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Comment by manishsharan | Hacker News Reader

I am not falling for BB again !

In my last iteration of smartphone purchase, I bought a latest-at-the-time Iphone 3GS for my wife and the latest-at-the-time Blackberry Bold. Since then I have watched in envy as my wife could get so much done on her phone than I could on my BB. My BB never did much beyond email and BBM ( I love BBM )

In this iteration, I recently placed an order for Nexus 4 and a Iphone 5. maybe if they are still around in 3~4 years from now, sure I could consider going back to BB.

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Did you even read the review? This isn't related AT ALL to the old OS7 Bold or any other Blackberry line, which were awful. BB10 can do much more than an iPhone and be just as productive while providing a rich media experience.

It's still relevant. Increasingly, mobile OSes are less about where they are now than where they will be. Apple have been outstanding in that regard- providing OS updates to really quite old phones. Vanilla Android has been just as great, but individual Android manufacturers less so. MS has been terrible. BB has a history of being terrible.

So, Blackberry's past is relevant. No, they might not repeat it, but absent of any other evidence, we can only judge them by past conduct.

just as productive while providing a rich media experience.

I don't even know what that means

"Apple have been outstanding in that regard- providing OS updates to really quite old phones."

Yes, like the iOS 4 update for my 3G -- which made my phone so slow as to be almost useless. Came close to smashing it in frustration many, many times. So in my case at least, Apple providing an update to an old phone is definitely nothing to brag about. However, it did force me to upgrade the phone, and I'm guessing that was the point.

That wasn't a good upgrade, but at least the option was there. The phone came with 2.0, received 3.0, 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2. Every one of those was available day one.

Most android manufacturers aren't releasing updates, or they're months behind. WP updates were often stalled months by carriers/manufacturers, and phones bought last year can't get WP8.

>Most android manufacturers aren't releasing updates, or they're months behind

HTC finally released the Android 4.0 update for the HTC Thunderbolt (Verizon's variant of the HTC Desire HD). I guess 14 months after Android 4.0 was released is better than never, but it kills me it takes that long for some Non-Nexus devices.

BB is also making good on that now, updating things that can be updated like their playbooks, even though they're several years old.

I'll say I was very impressed that they're going to update those tablets. That was an excellent show of good will. So many manufacturers would have released a new tablet (even if it was only cosmetic differences) and told their existing customers "Thanks for your last purchase, here is the new hotness, buy again."

Then I can only judge Apple by OS 7.

Mac System 7 was released in 1997. The earliest BlackBerry Bold (assuming that's the one under discussion, which I'm not clear of) was released in December 2009.

One of these things is not like the other.

The Palm Pre was an incredible phone, but that doesn't matter if the company dissolves.

It's entirely realistic to not expect Blackberry (the company) to not be around two years from now.

The Palm Pre hardware was far from incredible unfortunately. The slider was notoriously broken. The case would crack with any wear. It wasn't exactly a premium platform to showcase the software innovations.

I think you really should look at Blackberry financial statements and revenue targets which have been very realistic if you believe the company is not going to be around in two years. You are making some pretty forward looking predictions that are not at all in line with either market analysts or blackberry estimates.

HN should be about facts and well-considered opinion not FUD. Just my $0.02.

Brand new OS, brand new hardware, what could possibly go wrong? Last time they did this (Playbook - new hardware, new OS) it was a gigantic hit, right?

The re-brand is telling. This is not the same organization that launched the PlayBook.

I also believe that the PlayBook is an extremely under-valued product. I, and quite a few people I know, use it all the time. For the price point it is a great device.

For the 200 dollar price point.

When it launched it was what, twice that? Also came missing basic features. That's what lead to the failure. I got mine as a gift, it's a nice device. Main complaint is no suffort from bigger third party companies (i.e. netflix, skype).

The 7" Blackberry PlayBook 16GB cost $499 when it went on sale in April of 2011. That's the same price as Apple was selling its 10" iPad 2 16GB for.

Five months later, RIM slashed the prices of the PlayBook. The 16GB model was sold for $199, $6 below the Bill of Materials costs.

RIM sold 700,000 PlayBooks before they lowered the prices, and even when they were selling them at a loss, they only managed to sell 1 million more.

Aside from its price point, it's not hard to see why the PlayBook flopped. When it launched, there were hardly any third party apps for PlayBook, the OS lacked autocorrection, the onscreen keyboard was barely usable, there was no integration with cloud storage, the default search engine was Bing, it had no store for media content, and of course: it had no standalone e-mail and calendar software.

So if a company ever messes up then they're doomed to endlessly flounder?

Hey, you remember the Apple Lisa?

You've just described how many on HN view Windows Phone. It doesn't matter how good it is, remember how bad it used to be?

And I'd say that's a bit sad. As someone whom uses the WP platform I have to say as far as software goes, MS really developed a great product. Everything just WORKS, whereas with my Android phone it ends up being the platform to 'tinker' with because things randomly crash, or run slow, etc.

In my experience WP has been well integrated and there's not really any need to tinker with anything (which I suppose some don't like, but for me I just want my phone to work).

That's been my experience with WP7 and WP8. It's the platform where you don't need any apps. Everything you expect a smartphone to do comes baked in. The default featureset is quite impressive. Any extra apps are just that, extras.

The problem is in getting people to give it a fair go. I hear a lot of iOS and Android complaints that don't exist on WP, and when I bring it up people just laugh.

Honestly? I'd like to like Windows Phone. I really would. I'm not much of a partisan--I switched from iOS to Android not that long ago and still write code for both.

But I laugh at Windows Phone 8 because of Windows Phone 7. I simply do not trust Microsoft to not abandon its users again (and as a former XNA user, I distrust them there too).

You honestly can't understand the reason for switching from CE to NT? You honestly expect them to abandon NT for Windows Phone 9?

Even still, it's not like Windows Phone 7 users are just up and fucked, they're still receiving updates (like WP7.8). That's good for people who bought into the platform less than two years before WP8 came out; they're not left in the cold. Their apps still work, they can still install many of the new apps coming out, and when they do upgrade (almost all of) their already-purchased apps still work. It's not that Microsoft made a hard cut off and left WP7 users for dead, they're just not providing an OS upgrade from WP7 to WP8. Everything else still works like an incremental upgrade.

Windows Phone 7 still works, it's still being updated, and there are still just as many apps being released. And when you get a new phone with WP8, it will work just like WP7 did, and your apps carry over. There's no need to throw a tantrum; no one has been abandoned.

This is exactly what I'm talking about: people laugh at the platform with uneducated opinions they tout as fact and spread their "facts" to other people. It ends up being a game of telephone/Chinese whispers where the truth gets more distorted the more its repeated. If you'd really like to like Windows Phone as you say, as a developer or as a user, you might want to think about what you're saying about it first. That app you wrote in 2010 still runs on WP8, and the app you wrote in 2013 works just fine on a WP7 launch device.

You misunderstand me. I understand why they did it. I don't care. I'm a consumer here, not a developer, and I want to be the guy who has a phone with an upgrade path. If I can't get updates to my phone for at least a couple years--and save the "but but WP7.8," I do define "updates" as latest-and-greatest, and that's WP8--I consider it abandonment. Samsung does it. LG does it. HTC does it. Google's Nexus devices don't, and neither does Apple, and that's why they're on my radar and the others are not. WP7.8 is a joke for PR purposes--they are leaving people out in the cold because they can't get WP8. That's the important upgrade. Not WP7.8. And people who got on board with Windows Phone, the early adopters who Microsoft should be thanking their lucky stars doesn't consider them a joke (or didn't, maybe they do now!), are the ones getting burned. That's unacceptable behavior and I won't reward it with my money.

I have no assurances, none whatsoever, that WP9 won't leave me with an un-upgradeable doorstop even if there isn't a kernel transition. They've showed that they'll be assholes even to their early adopters, so why wouldn't they be an asshole to me? And Microsoft's word is dirt to me, so I don't even believe them if they say it's the case. If they release WP9 and WP10 without fucking over their customers, I will consider them no longer radioactive. Until then, I refuse to be make P.T. Barnum more correct.

(Microsoft's penchant for abandoning technology is also why I won't write code for Microsoft platforms anymore except for ports of my C++ games because that's still where a worthwhile percentage of the market is and I can't not target it. Which sucks, because I really like C#, but they made that bed, not me.)

Again, I don't understand why you're repeating your "truths". You're asking for updates. You got one. How is anyone getting burned?

Again I'm going to repeat: Software from WP7 works on WP8. A majority of software from WP8 will work on WP7. What are you missing out on by not getting WP8? A couple features only made possible by the new hardware released with WP8. Let's go with your Apple example: if you bought an iPhone 4 right before the release of the iPhone 4S, yeah, you "got" the update to the latest software version, for certain definitions of "got". What didn't you get? The biggest part of the update, basically the whole reason for the new phone: Siri. Without Siri, you've got a minor software update to last generation's phone.

So Microsoft is calling a spade a spade, where Apple is hiding behind a bigger version number. Apple leaves out big features from their software upgrades for users on last year's phone, but it's okay because the version number is one higher? That's not leaving their users out in the cold? You don't feel burned for not getting Siri on your iPhone 4? Because on both iOS and Windows Phone, you're getting updates for an old phone, and on both iOS and Windows Phone you're only getting the parts of the update your phone will support. Whether you buy that the phone support is the issue or not, that's how it goes. The only difference is the major version number, and if they're lying to you about it or not.

I guess I don't understand how it's acceptable for Apple to fuck you over and lie to you about it, but not for Microsoft to just release an update for an old phone.

WP7.8 is not the update that I demand for me to consider Microsoft credible. Simple as that. You can continue railing fanboyishly if you want, but it doesn't impress. I expect to get the newest--and that's not a point release for a dead OS, that's the new OS--for at least two years after I buy a phone. Don't bother quibbling about this: it is simply not up for discussion and you are wasting your time trying to claim that I am wrong for it.

Apple restricts some features from OS updates in ways I do not appreciate, sure. And it was a factor in me going to Google's Nexus device line. But it was a small factor because, in practice, Apple doing so was not a significant issue--I didn't care about Siri and Apple's messaging toward third-party development meant that I still got third-party applications that interested me that could run on my iPhone 4. Microsoft is not encouraging people to develop for WP7. It is a second-class citizen at best because WP8 is out, it is the new hotness, and no, WP7 loyalists, you can't have it. And there is nothing to indicate that they won't do the same for WP9. Or WP10. So when they get a couple of iterations under their belts where they have treated the customer in a way I am willing to pay money for, I will consider them.

Of course, they'll in all likelihood be pretty much dead in the water by then and it'll all be moot.

I'm not trying to impress you, I'm trying to make you (and anyone else reading who might trust you) see how ridiculous you are sounding. If Microsoft gave you what is included in 7.8 but called it 8, you would be happy. That's what you're saying. No arguments, that's literally what you're saying.

What you want is for Microsoft to lie to you just like Apple does. And until they do, you won't consider them credible.

No. If Microsoft came out with a single OS upgrade that they wanted developers to target, and put that on WP7 phones, then I would consider that reasonable. They are not. They are giving a point release to their long-time supporters while telling everyone else that WP7 is dead and to write code for the new hotness. That's unacceptable for phones that could be less than six months old. It's simply unacceptable.

Like I said, WP apps can be made using the same SDK. Apps can be made today that run on WP8 will run fine even on WP7.0 and vice versa. The only apps that won't run on WP7 are apps that use features that only WP8 can support (oh snap other platforms do this too). You know what platform they want developers to target? Windows Phone. I don't think they care which version. Hell, make your app for WP7 because it will still work on WP8. When I upgraded my phone, I didn't have to re-buy or do without any of my old apps. I booted the phone and redownloaded everything just like it was, with the same WP7 apps. Like I keep saying, they're the same. You're not even submitting to a different app store. WP7 apps continue to pour into the marketplace just like they were, and can still be bought and installed on WP7.

Again, what I'm reading from your posts is that you want WP7.8 to be called WP8. And until Microsoft starts to lie to you, you won't trust them. You've proven my point quite well, people will find the tiniest little things to bitch about when it comes to Microsoft. If you don't want to buy into the phone then don't, but stop telling your "truths" to other people who might. Please try to understand how ridiculous you're being.

I don't make apps. I buy them. My ability to buy them is predicated on other people writing them to target WP7. Microsoft's messaging excludes WP7. I am well aware that you can target WP7 and WP8 simultaneously; I am also aware that Microsoft doesn't really give a shit if anyone actually does and that it is an absolutely insane proposition to expect greenfield development to actually target WP7 today--because why would it? I sure wouldn't, because the WP7 market is tiny! But it's Microsoft's job to take care of its early adopters who trusted them, and their messaging indicates no desire to really do that. OS releases and app releases are two different things, and Microsoft is falling down on the latter in a way that means I will simply not go there.

I want my phone to have the literal newest-and-best for at least two years and I don't want the platform setting a direction in which I am not explicitly included as a first-class citizen. Which Microsoft isn't doing. And, sure, you're right that Apple doesn't do that either! Great! I use my Android phones as daily drivers and the Nexus devices do exactly that. Why should anyone do differently?

They're not doomed, but consumers are certainly right to look at them with more skepticism before dropping hundreds of dollar on their product.

I got the Playbook (2 actually, one for my mom) and it's actually pretty good. Considering how much cheaper it was to the Nexus, I don't mind the purchase and for what we really use it for (chat, YouTube, email etc...) it's pretty good.

The AppWorld isn't the barren wasteland of shoddy apps it once was either. I think they're slowly starting to attract decent developers.

The OS is an update of the Playbook OS, so not brand new.

I interpret "I have watched in envy as my wife could get so much done on her phone" as regarding how many apps are available for one phone and how few were available for his Blackberry.

It's great if the phone at launch has all sorts of modern features, but this same sort of device/feature envy will exist if Blackberry can't attract significant developer attention.

Well, if the incentive is there (I haven't researched much into the SDK yet), I'll develop for BB10. I really see the potential here and how this OS can really make an impact on the mobile landscape. I hope other developers will share the same sentiment after using the phone itself... Really, what isn't to love about it, judging from the reviews? It's a great platform and I'm planning to buy one as soon as it's released.

I think other developers will see the value in BB10 as well and create apps for it. We all know the big companies like Rovio, Facebook, Amazon, and Mojang will obviously at one time or another port their apps to work with BB10, but if we can get the smaller, part-time developers on this bandwagon, we have a very viable contender here.

How can we know that the big companies will port their apps?

Many of the top apps were missing from the previous BlackBerry OS. What indication is there that they will be coming to BB10?

BlackBerry says they are in talks with Netflix, but they said that about getting an app for BB7, and that never happened.

This. In my opinion BB10 will live or die on third party support. You can have a great OS, but people won't adopt it without a good number of high quality apps.

I haven't looked into development for BB10. But I know that previous versons were horrible to develop for. You wouldn't believe the number of times I've heard BB developers curse over having to have dev build signed by BB servers. Especially during heavier server times, where the servers went down for long periods of times. fixing this alone would do wonders in helping BB10

I've never done any legacy BB development, but coding for the playbook / BB10 is pretty excellent. Write C/C++ like you normally do for any *nix/Qt type system (using the Eclipse based IDE); Compile locally and deploy over the air to the device; stdout/err get sent back to the Eclipse console. I remember being really surprised at first at how easy it was to rip through the build/deploy cycle. The dev kit is pretty well done.

I can say with certainty that there is no RIM server involved beyond getting a Dev cert at the very beginning. You can develop offline and deploy over an ad hoc LAN or USB - so there's no requirement for Blackberry to sign your dev builds.

Anyway, if you haven't looked into it, do. There's also a bunch of BB folks on github porting libraries and such to BB10, so if the library you want isn't in the SDK, it may already be ported. Though in my experience it's pretty easy to just build most vaguely POSIX compliant code yourself.

It's good to hear they've improved the development experience. It was something that I think that really hurt them in the past. I will have to take a look into it when i find the time.

I think it is not the device but the ecosystem that supports the device that is more important. Like a certain CEO once said "Developers Developers Developers .. ". I would be curious to know how successful Blackberry has been in wooing third party developers. What is the ETA for Skype, Netflix, snapchat, and Uber for BB 10 ?

Do the Android versions of the above apps failed to work on BB10?

Unless the submission process is extremely arduous I would hope the developers of those apps release their Android versions at the very least on the BB app store.

> BB10 can do much more than an iPhone

Really? That's not the impression that I get. It might be able to meet the current features and abilities of iOS and Android but I haven't see anything that indicates it can do "so much more". There doesn't seem to be enough here to justify purchasing a device from a 3rd place manufacturer with brand new software.

Real time task scheduling, a much better keyboard, an excellent multitasking UI, full push email support, a better web browser and better benchmarks, to name a few.

The reasons I listed above are directed at BB's biggest userbase: businesses. That doesn't mean that the average consumer won't be able to take advantage of these features, though. QNX is real-time. That is huge. The performance of the OS should be unmatched by both Android and iOS simply because of that. Also, the UI is clean and refreshing compared to the standard crop of boring, button-nav, clone gridmapped interfaces out there. Gestures are the future. We saw them with Ubuntu Phone, and we're seeing them in BB10 now, too.

There's a lot of potential here if you look beyond the tangible.

"QNX is real-time. That is huge."

Why? What's the benefit?

P.S. I have a playbook if you can use examples from that (if it has RTOS)

I'm interested in this, too.

I interned at a software company back in the late 90s that ran on QNX (batch control software for concrete ready-mix plants) - so I have some exposure to QNX. It is a pretty interesting RTOS (the Neutrino microkernel was pretty neat, architecturally). QNX is cool and all, but what "huge" advantage does "real-time" have on multi-core mobile devices?

I also have a PlayBook somewhere (got it for free at a conference) and there was nothing particularly impressive about the multi-tasking that wasn't either obviated by OS design or otherwise simulated "good enough" in other tablet operating systems (the perennial real-time vs. preemptive multitasking argument).

I'm not saying that there may be some interesting things that are made easier for BlackBerry due to a RTOS - but what "huge" things is a BlackBerry user going to see that, say, an iOS or Android user won't - solely due to a RTOS?

No kidding humans don't care about 10ms jitter, missle guidance systems do. RTOS doesn't matter to humans.

So for example, the android runtime operates at the same level as any other process. You will run android applications at the same "performance" level as native qnx apps. The benefits of the microkernel means crashes of an android runtime or the adobe AIR runtime have zero chance of bringing down other platform services, etc. You have to remember it was once planned to also offer a "legacy" runtime environment so that j2me/bb apps would continue to run alongside android apps. That obviously was lost (good riddance!) in the development cycle. The CPU scheduler is also quite different.

The playbook represented a very "rush a beta product to market too fast" case study, so I wouldn't prejudge the smartphone builds of BB10 to the playbook experience. How does this translate into a "better" user experience is not clear to me either apart from being able to run repackaged android apps from day one. Design and flow is more important.

That said, the multimedia latency that can be important in gaming on low-powered devices is significantly improved compared to the performance of the linux kernel. Finally, if an app ecosystem builds up around "sharing" information capabilities between running apps, the QNX IPC messaging is significantly better optimized than the IPC mechanism "borrowed" from BeOS that android uses.

In theory, the advantages of the QNX microkernel to Blackberry isn't so much in that it will dramatically improve the smartphone experience per se, it is that QNX can be deployed/configured with less headache across more divergent platforms with different capabilities and hardware than the j2me platform, such as auto infotainment systems, factory floors, medical devices, etc. It would be quite possible to boot the device and "download" most of the necessary modules to run the hardware dynamically.

Finally, I think the one aspect of QNX that hasn't really been exploited or discussed yet is its use as a distributed computing platform. It is rather easy to tie QNX "nodes" together and do IPC across the network by using TDP on qnet. [0] I could imagine for example using the processing power of the "nearby" qnx systems to power the apps running on my phone to save its battery. You could see swarms of phones contributing to enterprise problems in a distributed fashion. Want to access the camera on a phone in China, the code is the same as accessing the camera on your local phone, kind of like the Plan9 filesystem/protocol. Obviously BB10 has to be successful for anything grander and someone at BB has to share my product vision for it to take root.

Sorry just rambling here, I'll stop.

[0] http://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.3.2/neutrino/prog/qnet....

You said the BB10 can do so much more but then provided a list of fairly insignificant features and the mention of potential. If you were a sales person, you would have lost the sale.

QNX being real-time has little to do with real world performance. While the Z10 does have good performance but it also has a pretty high clocked processor and double the RAM of competitor devices.

It may not be much of a boost in performance, but RTOS systems do enhance stability. First off, there are no memory leaks, so the performance of the phone won't degrade over time requiring a reboot as is often the case with my Nexus 4. The system will still stay just as fast as it was from day one without needing a reboot. Second, QNX is a microkernel in contrast to Android's monolithic style kernel or WP8 and iOS' hybrid kernel, so one process gone awry won't bring down the entire system. Again, a big stability boost, which is key in a business environment. Third, process scheduling is unmatched by any conventional OS compared to a real-time operating system, so multitasking is improved and is more rich compared to the crippled implementations that iOS and Android use.

I'm sure the average Joe would appreciate speed, functionality, and stability, don't you think?

First of all, how does a real time kernel have anything to do with memory leaks in applications or services? It's not as if modern Linux or Windows kernels leak kernel memory.

Secondly, unless you go all the way back to DOS or Mac classic you won't find an OS where a process can bring down the entire system. I can't remember the last time I had a full system crash on any OS on any device (that wasn't caused by faulty hardware).

I haven't heard anything that suggests that a real-time kernel has any effect on the multitasking performance of a GUI operating system. It's not as if iOS or Android have crippled implementations, as you said. They just make a different trade off and they should, in fact, more suited to this kind of work.

"BB10 can do much more than an iPhone and be just as productive while providing a rich media experience"

It would probably help if you named specific benefits that didn't sound like PR spew, because this means absolutely nothing to me.

Out of curiosity, and having never used it, what is cool about BBM?

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