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BlackBerry CEO Says Despite a 'Fantastic Job' With iOS Design, Apple Now Lacks Innovation

iOS may be a little stale but it just isn't Android and that's all I need to know.

I switched for a month and must have spent at least $20 just buying interface and keyboard plugins just to get the damn thing useable. Even then I didn't like it and every time I installed something free I was panicking that all of my user data was going to be stolen.

Lastly every time a pop up would open in a browser my phone would try to download an .apk or whatever they're called.

So you can take your shiny new S4 with all of its amazing specs and features, unless Samsung ditches Android and makes a completely proprietary OS I won't be going anywhere near it.
 
What he says is no more lame than what Schiller or other significant others from Apple say about Android.

And while the Z10, or BlackBerry for that matter is nothing to be or get excited about, as a person who's interested in everything tech, he isn't wrong but he isn't completely right.

Look, I get the appeal of iOS, it's simple yet effective and reaches out to various users because of this but when you compare it to Android, it looks flat and dull. What I think people get confused about is, well Android has all these widgets, other "features", and it doesn't make the OS any better. Well, that might be true but it doesn't affect the usability of the OS. I was one of those people who believed that until I played with my brothers S3. Are some of those "features" useless? Sure but it was still easy (probably as easy to use as iOS) but it felt and looked more advanced without sacrificing the usability of Android.

At a time where smartphones were only advanced as the latest BlackBerry, those colourful tiles and smooth transitions in the first iPhone were "wow" factors, 6 years later it's looking old. Very old.

I think everyone who's saying well what does Heinz know? He's running BlackBerry who can't even produce a competitive product are silly. I'm sure BlackBerry users/RIM were saying the same thing back in the day when they were so ahead. You never know what the future is going to bring, so saying or thinking Apple is invincible is pretty ignorant.
 
Changing for changes sake is never good...

The idea of flicking a little arrow over a screen and controlling that arrow with a device that fits into the palm of my hand (aka 'mouse') is 30 years and hasn't fundamentally changed - innovation was in other areas of the OS.

Windows 8 is a great example of what a break in visual consistency can lead to: lots of frustrated users refusing to upgrade.
 
Scraping the bottom of the barrel for stories I see. Come on, a CEO of a failing company says one of his biggest competitor's phone lacks innovation. I better sell my AAPL quick.
 
ouimetnick said:
Yes you can. Depending on what you are doing, you don't always hold it a foot from your eyes. When I need to read small markings on components or read a schematic, I have it closer to my eyes, and can see the individual pixels. Not a big deal, but the iPhone does't have the BEST display anymore.
Click to expand...

Density is not the main factor of quality. And I seriously doubt you can see the pixels.
 
nazaar said:
I agree, but really BB is just now only following in Apple's footsteps. Granted there are some nice features in 10... however they should have been there 2 years ago. BB is still missing the 'wow' factor.
Click to expand...

iOS no longer has a 'wow' factor either - it -is- an old concept now. The 'wow' is long gone, every new release is just more of the same.

But the 'wow' factor is completely over-rated anyway. Especially in the corporate business, stuff has to be reliable, robust and, preferably, secure and well integrated into the respective back-ends.
 
It's true, iOS is still lacking basic features I can find on a 4 year old Blackberry. The interface is a newton like icon manager. Turning wifi, Bt, airplane mode on and off takes too many steps. My phone app freezes weekly and has on every single iPhone. The auto spell is horrible and does not learn. Home screen is a totol waste, pull down doesn't do much for me, and Siri is only so helpful outside the USA. And most of all Maps is completely useless outside of major markets like the USA. I spoke to an IT Manager at a public Japanese firm and he said his entire org is still on ios 5 because of the maps issue. They are now looking to get away from ios because of maps, it's useless and they are unable to upgrade their fleet. Maps has totally destroyed my ios experience as I am traveling globally 95% of the year.. Might be getting the new Samsung
 
iOS is stale.. Feature wise. They add useless features that no one cares about. I still don't like that in order to reply to an email or text notification when I'm in another app, I have to leave and go to said app to reply. What doesn't a translucent window popup when I get a notification allowing me to reply w/o leaving the app. Why do they make a big deal about Siri. For me, it's a gimmick. It doesn't work very well anyways.

Improved camera.. wow, just like the Android phones. I love iOS, and the iOS devices, and will not go Android, but they really need to get down to work here.

I don't need some goofy shredding action when using Passbook. I don't even see the point of passbook to be honest.

I don't need all the visual crap. No visual orgasms are needed to make the experience better. Things like the volume circle and the playing tracker circle change reflection when the phone is tilted. I guess they didn't have anything better to do.:confused::rolleyes:
 
Apple laid down a great foundation and have been building on top of that with core technologies and UI refinements.

You don't just throw all of that away so that you can have a prettier looking home screen with a clock that dominates 50% of the screen real estate or live tiles which people have rejected on both mobile and PCs.

Unfortunately, clueless tech bloggers and journalists hail that as innovation and mindless fanboys and insecure iDevice owners repeat that mantra helping to make false perceptions into reality.
 
This is just CEO ********

Please tell me
-> wich other os supports openmp for calculating on the gpu to reduce power consumption ?
-> wich other mobile os has an integrated voip system to use by devs ?
-> wich other mobile os has something similar to gamecenter especially integrated apis for matchmaking, realtime dataexchange, free server support ?
-> wich other mobile os has a seamless backup restore mechanism ?
-> wich other mobile os has such a seamless and easy to use cloud synchronisation to your pc that even my grandmother can use it ? (yes icloud contacts, email, calendar, calendar invitations, fotostream)
-> wich other os is so secure that there exists NO malware because of all the extended and always increased security mechanisms ?
-> wich other os has so many features for visually impaired people like reading the screen, magnification of screen, contrast increase so that even my nearly blind mother can use it ? and can do more with it than with her pc ?
-> wich other os is so fast even on older hardware ? Look at the s4 wich is stuttering on scrolling webpages ?
-> wich other os has a browser so fast that it is even fast enough to use html5 games ? (from the START !!)
-> wich other os has a so simple to implement gui system that even 8 year old children can develope for it ?
-> wich other mobile os allows every of its users to fully use it without asking every 5 minutes some "nerd in the family how to do this"
-> wich other mobile os is USED by the people who bought this devices (see webstatistics or developer statistics about app usage)

so only because the app starter is a grid of icons and has not changed, it does NOT mean that ios is not innovative.
In many cases ist is more advanced than desktop os because it is far better documented, has a much cleaner and more efficient api strucutre, runtime environment and security.

Please every user who says
"IOS is not innovative because we don't have widgets" is just a stupid jerk who has no idea of innovation and technics. Its only one of these guys who can tap on some colored icons and does not even understand the most basic prinicples of software or other modern digital technology.

in short ... everyone who says ios is NOT innovative ... should just shup up because he has no right to even WRITE the word innovative because he is just to unintelligent to understand the meaning of this word
 
hestroy said:
Density is not the main factor of quality. And I seriously doubt you can see the pixels.
Click to expand...

I'm not a old fart. ;) I can see well (very well) close up. I'm nearsighted so I can't see far away well.

When I do electronic work, sometimes I have to work with SMD components (very tiny ones) So yeah, I can see the pixels.
 
ouimetnick said:
iOS is stale.. Feature wise. They add useless features that no one cares about. I still don't like that in order to reply to an email or text notification when I'm in another app, I have to leave and go to said app to reply. What doesn't a translucent window popup when I get a notification allowing me to reply w/o leaving the app. Why do they make a big deal about Siri. For me, it's a gimmick. It doesn't work very well anyways.

Improved camera.. wow, just like the Android phones. I love iOS, and the iOS devices, and will not go Android, but they really need to get down to work here.

I don't need some goofy shredding action when using Passbook. I don't even see the point of passbook to be honest.

I don't need all the visual crap. No visual orgasms are needed to make the experience better. Things like the volume circle and the playing tracker circle change reflection when the phone is tilted. I guess they didn't have anything better to do.:confused::rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Switch to Windows Phone?
 
While I don't disagree with the sentiment about Apple losing steam in the innovation front, there's also the adage "if it ain't broke..."

There's all the standard stuff: make it faster, make it lighter, make it last longer on battery, make the camera higher quality, add more features to the OS. But spec bumps are boring and apparently "lack innovation".

What is hugely missing from the iPhone? What can Apple do with the iPhone that would leapfrog the competition?

It's like they've been backed into a corner now. What if Apple announced an iPhone 6 tomorrow with a 5" screen? Would everyone say "Ooh, innovation!" or would they say "Yawn! That's been done"?
 
If a company changes the UI out from under people all the time... I guess that's innovative? Sounds to me more like a user-unfriendly admission of past failures.

Coming up with a great product end then EVOLVING it, while less exciting to people who love constant change, is a better product strategy.

Apple tends to improve their products on a steady slope more often than in fits and starts (I mean, "innovation" :p). That's how it has always been.

Innovation is not "change for the sake of change." It's not a re-skin for the sake of marketing, nor buzzwords for the sake of a bullet list. That applies to hardware and software both, and has served Apple users outstandingly well--we still have big advantages no other OS can touch, and many of them fall under the out-of-fashion "ease of use" category. Many phone companies are driven by the marketing need for something to look "different" on the surface. That's not really about quality or innovation. Anyone can do that. Doesn't mean they should.

Meanwhile I wonder whether a) Apple has still been working on new products, including iOS 7? I bet the have. And whether b) Jony Ive and the rest of the team come to work every day or stay home and cash their checks? I bet they come to work. And I bet they continue to come up with more new things than "just different enough me-too copycat" things (see: all the iPhone copycats vs. the originality of Windows Metro).

But BlackBerry knows how to get press attention... I'll give them that.

P.S. Does anyone actually remember how long it was between big Jobs-era bombshells? YEARS. Apple has shown no slowdown at all. People are just making up fictions about big changes coming in a constant rapid-fire under Jobs. In fact, if Apple STARTS to do what people pretend Apple USED to do, I'll be worried: constant flashy change every few months is a bad and desperate path.
 
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d0minick said:
I agree and it sucks. I'll be giving up my iPhone 5 for the S4. If the iOS7 is interesting the phone will come out the cabinet.

But any of you who seriously think that iOS isn't stale and lacking and the iPhone isn't stagnating are truly lying to yourselves.

S beam should have been an iPhone feature from the start.

I love tech, and i feel it just so happened to be Apples decades, and that might be over.
Click to expand...

Go for it. But also buy some reserve power source. And could you explain, what a ground-breaking feature has the S4?
 
He seems to be endorsing a philosophy of change for the sake of change. As MS has learned, once you have a loyal installed base using the product, you can't bounce that market just to say you did something different. You have to build on what works and change what doesn't. RIM, on the other hand is in that enviable "can do no wrong" position of having been pushed out of the market it once owned. THere is no place for them to go but up...or out.
 
I've gotta disagree with most posts. While using an iPhone for the last 3 years I've def gotten used to the iOS, "bored" with the iOS is not a word I would use. When I get bored, I download an app. If I'm really bored, I may jailbreak it one day. That'll keep me busy.

Apple's whole viewpoint isn't about being the best. It's about having an operating system that helps users become HIGHLY productive - not necessarily on the cutting edge of technology.

I hate Windows because every few years then clear out their operating system and replace it with a brand new annoying one. Users must take the time to relearn the whole thing and if you're like most users, and I say most assuming most are like this, you don't want to take the time to relearn a whole new IOS. I certainly don't. I say modify the iOS to add awesome features (messaging from notification center would be nice), but leave the iOS the same so users don't get frustrated having to leave their beloved easy-to-use iOS. My parents certainly have a hard enough time learning one. I'd hate If they'd have to learn a new one in a year.

Oh and look at the Mac OS. It really hasn't changed in 10 years and its spanking competition (another assumption). Don't fix something if its not broken.
 
unclejuicyjoe said:
I can remember Mr. Jobs saying the iphone was five years ahead of the next competitor five years ago....
Click to expand...

That is funny because it is five years later and BB10 is a powerful OS that can run a smartphone quickly without a powerful CPU or a huge battery. It is the best programmed bit of competition that iOS has faced to date. Android because it is based on software that was designed to face competition before the iPhone came out, is always going to struggle with being great iOS competition. That is until Google does a complete rewrite of Android. But for now they keep putting band aids on it and solving the problems with faster hardware and bigger batteries.

The Android manufacturers are just lucky that Apple has been resistant to making a 5 inch screen phone. If Apple did, and using its design skills, threw a 3000 M battery in there, we would see an iPhone that lasted two days of heavy heavy use on a charge. Blackberry's Q10 is going to last that long and it is going to be a major selling point.
 
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