No, it’s not Deja Vu. No one has reset the Matrix (we think…) It’s just another Apple follow-along. To paraphrase Bertrand Serlet: Waterloo, start your photocopiers!
Not content with merely iCloning the iPhone look with the Bold or touchscreen with the Storm, during the Blackberry Developer Conference today, RIM basically repeated Apple’s iPhone SDK Roadmap Event announcements from back in March, note for note.
Pop quiz. You announce the hawt new tic-tac-tile handset in May for a Summer release yet Summer comes and goes, and one of the largest carriers in one of the largest geekphone markets in the world (that’d be AT&T in the USA) keeps rejecting your firmware — over and over again.
Do you push (ha!) back and tell AT&T to first fix their 3G networks, which many now believe amount to the old 2G networks with rabbit-ears welded on top? Do you tell them to shove it up their UTMS and pour all your efforts in the risky virtual keyboard you’re hoping will take Verizon by storm (ho!)? Or do you try to shift focus to the device that forced you to take the risky virtual keyboard risk in the first place, the device that hasn’t yet touched (hee!) your market share, but sucked every inch of mind share out of your smartphone space?
What do you do? Well, if you’re internet dead-pan funny man Mike Lazaridis, CEO of RIM and maker of the sales-leading Blackberry business-monster, do we really even have to ask?
“There’s great scrutiny, as you might know, on that network and a certain device. So I guess everyone wants to be sure on every last test.” [...] Lazaridis appeared confident that the Bold would not be subject to the iPhone’s problems. “We’re very meticulous about what our product does.”
Jump off the plane at La Guardia, and within 48 hours of roaming on AT&T my BlackBerry Bold randomly rebooted itself 5 times, dropped 6 calls while talking (and 3 dropped after only one ring before I could answer) and at one point gave me an Invalid SIM Card error for no reason at all (soft reboot fixed it). Furthermore, my battery life tanked – the Bold was regularly switching between 3G and Edge which I think soaked back a lot of the juice. All in all, I wasn’t happy. It wasn’t the same phone that I was using when I boarded the plane, and the only thing that changed was the Network.
The iPhone shook up a very complacent smartphone world, but if we think it exists in a vacuum, if we think the other big players won’t respond (no matter how embarrassingly long it might take them), and if we don’t hope that they do — hardcore style — to prevent Apple from one day getting just as complacent, then we’re not doing our jobs as bloggers or consumers.
With that, splinter-like, in mind, witness RIM launching the Blackberry Thunder, their first touch screen device. If you ever wondered how brilliantly Apple handled the release of the iPhone, from Steve pulling it from his pocket to the first videos and commercials, wonder no more. RIM’s shows us by way of terrible — near Microsoft’ian — example, how badly that could have gone… (Though Mike Lanman certainly makes a convincing Doby to Lazaridis’ Gollum…). Couldn’t have hired them Virgin folks again?
We’re still not sure about the whole-screen’s-a-button approach. And the newly launched GDGT podcast is right on when they say RIM needs new software and they need it now (and tell a very funny story about how RIM’s co-CEO really doesn’t get that… scary…)
The. Whole. Screen. Is. A. Flipping. Tic. Tac. Tile. Button.
Seriously. We kid you not (though RIM could be kidding us all?). Sister-site Crackberry.com has all the deets, but…
Seriously? Who’s the usability wizard who came up with this one? Who came up with the single-click point of failure concept? The one mechanism to break it all?
We get that haptics are hard, but the iPhone pretty much showed the industry how to do Touch, and rather than just add the Blackberry messaging powerhouse to that buttery goodness, RIM went and grafted on an mechanic straight out of every 1980s playschool game?
Bravo for challenging Apple (they certainly need it). And kudos for being brave enough to push the metaphor, to take the next step, to propel technology forward. But — seriously? — we hope the feel is light-years beyond the look on this one, and not just for Crackberry Kevin’s sake… Otherwise most annoying gadget innovation of the decade awards beckon…
We guess a certain internet dead-pan funny man was right on the “button” when he said:
THERE’S a reason that R.I.M. is averse to the iPhone’s glass pad. “I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,” says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.”
Presuming he was really talking about the ThunderStorm…
Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!
This week: Zilch again. Nadda. We’re too busy getting ready to cover the no doubt universe denting news Apple will unleash at “Let’s Rock” on Tuesday. And, frankly, so is the competition. Face it, they’ve been quiet as little blue-OLED mice lately.
Blackberryboss Lazeridis is all dressed up like Leo Laporte and is already lining up in San Francisco to find out what Apple’s releasing this year… so he can release it next. Palm-Top Colligan’s not releasing anything new until Nova ships sometime in 2012, and Larry and Sergey have shifted the focus off Android and onto their new Chrome browser, which we just know they’ve been running on gLinux in-house for years but is somehow only released (in what will not doubt be perpetual Beta) for Windows.
And speaking of Windows, Steve Ballmer’s off preparing an extra-special CES-sized Monkey Boy dance (YouTube it) for his first adult Keynote since Bill Gates retired to make $10,000,000 mockumentaries with Jerry Seinfeld (Wikipedia him).
No doubt they’ll return to their usually scheduled schedules next week, and so will we!
Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!
This week: Boldly browsing (or not), AppClones, HTC’s dreaming, and Treo requiem.
Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!
This week: A day late but sadly no jokes short, Boldly browsing, unboxings galore, big love from HTC, who does Rubenstein really work for, and ZOMG! a new Android beta!
Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!
This week: All Bold all the time, spy pics, HTC gets red, and happy five-oh!
Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!
This week: Pearl gets kicked, ZuneNokia cometh, Android isn’t late (again!) and… a Centro clone?!
Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!
This week: Bold, Bull. Bull, Bold. WinMob Can’t Count to 20, and Colligan Loves the iPhone
![Is the iPhone RIM\'s \"Precious\"?](http://www.theiphoneblog.com/images/stories/2008/05/gollum_rim.jpg "Is the iPhone RIM\'s \\"Precious\\"?")
