I saw in the news (and by news I mean Techmeme) that RIM just re-upped their littlest model, the petite Pearl, to be equipped with Wifi. Well, that’s great and all, but have they (or you for that matter) ever tried to use the wifi feature? By the time the user navigates to and enable their “new” battery draining feature, detects the “available” networks, and get beyond the credentials (using SureType fer christ’s sake), you might as well have just visited the now fully loaded site using your EDGE connection. And that is assuming that your phone was even compatible with the network security provided by the router. It kinda reminds me of my experience with Windows and Wifi connections: cluttered, overly technical, and typically mysteriously failing.
Compare that to the WiFi experience on an iPhone/iPod Touch, and you quickly realize that it isn’t the frequency, or the draft release, or ANYTHING remotely related to the hardware update. It is the software, the interface, the process.
In the beginning, there was the Sun and the Moon. I kid. In the beginning there was the business. That is why computers existed, because corporate was the only thing that could afford them. Businesses trained employees, employees read manuals, and they in turn justified their presence and the presence of computers on the payroll. RIM did really well because it had a killer feature called PUSH services, a rock solid keyboard, and secure-to-the-core software. Right place, right time. Since then, plenty of other phone makers have come along and attempted to repeat the recipe, using strange new keyboards and faster cards, but their never displaced RIM from the lead because they didn’t understand that the glue (or crack, if you will) that keeps Blackberry users pushing those tiny buttons isn’t the machine, but the process. The instantaneous transfer of information. Want to send an email? Single button push, rapid input, and WHOOSH. Instantly delivered. It was almost like an extension of your mind. Thought became email. Ubiquitous. When I finally destroyed my Treo and had some room on my service contract to upgrade, the blackberry was the only consideration I made. Well, that or a Windows Mobile device, but let’s stay serious here.
Whether RIM was actually working to maintain their lead and just didn’t get adventurous enough, or they figured they could sit back and enjoy their lead, the biggest thing they did since introducing PUSH to the world was to release a miniature Blackberry for the consumer market, and introduce a backlit trackball. Wow. They left the door wide open for Apple to swoop in an release the handset they should have made. Obviously, they could not have made the iPhone. Their designers don’t have the chops, and they weren’t marketing “pretty.” But they are single handedly responsible for their current situation because while they rolled out hardware revision after hardware revision, the thing they forgot was the software. The Blackberry OS is woefully under thought, under developed, and under powered. It is clearly an afterthought. For example, if you want to change the background image on your home screen, you are presented with 2 options at all times. “Set as background image” and “Reset background image.” One would think that “reset background image” takes your phone back to factory default, and “set background image” would set your currently selected photo as the source. Not so. If you simply hit “Set as background image,” as any other intelligent human being is likely to do, nothing happens. Instead, every time, you have to reset the image, which clears you out of your current menu, navigate back to the photo (via a mind boggling slow file navigator, mind you), and then hit “set as background image.” ARRG.
Sometime this past summer, I grew fed up with the shitty selection of Blackberry applications and themes. I went through the process of registering for and downloading their developer tools. It was the single most disenfranchising experience I’ve had in the developer world. The only “tools” made available for me where to change background colors of shared elements. There wasn’t a single “code and compile” option, or even the ability to change the number of options on a given frame. Cookie cutter replication options for already sucky solutions. I deleted the suite and finally understood why there are so few killer apps available for Blackberry users.
Apple, with all of its design brilliance taken into account, released a relatively simple device with infinite possibilities. A stripped down version of its desktop operating system that retained all the necessary hooks to write an application you could want, and 3 buttons (referencing my iPod Touch). It has a power button, a “home” button, and 1 more: the entire screen. Pair that with an accelerometer, and the ability to detect more than one touch at a time, and you have a phone that won’t become outdated until we can manipulate computers with our minds. Because the finger is a natural an even “more natural” extension of our bodies than PUSH. All the business types said that the iPhone would never be accepted by corporate because it didn’t have a physical keyboard, but those are the same guys who said “all you will ever need is 637 kb.” I’m not saying the iPhone “keyboard” is the 2nd coming, but when Apple rolled out the iPhone Developer roadmap along with Exchange support and PUSH, they squashed any hopes RIM had to retain even a sampling of the power they wielded before.
If you haven’t read the coverage or somehow missed the media event, after Apple released their roadmap and xCode tools, the developer world realized that Apple hadn’t been stalling in hopes of making more money off their game-changing device. No, Cupertino had spent those months systemically reviewing every possible need an iPhone developer might need to get it right. As a result, they had over 100,000 downloads on the release day. Seriously, this stuff isn’t hard to figure out: Do it right, do it well, and people will want to use it. Like, DUH?
The iPhone was released last June. Since then, RIM has revolutionized their handset line-up by not updating their OS, not releasing a touch screen, not supporting Mac OS, not figuring out what they should have done YEARS AGO. Instead, they released a Pearl with WiFi. Quite frankly, RIM just doesn’t get it.