My good friend Matthew Panzarino at TNW sent this to me today. Pretty much sums up what I’ve been trying to say. Apple innovated; everyone else followed; RIM stayed the same.
You can read Matthew’s thoughts on the designs at TNW.
∞ Graphic: How Apple changed phone design, except with RIM
Nice. Now I have one easy graphic to show people when they say, “Yeah, but Apple didn’t use any of these technologies for the first time, what did they do that’s so special?”
NICE!!
The graphic shows the obvious theft from the 3 OEM’s. But I love how it shows that RIM hasn’t changed at all since ’06. I bet not 1 of RIM’s employees has seen any of these posts. If they did, someone over there would get the message & make some noise. Way too many “yes-men” @ RIM.
I actually thought the 2001 Sammy WAS an iPhone! D’oh! Has Apple ever got a case there.
Just playing devil’s advocate for a moment here, but if RIM’s designs had changed to ape the iPhone then folks would be deriding them as a copycat much like all the others. From that perspective it feels like they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
Not that I’m here to defend RIM – to be honest I mostly come here for some schadenfreude while reading about them crashing and burning – but in this case it does seem a little unfair to mock them for staying true to their own designs rather than ripping off Apple’s design along with the rest of the industry.
Cheers!
I don’t think Jim’s point is that all phone should change to ape the iPhone. They changed to reflect the new reality of the phone market. What people wanted, versus what the old guard had been shoving at them.
There are many ways Blackberry could have updated their designs to reflect the demands of the marketplace — bigger screen (even with a keyboard), better web interface, video calling (actually, does anyone do this? dunno, but people ask for it), apps, a consistent user interface or a completely adaptable user interface.
The fact that Blackberry has stuck with what appears to me (having not used one) to be a nicer keyboard than many of the Android physical-keyboard models should be a strength.
But their models reflect NONE of this. It’s the same phone, 5 years later. Tiny screen, what looks to be a terrible interface, and apparently not many apps to speak of. Who on Earth would choose this as their first phone, when there are so many others to choose from now?
Well, actually RIM is also influenced by apples design. They just couldn’t turn away from their core-strength: keyboard.
That’s from a optical design perspective the biggest difference.
BUT: from a GUI perspective you’re completly right. Most vendors adopted to android, which is very similar to iOS. RIM did not. And didn’t bring something competitive to market.
Believe it or not, some people think touch only screens suck! Texting, messaging, emailing is just annoying as hell. Also has the iPhone designed changed in the last 5 years? It got thinner, thats about it…