Yeah, my limited understanding is pretty much that. It was part of the (regarded as genuine) security advantage BlackBerrys had, where everything got routed through the proprietary BIS (Blackberry Internet Service) or BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server). This obviously covered data/connectivity but I think it even covered phone calls, although I confess I don't know how. Now those services are all getting turned off. No BIS/BES, no usable device.
I ditched my last BB for a 3GS, and never looked back. The iPhone was THE game changer.
I am not 100% sure that was the case for all devices. There was a way on some pre-curve blackberries to provision use without data. However, contracts with BB required that devices be activated with a data plan, and since back then most carriers treated a BB data activation as a new line of service for commission sales, some reps would just activate the charge if you went into a store or called into customer support.
And you could.
Chances are, the iPhone will be gone and replaced by another apple product, long before apple falls. But you can never know.
Apple are setting themselves up the same way BlackBerry did. Now everything depend on the Apple SOC which in a way is very bad.
You're talking about a company though, not a product. I'm sure Apple will outlive the iPhone, and the iPhone will continue to evolve for a few years yet - but then a new technology disrupter will come out of left field and within a couple of years we'll be looking back at the iPhone and saying "remember when...".
Yes, it was. BB added a layer of security to it so that messages between BB business phones belonging to the same organisation stayed secure when wandering over public infrastructure. You had this BB infrastructure in your own datacenter, cloud was still emerging at that time. More to be found here: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/mobile_security/mobile_security_blackberry_os.htm
That isn't an Apple limitation, just a US carrier one. I still have an old iPhone 5 that still works (in the UK).The carriers can save money by stopping support for older devices and then make more money by forcing people to upgrade. So it is a win/win for them.
Yes and no. Vertical integration is what every businesses dream to achieve. Going Apple Silicon was the right bet. Look at the rest of Android OEMs that are dependant on Qualcomm. Every new Qualcomm cores had worse performance per watt than the previous. The latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is literally the first one that actually improves in performance per watt. In contrast, Apple keeps improving the performance per watt every generation, even on the efficiency cores. Going Apple Silicon is not bad at all. But of course, what Apple do with it is the key.
