How RIM BlackBerry works with loyal app developers | Hacker News Reader

How RIM BlackBerry works with loyal app developers

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51 pointsnetcrash10 comments

An app is stuck in approval purgatory, and a customer service rep rattles off a canned response about why there aren't any IM apps on the Playbook yet.

That's a long way from solid evidence of anti-competitive behavior. These guys have a right to be upset, since it's been two months since they first submitted, but they should remember Hanlon's razor when trying to explain things.

Rather than trying to cover things up, chances are that the customer service rep honestly has no idea about the IM+ app submission. It's probably not his department.

Likewise, rather than RIM deliberately trying to block IM+, the two month delay is probably due to lack of staff, bad prioritization of tasks, or things otherwise falling through the cracks,

Does it really matter if RIM are deliberately trying to block the app vs. they are experiencing organizational mayhem that results in the app being blocked?

Point is, these guys have invested man months in an app that would add value to the playbook, and all they are getting are dazed canned responses.

In a similar position it seems more than enough to decide to drop RIM development and move on with the other platforms.

It's kind of sad if RIM has to depend on BBM as their last resort to keeping a competitive ground.

Yeah, I understand the frustration, but it's pretty clear that this customer service rep has nothing to do with the approval process of apps and is simply reflecting the current state of affairs.

It sounds like that approval process is pretty messed up at the moment, though. Two months without word seems to be slower than Apple at its worst, and the fact that this app's developers even tried to reach out to regular customer support instead of developer relations implies some serious disorganization.

I'd say it's intentional due to Hanlon's razor in upper management.

Perhaps some logic like this: we can't lose "our" BBM users but blocking IM apps would drive users and developers away. Let's quietly block IM apps at the approval stage!

Also, "anti-competitive" is the wrong description - unless you count killing your own company. :D

I can corroborate with the author's story. I'm developing the BB app for a cross-platform group messaging app and I've also hit a wall of silence from RIM. I can confirm that they are deliberately not giving us access to certain parts of RIM's infrastructure that would make things a lot easier for us. Oh well, guess we'll have to engineer our way around those roadblocks and then open source it!

I'd love to hear your history, reasons and current attitude to developing BB apps.

The stories* tell me that the RIM/BB developer experience is so much worse than iOS and Android that it's not worth bothering with (as developers and hence as a viable platform).

* the big ones: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2263882 ("You Win, RIM!") and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714270 ("Open letter to BlackBerry bosses")

You can't really blame RIM for being slow on IM apps given they are suing Kik with one patent claim around IM on mobile devices (I wonder if they will sue Apple with iMessage). Most other IM apps on BB were on there before the lawsuit and you have to bet no one at RIM wants to come down on the wrong side of the legal department.

I think the whole platform-specific app development issue is going to cause increasing headaches for the mobile platform developers over the next year or two. All these rigid policies and semi-arbitrary and unaccountable decisions to reject apps and locked up technical details just make it hard for serious businesses to justify committing the resources required to write native apps worth more than an iFart toy.

Maybe some will and they'll get away with it, just as right now Zynga are doing pretty well even though they're almost completely dependent on Facebook, but the average app developer doesn't have the highly valuable and almost symbiotic relationship that evolved in that case. Meanwhile, much of what apps do could also be done almost as well using web-based software, which can run quite happily on any modern mobile, can be developed at a fraction of the cost of targeting each platform with a native app, and doesn't carry any risk of lock-in or summary execution by random platform developer/app store employee.

We are about to do a test run of our loyalty application RewardCard.mobi, and it will only support iPhone and Androids. (Oh the test is at the RIM plaza)

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