Has anyone else seen the new(ish) "BlackBerry PlayBook Flash" advert?

[sip1976]

At the end of the day, BlackBerry (and other manufacturers) compare their tablet to the iPad 2, and try to point out the places that theirs is better. Apple don't need to do this, they created this market.

Mmmmmm

The market was around a long time before ipads arrived, its just no one wanted them. With the rise in social media, they now have a use where as before the most you could hope for was a cut down version of windows running email and show off your holiday snaps. All Apple did was pimp their iphone and generate a new interest in tablets, thus proving Apple could stamp their logo on a porceline poo and Apple users would queue through the night to be the first to own one!

It's natural for manufacturers to point out how there's is better, but how do Apple respond. By throwing every toy they have out of the pram and taking them to court. I'm thinking of the recent Samsung Galaxy S2 v Apple iPhone case where Apple were upset at them releasing a faster, better phone without them knowing about it so took them to court accusing them of copying their design for the iphone! Hilarious, as the samsung is larger and looks nothing like an iphone!

At the end of the day there are 2 main markets for phones, mp3 players and tablets. We have Apple, and everyone else. The problem is Apple won't share with the rest of the market so the rest of the market is sharing with itself and growing at a very fast rate. In a world when it's important to share information if the two markets can't speak to each other the smaller market will eventually fade away! I can already here the Apple users grand kids asking, what's an iPad Daddy?

 

[NebulaClash]

At the end of the day there are 2 main markets for phones, mp3 players and tablets. We have Apple, and everyone else. The problem is Apple won't share with the rest of the market so the rest of the market is sharing with itself and growing at a very fast rate. In a world when it's important to share information if the two markets can't speak to each other the smaller market will eventually fade away! I can already here the Apple users grand kids asking, what's an iPad Daddy?

Apple won't share with the market? What does that mean? Oh, right, they won't give away iOS so that every me-too phone manufacturer can slap it into their models the way they en masse switched to Android from Symbian, WinMo, etc. That's why the Android phone market share suddenly jumped in a year, all those smaller slices of the pie joined together to form one big slice. That stage is done, and sure enough, Android phone market share is stabilizing (or maybe shrinking).

The Android model is the old Windows model, which worked for PCs when Microsoft illegally locked PC manufacturers into paying them whether they shipped a box with Windows or not. But this ain't the 90s any more. So the idea that one company (Google) makes the software and everyone else makes the hardware is not such a good idea. That's how you get the fragmented mess that is the Android software market.

The current model is the vertical model. That's what HP is doing with their tablet, and that's how Apple got the iPhone to become the best-selling smart phone on Earth (and in the U.S. the top-selling phone for both AT&T and Verizon). When one company controls the software and the hardware, the customer gets a pleasing product, not the usual frustration of a mix-and-match solution.

So while geeks insist that Apple will fade away, the general public is buying Apple products as fast as Apple can make them. And if sharing information was so vital to sales success, why are iPods still the most dominant MP3 players on the market a full decade after their introduction?

 

[Bentron]

I find it amusing that instead of showing confidence in their own product, RIM feel the need to highlight the iPad's shortcomings.

 

[JeepGuy]

Oh, the irony considering it is RIM who should have waited until they could get email functionality onto this device.

I don't know how it's selling in the UK, but in the U.S. it is considered a market failure.

and that's why they have just laid off 300 people, and their stock is down.

 

[s15119]

Off Topic

Who cares- this is an iPad forum.

 

[Consultant]

Tell them: enjoy your death spiral
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1171666/

Pffft...

Just open an email on your iPad and ask them if their Playbook can do that on it's own.

Exactly.

 

[JeepGuy]

Who cares- this is an iPad forum.

It's fun to poke holes in other devices, as we sit around and sing Kumbayah.

 

[scottgroovez]

Saw the advert in the UK last night. Made me chuckle to myself. It is frustrating that flash isn't available. I understand the reasoning as flash really does suck on Apple hardware. I didn't believe the moans until I got a mac and seeing temps hitting 85+ just watching a video was worrying so I installed click2flash (or whatever it's called) and now I have a happy compromise. Wish they'd do that on iOS. Give the consumer the choice.

 

[Ronnoco]

Rim is in trouble...the Playbook was supposed to help them climb out of the huge hole they are in...it hasn't...

 

[vrDrew]

On a certain (cultural literacy) level its hilarious. And more than a little pathetic.

Let's not lose sight of the basic truth: Flash Gordon (the movie) was a 1980 stinkbomb, that drew critical pans and was a dud at the box office. Even the biggest Queen fans will probably point to the Flash Gordon soundtrack as their musical and creative nadir.

Lets also not lose track of the irony invoked by celebrating a thirty year old movie in relation to a technology product. Flash (the video container format and programming framework) isn't quite that old. But when evaluated in internet time: its just as much of a dinosaur.

"Flash - a - ah - king of the impossible"

RIM supposedly shiped a half million of their turdbomb Playbooks into the retail channel last quarter. Based on little more than the reputation of a once-proud smartphone maker and the delusion that the ability to watch grainy porn clips is going to distract consumers from a singular lack of usable applications and the inability to actually read your own Blackberry e-mail account. There's a name for this sort of practice: Channel Stuffing.

Blackberry and RIM are responsible for some truly milestone products in the history of mobile computing. Its too bad that the Playbook, and their risible "Flash" commercial, will probably be remembered as their tombstone.

 

[kdarling]

I find it amusing that instead of showing confidence in their own product, RIM feel the need to highlight the iPad's shortcomings.

It worked for Apple, with years of "I'm a Mac" ads that simply made fun of the "PC guy".

Pffft...

Just open an email on your iPad and ask them if their Playbook can do that on its own.

That's easy. Click on the included GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo or AOL bookmarks. You'd need to ask about say, Exchange mail, instead, if you were trying to be clever.

GMail even knows how to go into landscape mode:

 

[jbennardo]

Maybe Apple can run an ad talking about a "full email experience unlike other tablets."

The worst thing about the playbook commercials is that I can't get the song out of my head for hours.

 

[seamariners85]

All Apple did was pimp their iphone and generate a new interest in tablets, thus proving Apple could stamp their logo on a porceline poo and Apple users would queue through the night to be the first to own one!

Not sure how you got from Point A to Point B there, chief.

 

[Kebabselector]

I don't know how it's selling in the UK, but in the U.S. it is considered a market failure.

Difficult to say as it's only just been released here (I think!), but the reality is you don't see any, no one is talking about it. I work in a tech environment and you see the occasional Android tablet but the majority of people want or have an iPad (if they are in the market for a tablet device).

Looking at the Carphone Warehouse in the UK it already looks as if it's being bundled with a handset along with discounted accessories. It doesn't look good, sad as I don't really want to see a loss of jobs because of this.

 

[MacFan23]

It worked for Apple, with years of "I'm a Mac" ads that simply made fun of the "PC guy".



That's easy. Click on the included GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo or AOL bookmarks. You'd need to ask about say, Exchange mail, instead, if you were trying to be clever.

GMail even knows how to go into landscape mode:

View attachment 291483

Enterprise loves using gmail, hotmail, yahoo and AOL for their mail!

 

[jackc]

When I saw that commercial, I was wondering how many people would have any idea what Flash is.

 

[radiogoober]

When I saw that commercial, I was wondering how many people would have any idea what Flash is.

I always use the "parents test." My parents are in their mid 60s and very educated. I ask them a technology question and see if they know it. They aren't technophobes: they both have both an iPad and iPhone, download apps, and all that. They don't know what flash is. They don't know what Android is. They have heard of BlackBerries.

To the layperson, Flash is meaningless. Let's be honest: Flash is used on for some porn sites, spam ads, to run a bunch of really crappy games, and for a bunch of crappy websites that were created by self-indulgant web-designers. I've removed Flash from my system and have haven't missed it.

 

[imahawki]

Not sure it matters. I heard yesterday from a techie coworker that RIM is going to be pulling the plug on the playbook. There will be one model, it will sell whatever it sells, but they're not developing any further tablet hardware at this poing.

 

[jbennardo]

I always use the "parents test." My parents are in their mid 60s and very educated. I ask them a technology question and see if they know it. They aren't technophobes: they both have both an iPad and iPhone, download apps, and all that. They don't know what flash is. They don't know what Android is. They have heard of BlackBerries.

To the layperson, Flash is meaningless. Let's be honest: Flash is used on for some porn sites, spam ads, to run a bunch of really crappy games, and for a bunch of crappy websites that were created by self-indulgant web-designers. I've removed Flash from my system and have haven't missed it.

Using flash as the big competitive advantage is weak - for the reasons you stated. So are all those sci fi commercials with chemists and labs where "android meets LTE" and lightning bolts and snapdragon and AMOLED or other crap that the average person just doesn't get.

 

[sip1976]

So while geeks insist that Apple will fade away, the general public is buying Apple products as fast as Apple can make them. And if sharing information was so vital to sales success, why are iPods still the most dominant MP3 players on the market a full decade after their introduction?

Lol so anyone that doesn't like Apple is a geek? Sorry I just like things that work, doesn't make me a geek, even though I am a little!

In the UK, Apple is popular for the same reason Jedward are popular. Heavy marketing! We are constantly bombarded with messages telling us life is not complete without an ipad, idock, iphone, ipatch, ipoo and the majority of the UK consumer market is dumb enough to believe those messages!

"why are iPods still the most dominant MP3 players on the market a full decade after their introduction"

Why are iPods still the most buggy pieces of ***** after a decade? You'd think they would figure out how to stop the things deleting your music library for no reason by now!

I think Apple is great at producing products for people that have no desire to know how things work, but please, for the love of god, who do you think they turn to when they can't get them to work? The geeks! Sorry no more! You bought the damn thing, you figure it out!

EnDOfRaNt!

 

[NebulaClash]

No, that's not what I meant, I'm merely using a shorthand expression. The idea is that a geek (more properly a hacker) needs to know how things work and so they take things apart to understand them. That sort of person does not and never will like an iPad. For them it's Android all the way.

That doesn't mean that geeks don't like Apple products. What I mean is that Apple is catering to the vastly larger general public market. So if geeks like iPads, great, but Apple is not making them the priority. Android is, so they can capture that smaller market.

In the UK, Apple is popular for the same reason Jedward are popular. Heavy marketing! We are constantly bombarded with messages telling us life is not complete without an ipad, idock, iphone, ipatch, ipoo and the majority of the UK consumer market is dumb enough to believe those messages!

Rubbish. That's the usual lying bit of propaganda I see floating around the Net in recent years once Apple started to become dominant. Competitors couldn't admit that Apple was making better products, so the answer to Apple's success HAD to be simple marketing and idiot consumers. Riiiiight. If that's what you have to rely on, you've got nothing. If it was marketing alone, Apple would be in big trouble. After a decade of iPods, word would spread that they are bad and people would turn against Apple. Hasn't happened.

I have an original 2001 iPod that still works. I've never had my music library trashed. I simply love things that just work, and for me that's Apple.

 

[EssentialParado]

It worked for Apple, with years of "I'm a Mac" ads that simply made fun of the "PC guy".

There's a difference between saying "Our product does this and this and you can't!" from saying "Our product doesn't do this and this, it just works."


On topic, the ad is terrible. The flash websites they use are completely unknown (except for youtube, which is just a stupid example for them to use considering the iPad has a YouTube app), and they just all look like jerky, poor apps. Every non tech person I've asked who has seen the ad sees nothing that makes them believe it's better than an iPad. When I point out that it's half the size they laugh and lose interest entirely.

 

[19101984]

So, are you angry because iPad does not have Flash, and trying to justify it by "but hey, we have app store!!! It won't let us enjoy entire web, but I can shoot birds at stuff! Oh you can do too? Damn you!"

flash does not constitute the entire web my friend. iOS is greater by miles just for this simple fact. it's app store is the most robust (it has lots of crap but it's good lots of great apps that other OS' does not have) and it's OS is the most stable for many industries. find me any app on any other store that's as good as Pages/Numbers (document editing etc), Nanostudio/Beatmaker 2/Garageband (audio production), photography, videography, games, etc.. it's not just fart apps and angry birds..

The Android market allows users to create and publish their own apps straight to market. no costs, no string s, no big fat corporations rubbing their sticky fingers together at another way to charge developers to get their apps to market. Unfortunately for Apple this means a shed load of apps that work poorly, or constantly need updating to work but they don't mind, as long as people are paying to download them they get their percentage!

i don't understand your logic. android has an unfiltered market whereby anyone can publish anything. including dodgy apps. iOS' major con is also it's major pros, the walled garden app store. and i'm not sure if you're a fulltime developer or not but i've heard plenty of complains in regards to the android OS' fragmented nature and instability (especially for latency sensitive activity like music production)

The problem is Apple won't share with the rest of the market so the rest of the market is sharing with itself and growing at a very fast rate. In a world when it's important to share information if the two markets can't speak to each other the smaller market will eventually fade away! I can already here the Apple users grand kids asking, what's an iPad Daddy?

you're probably one of those guys that signalled, "THE DEATH OF THE IPOD! IT WON'T LAST! IT ONLY USES ITUNES!". onto your last comment. ironically, guess what's their first tablet those segment market (the kids/grandkids) are using? the iPad "propaganda" that was shown at the iPad 2 keynote of how people are using the iPad in various industries shows why people are adopting the iPad at a faster rate than other tablets.

 

[*LTD*]

All my "friends" are douches, so I've had to some right stick from them lately pointing out that this "BlackBerry PlayBook" can run flash whilst my iPad 2 can't...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STw4zti94iM

They're all die-hard Apple haters, and stuff like this just gives them extra ammo. Rrrrrreeeeeaaalllyyyy p****s me off. Little do they realise that the iPad doesn't need flash because it's got the worlds best App Store! Hater's gonna hate...

Just needed somewhere to vent some of my anger.

PS: That BlackBerry thing is fugly!
PPS: I think they're just jealous because they're all on Windows Vista/7, which let's face it, is a pile of crap compared to SL/Lion.

</rant>

It no longer makes any difference because the PlayBook is just another failed product. It's irrelevant. Here today, gone tomorrow. A victim of colossal arrogance and shortsightedness.

Don't trust anything coming out of RIM until they get new management.

 

[GeneKam]

It looks awesome on paper. I bought one and returned it a week after for iPad 2. The iPad hardware is inferior, but the os is is still bad the most basic things are missing. Like rearranging bookmarks. Developer community is still weak. So in a year or two it might be better, but as of now, it's not a good product.