours of BlackBerry's bankruptcy have been happening for years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/04...n_1400838.html03-04-16 06:03 PMLike 0 - i think the ideal situation would have been rebuild BB7 with QNX/micro-kernel and call it BB8, with the same user interfaces. That way people dont get an interface shock, yet it is still familiar to use but much more smooth.terminatorx likes this.03-04-16 07:28 PMLike 1
- I agree with this completely, and I give them full credit for this. Had they had a bunch of debt back in 2008, they'd have been liquidated years ago.03-04-16 11:27 PMLike 0
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Zimmerman suggests that the JVM is where the bulk of the klugery is.
"The JVM consumed a huge amount of memory, with a large portion of that dedicated to how it managed it's internal file system."
Sounds like a hot hairy mess to me.
From the article I get the impression the OS team and the the JVM team had some "us and them" problems.
The shack analogy seems apt to me.Elephant_Canyon likes this.03-05-16 05:35 AMLike 1 - It wasn't Java's fault.
Its was the architectural decisions made/not made by BlackBerry.
This article and especially the corresponding comments are interesting reading. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/black...ntent_res_name
Posted via CB1003-05-16 06:22 AMLike 0 -
Thanks for the warning about older languages though.
Silly me preferring C all these years.Last edited by DrBoomBotz; 03-05-16 at 06:54 AM.
03-05-16 06:34 AMLike 0 - Not at all!
BBOS is what brought BlackBerry in that situation.
It was JAVA based and not open at all.
BlackBerry is still suffering from jumping on OS10 way too late.
If they'd adopted OS10 about 2 years earlier - they would still be on top.
Developers lost interest on BlackBerry because of Java - customers jumped on other platforms and never came back - just like the developers.jas1978 likes this.03-05-16 06:53 AMLike 1 - True.
Legacy BlackBerry owners were saying the same thing about switching to a new OS that the BB10 owners are now saying about having the Android-Berry device as an alternative a year ago. Now, IMO, the only choice at this point.....if we want a handset with the BlackBerry name attached to it.
Glass half-full people: Quit complaining and just refill the glass. /SM-G928A 😎Laura Knotek likes this.03-05-16 07:18 AMLike 1 - True.
Legacy BlackBerry owners were saying the same thing about switching to a new OS that the BB10 owners are now saying about having the Android-Berry device as an alternative a year ago. Now, IMO, the only choice at this point.....if we want a handset with the BlackBerry name attached to it.
Glass half-full people: Quit complaining and just refill the glass. /SM-G928ADrBoomBotz and Blacklatino like this.03-05-16 07:21 AMLike 2 - This should have been done outright. BB7 to BB8. BB10 is great but the cursorless nav killed it. If classic was introduced first then they wouldn't be facing obsolescence.
Posted via CB10anon(9710735) likes this.03-05-16 07:33 AMLike 1 - Well, it's all about perspective I suppose. In my opinion if they had kept the design concepts of BBOS yet modernized the code BBOS 8 phones would have sold better than BB10.
No.
How is it that people accept technical obsolescence from Apple and Google but not from BlackBerry? Software releases from each ensure that their older devices slip into irrelevance.
(Perhaps, I am paying more attention to BlackBerry comments...)
Posted via CB10
OS9.3 is available to all iPhones as far back as the iPhone 4, iirc, and to the iPad 2, btw.
Agreed. BB made significant efforts to bring over developers, big and small. They understood how important this was. The problem was that this was all happening in 2011-12, a good while before the launch of BB10, but after it was already clear to most of the market that iOS and Android were going to be the OSX and Windows of the mobile industry, leaving nothing but scraps for everyone else to fight over.
For virtually half the world some version of Android other than Google Android is used. CyanogenOS is expected to become the 3rd most popular OS behind iOS and Google Android. Going with Android is the best thing that BlackBerry has done for handsets in a long time; whether some of us like it or not. However in order for them to make a dent they need to show total commitment to the platform--meaning that Chen needs to stop hinting that BB10 may continue on or that devices may be scrapped altogether.03-05-16 10:09 AMLike 4 - Interesting concept and perhaps it could have kept a niche market. Yet you can't argue that 99% of people want something more modern and that can do more than the BBOS devices could do.
Android is the future (if there is one) for Blackberry.GadgetTravel and Bbnivende like this.03-05-16 10:28 AMLike 2 -
Originally Posted by Art GoldbergBlackBerry, RIM at the time this was happening most definitely needed a better/newer operating system than BlackBerry OS and Java. The BlackBerry OS and Java were inefficient, and would only get worse with deeper pipelines of newer processor architectures that were already in the market with more coming (ARM v7, v7a - Cortex-A8, Cortex-A9, Cortex-A7/15...). Further, a multi-core architecture was clearly coming and the old BlackBerry OS and Java really was not designed for that. Sure, some limited load sharing could have been created, but really it was way, way past time for retirement. The Herculean efforts needed to get BB7 out was proof as well that something newer was needed.
Originally Posted by Martin ZimmermanThe BlackBerry OS had both a public and private existence, what the public believed was the OS, was primarily the Java JVM, the public had very little exposure to or even knowledge of the existence of the actual OS that powered the JVM. So many of the issues and performance were from the JVM, and a strong reluctance from the JVM group to implement changes suggested and recommended by the OS group. Some of the big performance improvements in BB7 were a result of the JVM group *finally* implementing some of those suggestions. Those changed could have been done years before. The JVM consumed a huge amount of memory, with a large portion of that dedicated to how it managed it's internal file system. There was an internal project that introduced a native file system at the OS level, that would have reduced the memory footprint by the JVM significantly. The OS portion of the project was completed, and the native file system even supported a POSIX API. The code never made it into production, it was cancelled by the JVM team because it would have required significant changes to the JVM, and the group didn't have the resources for the job. There were implementations of the BlackBerry JVM running on PlayBook, and later on BB10. At least two separate teams had this working. The memory requirements (as mentioned previously) were significant. The same was true about the Android runtime, the reality was that there wasn't enough memory for both to co-exist, only one could be present, and Android was the winner.
Symbian was a microkernel, so by that logic it should be tearing up the consumer market. Hell, Android runs Linux, which is not a microkernel, so it should be down in the dumps right about now. Of course, that's a stupid idea, since it was created based on stupid pretenses.
The evidence above points to the fatal flaws of BBOS being the old, clunky and poorly managed Java bits, even more so than the core OS. Replacing the kernel, assuming BlackBerry could pull it off without breaking anything, wouldn't replace the JVM. We would still be stuck with the same inadequate pile of crap that happened in our reality, except BlackBerry would throw hundreds of millions into buying QNX and attempting to shove the kernel into BBOS for whatever ill-advised reason they could think of rather than spinning QNX into BB10. While our timeline isn't much better, dropping BBOS like a hot stone is first and foremost amongst the myriad "what might have been"s about BlackBerry, and for good reason.03-05-16 12:03 PMLike 5
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