David Pogue: Blackberry storm downgraded to a depression
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
My theory on the iPod touch is that it's a scheme to further cement in people's minds the association between the iPod and the iPhone. I don't think they ever expected it to be a cash cow. If they did they probably would have killed off the classic iPod. After all, Apple consistently makes products that consumers aren't necessarily clamoring for and then tells us it's exactly what we want. The iPod Touch is kind of an oddball in the iPod line and they treat it like one.
You've got the classic iPod with scroll wheel and hard drive. You've got the smaller one with scroll wheel and flash memory to compete in that market. Then there's this touch screen thing that's basically an iPhone without the phone and it's called an iPod. The capacity is low. The battery life is abysmal. It's just as big and expensive as the iPod classic. I don't have a clue what's compelling about that. But people see the iPhone and think "it's just like the new iPod only it's a phone too."
I sync it with my Mac every night: I've never run out of battery over the course of a day, and I only sync the sorts of music I'm into at any moment. It holds 32GB, but I think 8 would be enough for a single day. And it's got more battery life than I need in a day.
I don't need a new phone, and I don't want to pay 70 dollars a month for a new one. I hate texting, and I rarely make phone calls. At the same time, I like playing video and I like a lot of the added features and applications. In college, the iPod touch is huge. I'd say it's the most-used of the various iProducts. So it's got a niche audience, and it's a big enough niche to make it worthwhile.
what i mean is blackberry's position in the market (enterprise market anyway) has been solid and well understood (if not appreciated). for example, people (again atleast in the enterprise world anyway) wanted the keyboard and had gotten used to certain "ways" of using the blackberry..
by trying to create products to compete with the iPhone, blackberry has essentially conceded that their brand is inferior to the iPhone... this i think was unnecessary.. blackberry, with their "me too" products i think has now essentially acknowledged the iPhone as a potential player in the iphone, without actually (as yet) making a dent in the consumer market that iphone enjoys...
this is not new but amazing how it happens again and again by a big player in a certain market reacting to a potential threat..
How is competing at all the same as conceding? The opposite is true in fact, not competing is conceding. RIM is going after a market of people that enjoyed their Blackberry's but loved the 'trendy appeal' of the touch screen iPhone. This doesn't mean that the people who want an actual keyboard can no longer use a Blackberry. They can stick with the Bold, which I'm sure will not be the last real keyboard phone that RIM ever makes. The Storm will serve to keep plenty of already existing customers from switching to the iPhone or G1 because they like the Blackberry system, or it's standard for their companies. It will also likely drive new customers who want the professional appeal of a Blackberry with but still dream about the iPhone. In plenty of industries iPhone's are regarded as a tech toy, not a business tool.
RIM has also already deviated from the full keyboard with the introduction of the Pearl, which was targeted as a more consumer phone to compete with Motorola and Nokia and this has been a great success.
my only point was that the range of products that RIM brought out were more along "me too" line rather than ones of true innovation... here i was talking purely about the bold and the storm lines...
agree pearl is no way in direct competition with iphone or any where close but i was only referring to blackberry's response with its bold and storm lines...
but having said that it can be argued that if the market demands iPhone-like phones then creation of a new brand (ie with the storm and bold) may be an answer...
They released the Storm to cater to the 75% of Americans who don't want to be on AT&T for whatever reason. When the iPhone was released, everyone said "Apple is going to make it about the device, not the carrier" but the reality is they haven't. A lot of people haven't purchased one simply because they prefer another carrier.
Blackberry is giving them an alternative with the Storm. I don't know if it's a good one (maybe not) but it's probably the best, and will probably sell decently just for that.
Does this mean that Google, by creating GMail to compete with hotmail was conceding that their brand is inferior to hotmail?
with storm what is new? sure it has a 3.2 mp camera vs iphone's "paultry" 2 mp and a screen area that is 0.4" larger...
again my issue was with the copy-cat behaviour ... again should have worded that better... what RIM is doing with Storm and Bold is no different from MS's attempts with Zune...
I think Blackberry's trying to compete with Apple was inevitable, and I think they've got some good ideas. But they're dealing with a much higher-quality competitor, in a different field. Phone manufacturers are trying to make a competing phone. They need to work on making competing mini-computers. RIM is the top smart-phone maker, but they're competing in a different (albeit overlapping) field now, and their first attempt was a dud. I think if they didn't try, that Apple would (and still very well may) swamp them within a few years. So they're responding. But their first foray has been a dud.
The simple explanation is that the consumer market is more than willing to tolerate bad quality for the latest and greatest. As everyone will remember iphone OS 2.0 shipped with many similar problems yet Apple still sold many millions of iPhone 3Gs. RIM is obviously well-aware of the issues people are having, but that won't change the fact they too will sell huge number of these this holiday season.
I have not used a Blackberry Storm, but it the article makes it clear that there are a number of fundamental problems with the user interface.
There were a few hickups, crashing, etc. with the iPhone 2.0 software, but nothing significant has changed about the UI design (only the underlying system).
"It can take two full seconds for the screen image to change when you turn it 90 degrees, three seconds for a program to appear, five seconds for a button-tap to register"
Take your iphone, open up contacts and count how many seconds it takes from the tap to being able to scroll or click. ~5s on mine, and I remember it being worse with OS 2.0. And what about switching orientations in ipod? At least a second unless it happens to get stuck and not rotate at all.
Does rotating really have lag? It's pretty much instantaneous for me on a Touch running 2.1.
Giving Rim's history, I wouldn't be suprised if they are working on a brand new 5.0 OS, and they will release it for the current phones (BOLD and STORM). After all they did the same, where many devices with 3.6 could upgrade to 4.0 for free.
For what it's worth, I've never read a review of his that didn't make good points on both sides. If Pogue's in Apple's pocket, he's doing a very good job of being fair to both sides.
Any reporter given the sort of access he has is in a feedback loop where bias begets access which in turn begets bias. To pass it off as "Apple just rocks and Pogue knows it" is naive.
With the Storm, he's being much more dismissive than usual, hence the suspicion - but he's dealing with a product that's visually and feature-wise a direct face-off with the iPhone, only with added layers of abstraction and difficulty inherent in using the device. Pogue's very clear about all of that. To read this review and say that Pogue's being negative because of the messed-up incentives is missing that Pogue is in fact reviewing an inferior product.
I mean, I suppose there's some bias in my statement, since I do trust Apple and its products, and therefore I tend to see straight in this only with people who are in a similar place. So in my mind, Pogue is only doing the logical thing when he slams down this phone as being a cheap Blackberry knock-off.
The Apple journalist deal is one that gets a bit argumentative. I think that Apple fully has the right to only give products to journalists that like Apple, and I don't think that there's a bribe inherent in that. And I know I'm in the vast minority for people that think that, too. In my mind, though, Apple gives those devices as a favor, not as a responsibility, and they are sensible when they only hand out to people that happen to like Apple. That's my inherent bias in this discussion: I think that Apple's in the clear for this.