It's the Apps Stupid!

I consider myself to be a very loyal Blackberry customer. I really like my Playbook, but as with many others, I'm looking forward to more updates to add missing functions.

As I former loyal OS2 (remember that desktop OS?) customer, I witnessed a "superior" OS go down in flames not on the superiority of the OS, but because there were no comparable applications to compete with those available on MS Windows.

I sure hope RIM learns from the proven mistake of others and does all they can to focus on attracting developers to invest in this platform.

So far, I'm very nervous from what I see now.

With the acquisition of companies like Teknision and TAT, there should be at least some exclusive high quality apps from them by now. You know, something like iMovie or Garageband. So far we only have Scrapbook...

That's so true. It's the apps that makes a solid device even greater! If there wasn't any apps for the ipad then it would just be a very big and useless tablet. Playbook is still considered "new" and needs time to grow. Current ipad app developers should look in porting their apps to the Playbook. It shouldn't be that hard for them since they already created the basis for their apps. Just need to convert the code to be used for the Playbook and bam...they got a whole new customer base and increased in profits.

Originally Posted by debugy2k

It shouldn't be that hard for them since they already created the basis for their apps. Just need to convert the code to be used for the Playbook and bam...they got a whole new customer base and increased in profits.

Um, given the currently available development options, they'd have to completely rewrite their apps from scratch. Yes, that is a hard thing to do. The only thing they'd be able to reuse are the graphics.

Once the native SDK comes out, they might be able to reuse some of the code as well (if someone makes an Objective-C compiler work with QNX, which is possible). However, they'd still need to rewrite the entire UI, unless someone creates a complete clone of the iOS UI toolkit for the PlayBook (also not a small task, and one that could attract an Apple lawsuit).

Originally Posted by debugy2k

That's so true. It's the apps that makes a solid device even greater! If there wasn't any apps for the ipad then it would just be a very big and useless tablet. Playbook is still considered "new" and needs time to grow. Current ipad app developers should look in porting their apps to the Playbook. It shouldn't be that hard for them since they already created the basis for their apps. Just need to convert the code to be used for the Playbook and bam...they got a whole new customer base and increased in profits.

Two problems: 1) RIM hasn't released the proper developer tools, and won't until the fall. 2) Developers seeing a good return on investment in iOS won't divert attention from their cash cows unless the other cow looks better. Many iPad devs aren't even looking at Android tablets yet.

There is another problem, at least rhetorically. In defense of the PB's lack of apps, the community has taken to saying that they do not need or want a bunch of apps, most of which would be junk. They talk about how iOS has too many apps, and, you don't need an app for that when you have a good browser with Adobe Flash!

You might want to only whisper those silly things amongst yourselves as app developers can hear you. In your attempt to win meaningless geek battles, you are pushing away the very people that could build your platform. Not so smart.

Don't feel bad, this is just another thing this community has in common with the Palm fans. TouchPad fans actually go one better. In defending the relatively chunky size of their tablet, they claim that the iPad 2 is too thin. Imagine that. The iPad 2 is too thin and has the option of too many quality apps. And you wonder why devs aren't breaking down the door to get in.

Originally Posted by debugy2k

Playbook is still considered "new" and needs time to grow.

Sorry, but the old line of "Just wait for it to be good!" isn't going to work when they were already outclassed on the phone apps to begin with.

not one of these threads again.if you don't like what you see,then move on to something else.

^^or try to wait... like us... ;-)