RSSOpen mouth, insert BlackBerry
By Angela Gunn | Published January 26, 2009, 6:44 PM
RIM CEO Jim Balsillie may wish he'd stuck to texting and gesturing last week. A statement to the press that buggy new hardware is just a fact of life isn't engendering much love from consumers who invested hundreds in that "new reality."
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Balsillie described the mad rush to get the new touchscreen BlackBerry Storm out the door before the holiday "Black Friday" shopping frenzy. When queried about the fairly widespread reports of weird and/or sluggish behavior from the handsets, Balsillie called the bugginess and necessary subsequent fixes part of the "new reality" of smartphones.
We are, of course, talking about complex, feature-rich devices that scramble to gain even a few weeks' worth of attention in the crowded smartphone marketplace. But we're also talking about a gadget that costs, depending on one's Verizon contract, between $250 and $500 before a single call has been placed or finger-smudge deposited. The online response has thus been fairly predictable.
Gizmodo opened its screed with "Buggy, Busted Ass Smartphones Are the "New Reality" and went fairly thermonuclear from there, pointing out that even the notoriously final-release averse Google managed to release a reasonably bug-free G1. ending with a disgusted "If you're not even gonna bother trying, why should we?" (We at Betanews do, however, support and endorse Gizmodo's mid-article declaration that "beta culture is here to stay, and you better like it.")
The feisty RIM-arkable blog drew a dark comparison to a company that, ironically, may be positioned to benefit from a serious hit to RIM's reputation. "Did RIM not pay attention at all to what has happened to Palm over the years? If this is RIM's attitude when it comes to making cool devices that just work, they may get a a front row seat as it happens to them."
Of course, for the Pre to benefit from Storm's trouble, Palm would have to rush it to market perhaps sooner than later... and the beat goes on.
Consumers and the blogosphere had their turn at the microphone today, but tomorrow may prove far more informative as to whether Balsillie's prioritization of speed-to-market over bug-zapping was the right move. Verizon, which has an exclusive deal on the Storm in the US, releases its earnings report tomorrow. It might be more entertaining to ask the phone tech-support staffers at Verizon what they thought of the handset's problems, but it's likely that the telco's quarterly sales results will tell the story of whether Balsillie's "new reality" makes real sense.
Ha Ha. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later. As a former Research in Motion employee, I resigned because I couldn't work for a company that knew it has shoddy hardware and software running their devices. I believe at last count, BlackBerry Customer Support was getting nearly 5,000 calls a day on software glitches and freeze ups on just about all their new devices, and not just the Storm. Research in Motion is powered by hype and that's about it. Their BlackBerry Infrastructure is a joke. Even as an employee with a company assigned BlackBerry handheld, it took sometimes a couple of hours to get messages relayed to the device after it appeared in my Outlook Inbox. I noticed this as well when I was a BES Admin for Verizon Telecom. Overall, Research in Motion is a fad... I always tell people who seriously need to keep up with email and appointments, get a damn laptop with a wireless card. You'll have far less problems than a damn so-called smartphone.
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|Only 5000 a day?
That's actually damned good considering how many users they have...
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|Another rushed-to-market iPhone killer bites the dust.
Apple's Steve Jobs set the standard, and continues to stay on the same course: Forget about competing; just do what you do best. And you know what? If Apple wanted to do so? They have no debt and so much cash, that they could become one of the nation's biggest banks right now.
What irks me most about the Storm is that so many people were so willing to bash reviewers who forewarned them that the Storm was a broken toy out of the box -- most notably, David Pogue -- yet they not only bashed him and others who provided similar reviews, but then went out and bought one anyway.
Nose? How does it feel to be disenfaced to spite your previous owner's self?
Worse than this, is the so-called "reviewers" and self-reported Storm owners who, seemingly paid by the word, told us how much they loved their Storm; how much better it is than the iPhone; how much better it is than anything else available in the Universe. These people are not only reprehensible for their moral failings; they're disgusting examples of what the most mean-spirited, most greedy and most despicable among us can be.
Stupidity sometimes kills people. Other times, it just helps people part with their money in a speedy fashion. But those who suffer from it ultimately get both.
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|I have yet to see anyone other than perhaps RIM claim the phone was anything worth getting excited about.
Flame-bait much?
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|Blackberry... "cool devices"???? In what language isn't that an oxymoron? People, pardon me, IT departments buy Blackbberries, pardon me again, bought the pre-Storm blackberries because they do messaging not because of their iTunes integration. David Pogue among others pointed out in his review that messaging without a real keyboard has some problems. The Storm isn't buggy; the storm combines the worst traits of two contrasting design philosophies and has no clear market. Is it for business or consumer? Neither, it frustrates everyone equally! Well, if that doesn't make you "krav" one, I guess you're not schizoid.
In all seriousness, there are two really good cell phone platforms providers, Apple and RIM. RIM has a great set of development tools but the Storm is just completely at odds with their market. As much as I'd like to see RIM invest in this, they need to treat the Storm as an entirely different market. The Storm isn't cool, it's frustrating.
As for Verizon, well, what more is there to say about a call phone company who's marketing slogan is "Can you hear me now"?
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|Verizon is actually one of the most reliable networks in our area (MPLS). Good coverage, and in my experience, excellent customer service.
My two phone calls to them so far have taken under 5 minutes each and they pushed every possible discount they could at me short of giving it away.
I had to call to get my old cell-numbers transferred, but because our old numbers were tied to "Boost" Pay as you Go, we had no "account" numbers. They put me on hold, called boost, got the authorization and took care of each phone in under 5 minutes. No hold times to get to them.
So far, so good.... As for the blackberries...yech. See my previous post regarding them in the last cell-related article. Unwieldy, ugly and un-intuitive junk.
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