I'm embarrassed for RIM: Blackberry 6 sneak peak. | Hacker News Reader

I'm embarrassed for RIM: Blackberry 6 sneak peak.

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56 pointsspeek74 comments

Not entirely related, but if you look closely at 0:50, you'll see that Apple's Mac OS X "Clownfish" desktop image appears prominently in the photo gallery.

That said, the OS looks much nicer than the previous release - at least, on par or a bit above the native Froyo components. I have a hard time getting past the hardware, though. There are tons of diehard BlackBerry users, but I'd have trouble bringing myself to use any of their devices in their current form. Even so, it's great to see that people have choice and that the UI/UX bar is rising on each of the most popular mobile platforms.

[edit: topical content added]

A few comments about the BB user experience.

- The BB might as well be a text only device (in a good way). I love reading RSS feeds on it and doing email on it. It's fast, simple, uncluttered.

- As a phone the BB is well beyond the iPhone or Android. Want to set up rules for when your phone rings or stays silent? BB lets you do anything you need using a simple exceptions approach.

- The web experience has been really bad on the BB b/c of the slow processor. The video suggests this may be changing.

> The BB might as well be a text only device

The odd thing about this, to me, is that as text-centric as the Blackberry is, every single handset I've played with has had atrocious text rendering (with the last being a friend's Storm).

BB ships with a few very bad fonts, and the default font doesn't look good when reduced in size, so it's quite possible that you've seen customization gone awry.

There's an app for that? Between locale (which allows you to set location-based ring preferences [e.g., do not ring while at the movie theater, but turn the ringer back on when my location is elsewhere]) and some other app whose name I can't remember (that lets you set positional ring-settings [like, if I place my phone face down on the desk, it won't ring, otherwise it will]) -- I don't know what else I might be missing.

I'm not at all familiar with recent Blackberries though, so if I'm ill-informed, please let me know.

Actually, it might have been Locale that did both of those tasks. I just looked over the feature listing, and apparently it can configure display, network settings, notification settings, ringtones, volume and wallpaper based on location, calender events, manual timers, contacts or battery / charging levels.

I don't see position, but uhhh, maybe?

that sounds like a great app!

> - The web experience has been really bad on the BB b/c of the slow processor. The video suggests this may be changing.

The old browser was a custom one written in Java. There is work underway to replace it with a WebKit one.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/16/rim-demos-new-webkit-base...

The advertising agency plus the people in marketing who hired them need to be fired. Seriously, this screams of clueless 35 year old white dude thinking that this is what constitutes "cool".

or, rather, they paid a ton of money for the rights awhile ago, and are locked into using a rapidly aging song.

That's why you don't license shit from beat pushers like Black Eyed Pease; Will.i.m and his PR are pushing their music like crack, and I heavily suspect Payola. They're also heavily in-bed with TicketMaster and those do their bit as well.

The way to do advertising music is to get something naturally cool, but unknown. Mitsubishi struck it big with Dirty Vegas doing the soundtrack for the 2003 Eclipse. Such a good song, you ignored the dancing clown chick riding shotgun. You knew it was successful because Chappelle did a parody of the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGaIe-4-2yg

Don't you feel sad when it ends?

Here is orig, sweetest vid since Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAt7sawS8_4

According to popular legend, that's what Steve Jobs does (or at least, did once).

http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/does-steve-jobs-choose-t...

"We have this company working for us in the States called Synch, and they got in touch with Apple," explained Iversen to Songfacts.com. "I think they had this meeting with Steve Jobs himself, and he picked that song out of the bunch and said, 'This is it, this is the new track for the iPod Touch.'

"Apparently he just loved that track, but we never saw it as one of our singles," continues Iversen. "We have some other songs that we thought would be great singles, and that would work cool on the radio, but he really loved that song."

Song/ad in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS4CEDFQBos

Hey! I liked it the ad. Then again, I'm a clueless 32 year old white dude...

Not that it made me want to buy a Blackberry, overall it was too cluttered for me to figure out how to use it. Well, that and my iPhone.

Agreed. I got goose bumps watching it. It is the opposite of cool to me. Trying too hard to appeal to non-business users.

Clueless 35-year-old white guys are the core of their target market. Instead of a clueless guy trying to "cool it up" and failing, perhaps this was a very cool guy trying to "dork it down" and succeeding.

I'm 30 and I thought the ad was cool. Maybe I'm just ahead of the game... and already clueless.

Snide remarks aside, I disagree. The ad works, and I'm exactly who they are selling to, and I was interested. It was hip, rad AND awesome.

Still, Blackberry to me means email. I had one for 2 years and loved the heck out of it. In fact, I was frustrated with my iPhone for a while after the switch. Now I love each for what they are and ad or no ad, it's too bad RIM is walking away from its textual non-media-centric awesomeness.

Word to your mother.

I write Blackberry software as a major component of my day job. I was basically thrown into the position as part of my companies mobile division because nobody else wanted to work with the platform. After a few weeks of learning the platform I understand why.

The Blackberry OS was never designed with general consumers in mind. I'm assuming that RIM was under the impression that the Blackberry API would be used by programmers to develop in-house software. Why do I say this? Until OS 5.x, there's no built in way to determine how to get a Blackberry on the internet. In order to reliably get the device online, you have to sequentially attempt to connect using the six documented connection methods. Ironically, there's an undocumented seventh method that RIM will tell you about for $1,200. The details on how to access this without paying the RIM tax are readily available if you simply google "blackberry undocumented mds-public". The only rationale behind why they'd make this so difficult is that they didn't foresee the advent of 3rd party apps being written for the device, or alternatively, they just don't give a crap and think taxing people who develop for the platform is good business.

Forunately, as of 5.x, they finally provide a closed source class to get your device online; however, 90% or more of the phones on the market don't run 5.x, so you're still stuck figuring out how to do this yourself. This is discussed endlessly on the forums with each programmer posting his or her personal example of how to get their customers online and reading these posts has become pretty comical after a year of working on the platform.

Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Additional pains of working with Blackberries include the following.

* Five minute reboots between tests for any sizeable app

* HTTP requests must be constrained to a max of 100k

* Code signing requires a 3rd party server that's down frequently

* The simulator is constrained to 10k/sec downloads

* The Java API and UI toolkit are unbearably ancient

All this considered, I think RIM will continue for a good while in the same way Microsoft will. They're heavily entrenched and a lot of suits could give a crap about aesthetics. That being said, if you're thinking about exploring the Blackberry platform, there are better ways to spend your time.

I'm really glad that Blackberry finally came up on HN because there's something I've been interested to get feedback about on here. I feel like a large section of the developer community doesn't understand the power of BBM. It's an application developed by RIM that allows for high speed conversations similar to texting except instead of sending messages over the SMS protocol, it uses the PIN message infrastructure that RIM developed so that it could push emails at a very high speed to phones. BBM is RIM's secret sauce to their cell phones. It's amazing to me, but having a text-based conversation with someone over BBM is ENTIRELY different than even a threaded SMS conversation on two iPhones. Firstly, the messages are sent between the phones much quicker. It comes with complete outbound/read/delivery reports, and allows for a much greater level of complexity in the messages that are sent. Secondly, it uses a buddying system that changes the dynamic of conversation. You have your normal contact list, and then your 'bbm contacts'. I have 90 BBM contacts, (mind you those are all over people I know who also have Blackberrys and we have connected the two phones), but at school I knew people who had 250 or more. Thirdly, it allows for inline insertion of almost any content one wants. Be that sound notes, music, pictures, etc. It also allows for GROUP chatting. In a way that is simply impossible with SMS and the way SMS billing works with the American cell phone companies today. I can't stress enough, there is a developer GOLDMINE here. The first group that writes an app which takes advantage of the inter-phone PIN messaging system that RIM has developed to do more than just BBM is going to be looking at a lot of money. I've had friends ask me multiple times why I didn't develop an app that would allow you to play chess or battleship against your BBM contacts (those are two simple ideas, the possibilities are immense), and after some research I got sort of turned off by the BBM api calls. There didn't seem to be enough of them, and the documentation was quite confusing. I feel like the next iteration of the Blackberry API will change this though, and I have a hunch that there is going to be a new wave of apps specially designed to take advantage of this system. Keep in mind there's nothing like this on iPhone. There is no special code, (like the Bberry PIN) that I can give someone to specially link our two iPhones. What is everyone's thoughts?

Sorry I shouldn't have capitalized random words. I was excited to post something that's been spinning around in my head for a while.

Please please please, use paragraphs. Juts leave a blank line between them.

What makes BBM different from a IM application like Google Talk?

If you're on BIS it's just a very well implemented IM system. Logging in doesn't exist as a concept, messages are just sent like SMS. It provides sent, delivered and received notifications for each message and lets you do all the normal IM stuff like sending images, etc in relatively straightforward way. Honestly it's head and shoulders above AIM, gtalk, etc at least on my Tour. The add-a-contact with the barcode is nice too.

If you're on a BES I believe it ties in with Exchange's GAL so any contact the BES knows about is just available without you having to discover it.

The silly-named cnectd [1] is a cross-platform (iphone/android/bb/symbian) im client with very similar semantics to bbm. It's beta and noticeably buggy but functional.

[1] http://www.cnectd.com/

I reluctantly use a BB at work. For me, the PIN part of messenger is a pain. Identity seems to be tied to device so anytime anyone refreshes hardware, a bunch of PIN messages go out and a lot of the time they fail with some gibberish message. I'm much more curious about BBM having read what you wrote, as point to point messaging is an interesting thing, even though I'm not partial to adding interruption channels personally.

I was an intern at RIM two years ago, and I was with a small team that was working on applications that used PIN messaging in some of the ways you're envisioning.

It never really launched in the way that it was being worked on at the time I was there, but little pieces did make it out in various other forms—I wrote the QR code syncing mechanism that was part of it, which I believe is now launched as a part of BBM.

They are, indeed, "so 2008".

Oh snap!

It makes me wonder who signed off on using a soundtrack that explicitly dates itself like that. Are they trying to act like they aren't with the times?

Oh, man, here I was thinking, "who are these new artists? I'm so behind!"

Technically, Fergie says they're so 3 008.

Yes, it is sad I know that.

No, Fergie is 3008, they're so 2000 and late.

No yourself :^P. Fergie doesn't use 'they' at all. I used 'they' meaning Blackberry.

'You' (their enemies) so two thousand and late. 'I'm' (meaning Fergie, or in this ad, the folks at Blackberry) is/are so 3008.

Ref: http://www.elyrics.net/read/b/black-eyed-peas-lyrics/boom-bo...

God that was sad.

Can someone explain why this is embarrassing? Is it just the reduced focus on business use? Is it the music choice (I don't have sound here, but I assume it was a Black Eyed Peas track)? Something else?

The fact that the interface looks like a less-polished copy of the original iPhone UI.

I assume the primary complaint is that it is cheesy and a little weird how the girl touches her chest.

I was thinking it was the man-in-suit fist and pelvis pump towards his phone while dialing his wife.

It's like the guy who is smart and really good at what he does, but just discovered the Cake Is A Lie meme only last week and now can't stop referencing it.

And he is Rick James.

How dare you..

It makes me cringe, and I think it's because it's trying too hard to be cool. The obviously chosen backgrounds and ethnicities of the subjects, the "was recently cool, but not really anymore" choice of a pop song. In Apple's ads, the music is either something you've not yet heard but will be popular soon (such as "New Soul"), or a legitimate classic from decades ago. They don't run ads of songs that are on their way out. Second, Apple's ads make it look like the dancers are just really enjoying the music, and dancing well to it. Here, dancers are being forced to be constantly touching a screen in a non-natural way, which makes it look neither fun to be dancing nor effortless to use (as a UI experience), and the result is bad dancing and awkward corporate-seeming stiffness, only enhancing the "we're trying to hard to be cool" vibe. Ugh.

Ironically, the very first dancing-silhouette iPod commercial was set to a Black Eyed Peas song--before they made it big.

Is that running code or will that be like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPDT21oEhW0 ?

Wow, I've never seen that video before. Pretty impressive amount of stuff that didn't make it in.

I guess this is the difference between Apple and Microsoft - Apple, by and large, doesn't show you the public until they're ready to sell it to you, at which point you see a near-finished beta.

Microsoft, on the other hand, tells you about their pie-in-the-sky dreams about what they're going to make, but just can't deliver.

> Pretty impressive amount of stuff that didn't make it in.

Actually it's a pretty impressive amount of wishful thinking that never actually existed. Whether the producers knew it would never exist will be debated forever.

Mrs Nailer just pointed out the lady is in a clothes shop (even though she's wearing a suit), the man in a boardroom.

The calculated and blatant appeal to three market segments (women, corporates, teens) is part of the unhip smell of the ad.

Thing is they just pissed off a corporate woman who owns a blackberry.

At least they are finally realizing UX is their weak point and sort of addressing it. But yeah, embarrassing.

Do they have to rub their chest and fix the tie so many times to manipulate the interface?

Reminds me of the lines from "Blades of Glory"

Chazz: No one knows what it means, but it's provocative... Jimmy: No, it's not, it's gross... Chazz: ...It gets the people going!

Lordy, that's very funny. It only works if you dance for it. Which/Who is entertaining Who/Which?

Youtube.com/watch?v=DlO8KMv7Bx4

" Not available on Mobile " as seen from my BB8130 using opera mobile 5.

The native browser used to work with youtube, but then the site changed. Using opera on certain yt videos usually offers me a link to the rtsp:// feed that will open back in the native browser, then the media player (a part of the browser?) launches the stream. To say nothing of how bad the mitsubishi ad linked elsewhere played, when I got it to (likely youtube or the original uploader making a bad encoding decision, but it was all artifacts with no interpretable images).

Offtopic, but oh so relevant. I love to hate on this phone.

Pre-edit(ps?): The input system hates text fields on webpages, hates entering and leaving fields (cursor gets locked on the first word), hates text boxes bigger than the screen (seen occasionally in the horrible RIM FB app), the input system will crash occasionally, and it's predictive text refuses to acknowledge typos. Also, I kept getting a spurious double "e" ("ee") when I /pasted/ the youtube link above, and I've never seen that before.)

Oh my. Will this end up like NOKIA's failure to deliver on the interface promise? See comparison between the animatic and real life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJpEuMidcSU

I've got serious issues with the disconnect between advertised and delivered user interfaces, especially when it comes to flow.

Oh.. And the music, the dancing. +1 for the title of this thread :-S

So Blackberrys are now aimed at teenagers?

And proudly displaying their on-screen keyboard :-(

Teenagers in business suits. Seems like they're having some sort of identity crisis.

Very much so, as a teenager I know a ton of people with Blackberrys, apparently the BBM (BlackBerry messaging) is very popular.

I don't get it :sigh:

Really? I can't see it being chosen over an iPhone or many of the other phone by kids except for those who act like school/life is a job.

Among the people I know with them none of them are the "everything is a job" type. Honestly, it may be a random result of the people I know, but I'm not sure what it is.

I see it in my city, too. BBM is very popular with the high school and college crowd, so they all seem to prefer ANY BlackBerry over an iPhone, their argument being that they can't use BBM with out the BB.

BBM has a certain amount of exclusivity factor to it that lends itself well to teenagers

As someone still nursing the grand old dreams of a great wearable system, I just see it as false advertising. If it was a HUD and body gestures system that actually worked as shown, I would buy it.

You want checking your email to require dancing like an idiot?

Of course not, but some subtle gestures would be quite nice.

I see this as the opposite of Apple's elegance. Instead of a crisp, clean, simple presentation of the phone's features, they went with a busy, dancing, cluttered, fast theme.

Why the guy looks at his watch, when the idea is that he was operating with the Phone, and there is a clock right there?

Because his watch was about as expensive as the unlocked phone, or maybe more and likes to use it.

Definitely noticed that.

Perhaps he was waiting for the screen to refresh on his new BB?

their logo is looking great though, lately

For as flashy as RIM tried to make the UI, they definitely skimped on the Twitter interface.

s/peak/peek/

I thought that meant RIM would quietly become #1 in sales.

that was so incredibly hard to watch. it was like an awkward hipster at a high school party

Sneak *peek".

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