How BlackBerry’s bid to one-up the iPhone failed | Hacker News Reader

How BlackBerry’s bid to one-up the iPhone failed

theglobeandmail.com

53 pointsuladzislau41 comments

  When he pressed on a digital key, the entire 
  screen clicked down like a giant button, replicating 
  the tactile feel of tapping a BlackBerry keyboard.

That sounds tone-deaf to me. The appeal of the physical keyboard is that you can feel where the keys are, and not as RIM apparently thought, the joy of tapping on something that depresses by half a millimeter without any tactile position feedback at all. A touch screen that you have to physically press combines the worst aspects of keyboards and touch screens, doesn't it?

> “Did we push the teams too hard?” says Lazaridis. “Probably. Can you show me a company that doesn’t? I’d be hard-pressed to believe you. The pressure Jobs put his iPhone team through was worse than anything I ever put on my team. The fact is, that’s how business runs.”

Asshole.

It's disgusting the fact that being deliberately an asshole is the de-facto view of the awesome manager today. Quotes like "that's a price you have to pay", etc. usually follow shitty statements like the above.

Elon musk also expects his employees to work hard, the recent story about how spacex and tesla almost went bankrupt had paragraphs about employees totally giving up any semblance of work life balance:

>Hollman exemplified the kind of recruit Musk wanted: ... At 23, Hollman was young, single, and willing to give up any semblance of having a life in favor of working at SpaceX nonstop,

>SpaceX engineers would work for 10 days straight in Texas, come back to California for a weekend, and then head back.

When searching for that article to quote I found this one as well:

>If an employee tells Musk a deadline or cost requirement is isn't possible, he will often kick them off their job on the spot. "Elon will say, 'Fine. You're off the project, and I am now the CEO of the project. I will do your job and be CEO of two companies at the same time. I will deliver it,'" former senior SpaceX engineer Kevin Brogan told Vance. "What's crazy is that Elon actually does it. Every time he's fired someone and taken their job, he's delivered on whatever the project was."

my only point is that HN loves musk and his work ethos but apparently the same expectations from apple/blackberry don't get the same treatment.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-elon-musk-spacex/ [2] http://uk.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-doesnt-believe-in-im...

Celebrity worship. Musk is favored on HN, Jobs / Apple not as much. Both companies can be considered successful, but are not given similar critiques.

He's not even an asshole who won. So, while that may be how a lot of businesses run, it's not exactly a ringing endorsement of the strategy.

There's also the other side of the argument, that he wasn't enough of an asshole to win...

Whipping the team harder in the wrong direction wouldn't have worked any better.

It was the wrong product. Even if it had worked perfectly and been delivered in a day instead of nine months, it would still have been the wrong product.

That's what a management failure looks like. Turning up the assholery wouldn't have fixed anything.

The same could be said of making your staff drink honey when they come into work. If it's not increasing their productivity, perhaps they're simply not drinking enough of it.

It's true enough that nothing will work if you don't sufficiently commit to it. The limitation with the observation is that it doesn't show how well associated different stimuli are with the desired output. Did torture not get the truth, perhaps you just didn't use enough of it? Did dosing someone with Omeprazole not cure a cold? Perhaps you didn't use enough of it... and so on. Or perhaps it's not the right approach.

What we can say in general terms is that if you need a lot of something, the desired effect is at least only weakly associated with the stimuli. It might be possible to get the desired effect by using more of the thing, but this is a poor substitute for understanding the mechanism involved, and can be prohibitively costly; ethically and practically.

In the given case: being an arsehole, for all that it comes easily to the individual, seems likely to be expensive to those around them - and by extension to the organisation - in other terms. There are people who will refuse to work with you because you're an arsehole. There are people who will burn out if you push them too hard. There are people who will keep their own counsel on issues rather than attempting to involve you in things. There are normative arguments that you won't be able to make, because no-one will take them seriously coming from someone like that.

Balanced against the uncertainty that the output is even there, (anecdotes seem to go both ways on the issue,) that it does not match how I would expect productive working relationships to operate, and that I personally have never seen an effective team that I would attribute to the manager being mean, (and a great many ineffective teams that I would attribute to the same,) it does not seem a wise strategy to me.

Though, that said, you might be bringing a different model of productive working relationships, or a different basis of observation, to the discussion. (Or be playing devils advocate.)

Yeah... he is a jerk but he is right, Jobs was way worse and the myriad of people buying iPhone make look like he was right.

The question is whether it's a precondition, or enhancer, of success in this sort of field. Not whether some particularly well-known business leader happened to share the property.

Do you know of any horror stories from the then iPhone team that you can link to about how Jobs pushed too hard?

I worked at Apple when Jobs was CEO and pretty much ALL of the company worked hard. It was pretty much written into the contract. It didn't have anything to do with Jobs personally telling you had to. It was because the deadlines and work were demanding and at a company that strives for excellence you don't want to be the weak link.

If he would have pushed himself harder, had tried to imagine the future and bring it into being a year or two earlier instead of sitting on his ass milking the cash cow, maybe the pressure would not have been necessary.

So, Apple had the ability to leverage AT&T's weakness to deliver a phone focused what consumers actually wanted, access to the internet. Blackberry in response, is pressured by the other carriers to focus on delivering a hard to execute "better" touch experience, as if that meant anything to anybody. Apple in the meantime, works on delivering mobile apps. I guess the takeaway is if others are focusing on the real needs of consumers, that's what has to be on your roadmap, not the whims of powerful channel partners.

Ah, well RIM didn't really sell Blackberry phones to end users, they sold Blackberry phones to carriers. Carriers were the customers. This makes a conflict where making carriers happy is more important than end users. The fact that Apple changed the game and could sell directly to carriers and provide updates without carrier permission was a game changer (and still is, just look at the majority of android devices that will never get an update). This is briefly touched on in the article, but not really highlighted and I am guessing is talked about more elsewhere in the book.

I gave blackberry a chance, buying one of their OS 10 based devices. But they simply don't get it. Boot time is measured in days. Lots and lots and lots of snags and bugs and glitches still persist even though it is now 10.3.

They have services that keep running that then annoy you to log in, even if you don't want to (no I don't have a BlackBerry login, nor do I want one, and don't keep bugging me in the alerts).

They send spam alerts, for example when trying to offload their new failing handset models.

Cut and paste is a disaster.

Seems like an odd list of criticism. I thought every phone booted slowly but it doesn't generally matter because it's so rare. I haven't rebooted my Blackberry since 10.3 was released and I don't remember that being especially slow.

Have you tried using an Android without creating a Google account? It didn't seem possible but I didn't really have any motivation to fight the prompts. I'm a bit surprised if iOS doesn't do something similar. Why not just create the account?

I've never seen an alert from my phone trying to sell another. I think your carrier is just spamming you.

I've not noticed a problem with cut and paste; what's so disastrous for you?

The difference is this.

iOS devices boot in about 30 seconds - they don't give you progress reports or anything to tell you how long it will take to boot, just the logo and then it's on, all cylinders firing. It's a design decision which means you don't actually notice how long it's taking. The blackberry on the other hand has a progress bar which creeps along, giving a much longer perceived sense of time.

All phones need you to sign up for an account to get the best from them - the difference is that blackberry and android let you use the phone without one, whereas apple does not. Thus, the other two annoy users who haven't created an account with popups, whereas with Apple, you are never hassled because you have had to sign up to use it.

Cut and paste on BB is confusing - again, iOS is relatively simple (although not perfect) tap words > copy, tap empty space > paste

I'm not sycophantically promoting the iphone, but Apple understand that users want an easy to use phone. No hassling to do this or that, no 'launch pad' of apps which you then have to tap another icon on to get to all of your other apps, they are just all presented on the swipable screens. BB and Android both fail to 'get' this, still.

I get the feeling a lot of people form their phone opinions without actually giving the others a chance. I have an Android tablet (Nexus 7) but my iOS experience is mostly helping my daughter when her iPod starts acting weird. I touched a my father's Windows Phone once. I'm happy with a BB phone, don't like Android phones and see nothing attractive about iPhone's.

Are there people who honestly compare the different OS's regularly? I'm skeptical an honest comparison is even possible at this point.

Blackberry hasn't had a progress bar during boot in years, not since BB 10. Thinking of BB OS 7 maybe?

I rarely use an iOS device but I don't remember cut/paste working different than it does on BB.

I agree with your comment about a launch pad, but that's an Android thing. Blackberry and Apple seem comparable in how they present installed applications. BB is really different about running apps, but honestly BB's approach seems simpler to me.

There seem to be quite a few people who use a BlackBerry for work or BBM, and an iPhone or Android for everything else. These people should have a pretty understanding of both platforms - they're just probably not tech bloggers :)

I used the iPhone for a while after a factory reset without entering an Apple ID. It "works", if you don't mind not having access to the App Store at all. I spent a lot of time in Safari.

You don't have to sign in to use an iPhone as a dumbphone with a nice camera.

There is not even one Apple account that rules the system - you can use different Apple IDs each for the App Store, iCloud, iMessage, FaceTime and Game Center (and probably TestFlight now). Apple even keeps bugging you about signing up for Game Center if you are "only" logged into all the other services with your Apple ID. I think it's quite messy, but at least it is easy to selectively share an Apple ID with your SO (e.g. shared purchases and photos, but separate iMessage).

I understood copy and paste without any problem.

I've been using BB 10 for over 2 years and none of what you say resonates with me.

Where do you get spam alerts from? I presume you don't mean emails but I don't even get promotional emails from BlackBerry and don't remember opting out ever...

Cut and paste is fantastic - and that's from someone who's used both Android and iPhone extensively in the past. In fact keyboard and multi-tasking are two of the reasons I bought a (touch screen) blackberry...

I'll admit boot time isn't the best, but I never turned my phone off and I've got 3 day battery life on my passport so I've never run out of battery before hitting a charger, so a moot point to me.

Also no idea what you are talking about for services. I'm sure if you didn't use any integrated key features on any OS it would bug you to use them though.

You can also unsubscribe from their newsletter. Copy/Paste doesn't seem that bad.

He never signed into BBID. Which is a required feature for BlackBerry. He just doesn't know how to use his phone.

Sent from my Passport ;)

Also, since this thread seems to have a lot of BlackBerry users, check out my appp Reader YC.

Reader YC must be one of the apps I use the most on my Passport. Thanks for creating it :)

I have both the Blackberry Q10 and the Iphone6. Work provides the Iphone and I prefer the Blackberry. Ironically I do more work / email /txt etc etc on the Blackberry and the Iphone is pretty much a company paid hotspot and a gaming system.

Maybe you had a defective unit? I've been using BB10 for over two years and have never experienced any of the issues you describe. Cut and paste and text editing in general are one of the biggest "wow" features when I show people my Passport.

I have a q5 (the least powerfull bb10) and boot time is not that horrible. A little long yes but still less than 5 minute. I don't mind. Overall, it is a good phone (with glitch, yes but does other phone os don't have some ?).

I will probably switch to android however because of some app missing. The there is no app on blackberry is not true anymore, but still many are missing (uber, skype is buggy...).

'On a scale of 0 to 10, if 10 means no way, then this project is an 11. It’s impossible. It’s something I would not be able to deliver.'

Project was doomed from that first meeting but it's the same story every time. It's not lack of innovation that kills companies, it's inertia from within.

Was waiting for the punchline where Storm faced resistance from BB's own staffers / engineers, and this article didn't disappoint.

I attended one of their Blackberry 10 jam sessions in 2012. While having a conversation with one of their managers, he was emphasizing on the virtual keyboard in Z10 over and over as if that was the magic sauce of a successful smartphone. What I realized later, the physical keyboard was really the magic sauce of blackberry phones. And even though they were stepping into the virtual keyboard era, it was very hard for them to come out of the shadow of their golden time.

Apparently the failure of Blackberry 10 devices has proven that keyboard is not the magic sauce of a successful smartphone anymore.

BB can bog off. They chose their customers - the carriers, over the poor end users. I made the fatal mistake of buying one of their unlocked devices. I always bought unlocked devices, as, I want to choose the settings, not get a locked down set of options the networks prefers. But BB? no, insert a SIM into one of their unlocked devices, and it then subsets the options for those it has agreed up front with the carrier.

Fuck. That. Shit.

Never again BB.

I have a couple friends who refuse to give up their blackberries because of the physical keyboard. On the recent news of BB as a company going down they simply went to the local phone store and bought several "backup" blackberries in case the one they're using dies. That way they can continue to use it even if the company is dead.

My mom has a flipphone with a qwerty keyboard on it she uses for texting, and despite having an iPhone 4 sitting in a box for a year, hasn't bothered to activate it and use it since she likes her keyboard.

It's kind of mindboggling, but there really are consumers out there like that and BB as a brand is built around that idea.

The problem is that they needed to be willing to disappoint those customers in order to get into the larger market of people who don't give so much of a shit about.

Looking at the stock price on this one is interesting. RIM's market cap hit its peek in 2008. So it didn't instantly crater. It took a bit for people to see the effects of the iPhone.

Was likely due to the fact that enterprise sales of the iPhone took quite a while. Blackberry very much held onto their corporate accounts which is a very large market.

BB sold mostly to enterprises, which have very long purchasing cycles. Plus the early iPhone really wasn't built for business. My recollection is that executives demanding iPhones is a big part of the BYOD movement.

Do you remember the tech community's and the business world's reaction to the iPhone in 2008? To say that there was massive skepticism is an understatement. (There was also a large amount of hype and excitement, but the RIM's stock price tells the story of which was actually bigger.)

There were plenty of people saying stupid things like "a smartphone is what a blackberry does or what windows mobile does, this iPhone thing doesn't have apps or even a keyboard so it's not even a smartphone." Whereas I hope anybody on HN would immediately be able to see "OMG it has a full web browser, this changes everything, refuse to call it a smart phone or whatever you want, but this is the future of mobile."

> Do you remember the tech community's and the business world's reaction to the iPhone in 2008?

Yep, and it more inline with what you said than the article's tone of inevitability. I still wonder what would have happened if RIM attacked the low-end / pay-as-you-go market aggressively with a basic Blackberry with a good programmable camera. The text loving younger market might have been fine.

I remember when the Storm came out. I was doing IT work for small businesses in the area and many of my clients, the Blackberry Faithful, would get their latest phones whenever possible. From the consumer side, it was every bit of the disaster this describes. The keyboard was an unbelievable disaster, it was horribly slow, crashes constantly, but they kept buying them. The Storm 2 was a relief, mostly because its improvements made my job so much easier.

What was always really interesting to me about Blackberry/RIM was how they managed to create some loyal fans who would happily follow their march into the sea. For years, even as iPhone and Android market share grew, there were (and probably still are) some power users who refused to even consider switching. These were exclusively owners or execs at small businesses, mostly companies with in-house Exchange servers that needed Blackberry Enterprise Servers. The BES always added an extra layer of pain for everyone, since we never got good enough with it to be anything more than a hornets' nest. Still, the Blackberry fans couldn't be swayed, called iPhones "toys," and insisted that their products were the magic to their productivity.

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