I sat last night reading reviews of the RIM PlayBook and wondered what the hell the company was thinking releasing this product. I’d email the company, but they wouldn’t get it, since the PlayBook doesn’t have an email client.
[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]Yes, you read that right. The mobile company that built its name on being the email company doesn’t have an email client on its tablet. That is one of the most asinine decisions I’ve seen of any tech company in a long time.
The only thing that could be worse is if they left their users with no way to do calendaring and contacts too. Yes, you guessed it — you can’t do calendaring and contacts either.
RIM is an enterprise company that has been trying to appeal to the consumer market. For a while, they did, but it seems they can’t compete with products like the iPhone.
Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion, said the “BlackBerry PlayBook is an amazing tablet. The power that we have embedded creates one of the most compelling app experiences available in a mobile computing device today.”
Keep in mind that there is no email, contacts or calendaring, so what about the other apps? Jonathan Geller at BGR.com said this:
“In daily use, RIM’s own apps like the browser and video apps have crashed on me multiple times. When I log into Facebook I’ve even gotten out of memory errors while only one or two other apps were running.”
Not so compelling.
I’ve said it before and people argued the point with me, but come one, it has to be clear now — RIM has no tablet strategy.
Jim Balsillie, RIM’s co-CEO, “vigorously rejected suggestions,” that RIM wasn’t prepared for the tablet to take over the market in a recent interview.
Unless RIM’s strategy was to provide users with a crashy, buggy pile of crap, even they should admit their failure now.
Jim, you violated “bynkii’s law”: you used the word “asinine” 😉
I guess since these key applications are missing, there will be a good opportunity for app developers.
On a related note, IMO, shipping a tablet with a dependency on a cell phone is pathetic.
App developers _really_ want to develop for Playbook:
http://blog.jamiemurai.com/2011/02/you-win-rim/
If they had only said it was an external monitor for a Blackberry phone that could be used as a toy when uncoupled it would make a lot more sense.
It also means that any kind of app will need to have its own email implementation.
On the iPad email is integrated in the system and each application can access the account data and send emails.
If RIM didn’t add APIs to allow one third party app to access another third party app’s email capabilities, email will be a bag of hurt on the PlayBook. With the software mess that are all those virtual machines and emulators on the PlayBook, I don’t see this working anything close to seamless.
I’d hoped for more, but pretty much got what I expected.
Hey, WebOS, you still have a chance to get this right.
“RIM has no tablet strategy.”
It’s worse than that, though. RIM has no strategy whatsoever. RIM stalled bringing any innovation to its smartphones to release the PlayBook — a product which is completely alien to its identity and its key demographic.
I’m all for betting the farm on new ideas, but given that it has been over six months from the original announcement and that we’re just starting to see a buggy, half-baked PlayBook begin to ship, it does not seem like RIM put any real thought into weighing the risks. It is as if they believed they could cobble together high-spec hardware with a copy-cat OS and have a legitimate iPad competitor in under a year. In fact, this is exactly what they did except that RIM’s Frankentablet isn’t even recommendable, let alone an iPad competitor.
Are RIM’s CEOs that delusional or do they really think that little of their consumers? I don’t mean to bash them, but I’ve always held on to a glimmer of hope that RIM would eventually adapt to the mobile market and find itself successful again. Sadly, that glimmer gets quite a bit dimmer with each passing day — and the PlayBook isn’t helping.
It isn’t very difficult to imagine how timid RIM’s VPs might have been, in the face of their CEOs’ egotism, at the thought of suggesting capabilities for the Playbook when they realized they had to come up with something, if only as a placeholder.
Spinning out of control.
I’m waiting for the RIM apologists to show up here. Have they actually given up?
I can understand their flawed thinking. They want to make sure their blackberry phones are a prerequisite and get companies to spring for both. They really are not a consumer electronics company. Their touchscreen phone attempts have proved that.
Having said that, I’d still be annoyed having to fitz and fuddle with making sure the blackberry and the tablet were connected to get the mail and the contacts, etc. But assuming you only have to set that up once and then it happens every time the two devices are in proximity, it’s not as bad as it sounds.
They claim this enhances the security aspect, as the tablet is only a viewer of mail, contacts, and calendar data that’s on the phone. Maybe it is. But this design is only ever going to appeal to people who use this for business and have a blackberry phone.
Light em up boys!
Another one bites the dust.
I own a BB Torch, being able to tether or “Bridge” my data, email, and calendar I think is a huge advantage over other tabs, not a weakness. You don’t need to buy an expensive data plan to get it to work on the go! I guess bc Apple hasn’t thought of it, it must be wrong? lol
Lets see one data plan with a Playbook w/ BB or two separate data plans with other smartphones and an iPad? I will take the one data plan and buy a Playbook…
Um hello? This has been feature of the iPhone for a couple of months now. It’s called a personal hotspot. No need to purchase 2 data plans unless you want to.
personal hotspot, the $60 fee charged by AT&T or Verizon per month to use it? You mean that one? The BB Torch and many Android phones can run the Tether app that circumvents the fees and you buy once as an app allowing you to tether to your laptop on the go sharing your data plan without paying your service provider an extra monthly fee.
So recap, its anywhere from $15-30 for data on your phone + $30-40 extra for personal hot spot to run on your WiFi iPad. Or buy data for both your smartphone and iPad (which only runs phone apps, not Flash websites).
Or the alternative buy data on your BB, either “Bridge” or tether to your WiFi Playbook and spend anywhere from $15-30 total per month? Oh an run Flash sites so apps aren’t necessary to view your favorite places.
A logical and practical person that already owns a BB, which BTW is still a lot of people, would go to the second option. Unless you would rather have the 10” tab over the 7”, but thats a different issue.
Well, it’s ludicrous that when you have a WiFi connection you still need to bridge to Blackberry to get your email.
Also, when not on WiFi, am I right that the bridge does not supply an internet connection to the Playbook, so you would need to tether? And that tethering would have to come with fees because the carriers will demand them, just as they do for everyone else.
So, how is that a cost savings? With my iPad on WiFi, I get email directly. If I need to tether, I can buy that just like the Playbook user.
Or, I buy the 3G iPad and turn on and off a cellular connection only when I need it ($15 month/ no contract).
The iPhone was a POS when it was released – awful phone features, bad battery, etc – yet somehow the word “magical” got tossed and people bought.
So, the Playbook v.1 needs upgrades – RIM has a great product out the door in a fast TAT (under a year). Pretty impressive – I am looking forward to getting a Playbook.
Maybe RIM should do some research in marketing. Their products are total crap, but maybe a master marketeer could save them. Then again, they should have enough dignity to close shop. Game over.
No fees for tethering on BB’s if you buy the tether app one time, you share your data forever with your laptop. I am not 100% sure how it works with BB/PB exactly the same as it does with BB/Laptops.
Every other phone I know of except certain Android phones that are capable of running the same app, yes, you are correct, you pay extra every month to your service provider. Although I know you risk “bricking” your Android phone to root it to tether for free.
Anyway, I have read in some reviews it already tethers to BB’s for free, others just say its certain features like email, messaging, etc. but not web browsing, streaming videos, etc.
Inconsistent reviews, its almost as if each critic latched onto some mundane detail and either praised it or bashed it. The tethering feature should be talked about in greater detail, especially if its free with BB phones.
Game over? Thats it? The market leader in smartphones for most of the last 4 years should just give up on their installed base with BB’s that might actually like this new Bridge feature on a Tablet?
This is a unique feature that I think is being unfairly bashed, I think its brilliant. If it can tether for free the way some more positive reviews are just briefly glossing over, that could be huge selling point.
One shared data plan on a phone and tablet without paying some damn service provider extra for something that should be free!
I don’t believe for one second that RIM will be allowed by the carriers to offer free tethering when no other manufacturers are getting that option. Sure, there are workarounds on every platform, but the carriers will demand to be paid for official tethering. I think that’s idiotic, personally, but that’s the way it is. Why would RIM get special treatment?
If by POS you mean, a revolutionary, game changing device that the entire industry would move to copy, then sure… I see what you mean. 🙂 Sure, there were a few 1.0 rough edges, but even at 1.0, the iPhone did nail the basics. The same cannot be said for PlayBook. It’s more than clear that this was rushed to market WAY before it’s ready. By the time it is ready, nobody will care. RIMM has done enough damage by coming to market prematurely with this real POS. It seems as though competitors are going out of their way to make Apple look good these days.
What’s brilliant about only being able to sell to your existing installed base of customers? Imagine if Apple never opened up the iPod or iPhone to anyone but Mac users? That doesn’t sound very “brilliant” to me. It’s one thing if you get additional features as part of buying into the BlackBerry ecosystem. It’s another thing entirely if you simply can’t do mail, calendaring, etc. at all unless you’re a BlackBerry user. As much as I do like QNX, trust me, this PlayBook is DOA. RIM really blew it by coming to market when the implementation is half baked. They would be cut some slack if they were doing something groundbreaking in the process. They’re not, they’re just trying to play catch up and doing so poorly.
I don’t need to bridge my information. It syncs automatically through the cloud to my computer or I can use a web client. If I read an email, I know it is read on my computer. If I add a contact, then I know it is added to my contacts on my computer. If I bookmarks website, I know it will be bookmarked on my computer. Add an event, then you guessed it.
AT&T charges $45.00 a month for Blackberry Internet with tethering. That is what they were charging me. AT&T charges $45.00 a month for an iPhone Data Plan with tethering. No need for a HotSpot device when your phone is the HotSpot device. The HotSpot is built in feature of the iPhone.
How is in development since 2009 qualify as under a year?
Maybe their plan is to try and convince people that they need to buy a $500 tablet and a $200 phone for full functionality. Jth9234 seems to be sold on this concept. Now if they can only convince 100,000 people a day to convert.
PB is just as functional as a WiFi only iPad2, not sure if you guys see this. The Bridge feature is an innovative and brilliant feature, IMHO. The smartphone user and the tablet user are generally one and the same, they are not mutually exclusive. Also very few BB phones are $200 with a contract, most are cheaper.
I think you guys must know little about all the features on BB phones, believe it or not there are many things they do where iPhones fall behind on. Especially the Tether app, that gets around paying extra to your service provider to share data with your laptop, making your BB a free fully functional air card with no fees to your service provider. iPhone? Pay extra to ATT or Verizon for a “hotspot”? Buts its Apple, it must be better, right? Hmmmm…
Now enter the PB/BB. As of right now its questionable how tethering works. Its reading like as of right now, you pay extra to your service provider just like all the fleeced iPad users. But the Bridge is a good start and its free. I am guessing, before long there will be a BB tether app to make your BB an air card for the PB.
QNX is a robust, time-tested OS; however, it has been designed to primarily serve the embedded market. On embedded and real-time systems, apps and PIM are not essential. By publicizing (read shooting mouths off) the Playbook too early, RIM gave their QNX developers too little time to develop too many add-ons. Don’t forget, QNX was acquired barely a year ago! In 12 months, they had to add a tablet UI (read plagiarize from WebOS, which still takes time), work with Adobe to make Flash 10.x usable (although Flash was working on QNX before, it was for a different purpose than playing videos on various websites), compatibility with BB apps and Android apps. That’s a lot to ask.
Most important, the leadership at RIM is not software-oriented. Sure, the BB runs software, but it BB OS was not, and is not a general purpose OS suitable for smartphones and tablets. After all, it took RIM forever to add a passable browser (by acquisition). Acquiring QNX to replace BB OS was a stroke of brilliance and necessity. But they should given the QNX developers proper time to do it right, exactly what HP is giving the Palm developers. Most importantly, they should allow one of the QNX engineers to take over a key position in the company. Software is where the future lies for smartphones and tablets.
At least PlayBook is running a PC class OS, not Android.
What does that mean – PC class OS? In close to 20 years of writing software including OS dev’t, I have rarely (never?) heard that term. It would interest me to learn.
Uhm… no. Personal Hotspot just started working on my phone when I upgraded. I didn’t have to pay extra for anything.
Huh? Seamless integration to the contacts and schedule on your computer. A Messaging system that actually threaded your text messages like a conversation. The best web browser, maps, music app, video playback, etc. ever seen on a phone.
Yeah, that was awful. No wonder they failed to sell millions before they even allowed third party apps. Oh wait…
I don’t pay extra for Personal Hotspot on my iPhone. There are customers outside the US, you realize. I figure you would, since RIM is not an American company. Personal Hotspot was available at no extra charge the day Apple released it in an OS update.
And no, the PB is not just as functional because it has a paltry selection of apps.
Apps again? How many apps do you run on a laptop or desktop? With the PB, apps become sort of irrelevant since it can web browse just like a real computer.
Apps matter on tablets utilizing weaker OS’s that can’t run Flash and have to streamline sites that use Flash. Then yes, apps matter for a tablet like the iPad. On tabs with Flash enabled, apps really don’t matter much.
So its a moot point…
you are a sad joke.
in your glorious no-app, web-only platform, please explain which websites would be used to control my media center at home? SSH into remove machines? sample speech and translate it?
please be detailed. id like very much to use these websites.
Maybe Mr. Basille should have spent less time trying to get an NHL team and spent more time paying attention to what his company is making.
If you have RIM stock, my suggestion is to sell.
Respected U all I am a ….employee but I am. Not satisfied with Ur applications.& games like ninja game speed is very high if Ur humen U can’t run with these types of games & I am download minimum 10 apps in my Bold But No One Is Running ………How we Use BB & Ur apps…