I don't see a great future for RIM either. I own a BB8800 and an 8310. Switched 4 months ago to the iPhone. It took about 15 minutes for me to type pretty well on the iPhone. And after 3 days, I can type pretty well on it.
There is a lot more subconscious work that goes on with typing on a BlackBerry vs. the iPhone. For starters your finger feels more keys than the one you actually want to press. So you have to make a conscious effort to apply force just for the one key you do want to press. Sometimes you press two keys and have to correct it. But the reality is, you have to feel the keys, focus your pressure on the one correct key, etc.
On the iPhone, you are just tapping the surface and then moving on. There is no need for pressure. Which is why no one who can type on the iPhone is typing at half the speed of the BlackBerry. I can type with one finger, not two, about 2/3rds of speed I had with two thumbs on the BlackBerry. And for those who type with two thumbs on the iPhone, they are often faster with the iPhone than with the BlackBerry.
The BlackBerry requires the use of the Option Key for menu choices as well. Get a call on the iPhone and you know what choices you have because they are in your face. The floating choices are right there. On the BlackBerry, you have to do an option stroke to find the choices, and scroll to the appropriate one. I can't speak for all BlackBerry owners, but when my phone is ringing, I don't have time to press an option button and use a scroll-ball. I need the choice to be right there and waiting for me. I'm kind of in a rush you know? The phone is ringing after all.
They love to talk about their so-called great security. Did you guys read about the Indian Government getting access to the Crypto keys from RIM?
http://www.blackberryforums.com/gen...n-may-hand-crypto-keys-indian-government.html
I raised this subject on the BlackBerry forum. 1 person replied. Just one. No one wants to deal with this reality that even though the email is encrypted at the source, aka the BES on your own network, and is not de-crypted until it reaches it's destination which is beyond the NOC at RIM's Network Operations Center, doesn't mean it can't be accessed. RIM has the crypto-keys. And because your email flows through their NOC, they can crack it and show it to anyone who asks.
Right now, the Indian Government has been given the Crypto-keys for the India traffic. They can read any email they want in their country. And quite obviously that data can be stolen from the government, or miss used. The fact that they have the crypto-keys renders them useless. And the fact that you have no say in "IF" you use the NOC is the problem. All BlackBerry mail goes through their NOC. All of it!
At least with ActiveSync, your email goes from your Exchange server to your iPhone. There is no central NOC that can be tapped into or bugged.
More secure huh... What a joke.
Lastly, as I always say, it's about the software. The software I saw at the March 6th event are a full generation ahead of anything on the BlackBerry. That SalesForce.com app is all business. To say that the iPhone is not a business tool is ludicrous. I am a business user. And in my opinion, the iPhone is by far the better business tool. The software is far better. That's the reason. It's faster. Get on a sales call. You'll find it's harder to think when you are on the phone trying to answer questions. That's why people prepare to make a call. They get all the info they need right in front of them so they don't have to go looking for it while on an important call. Do you want a phone that has you looking for options in sub menus while you are on the phone? Or would rather have a phone that has choices in your face, and readily available based on the context of the application? I vote for choice #2 and I bet when business users see and use this phone, they too will see how much better a tool it is than a RIM BlackBerry. It's the Fanboys, yes I said it, the FANBOYS that are making noise about the RIM being the better business tool. They are likely idiots techs who love gadgets and have never made a sales call in their lives. Never had to see a PDF or a graphic and decide if they want 100,000 of those printed. If they had, they'd want clarity in the phone so they could make those choices.
I do design, sales, and technical things all day. You can send me a PDF of an Amaray cover, those covers you see on all those DVD cases you buy in the store, over the iPhone. And I can see the PDF perfectly and make print decisions without a computer. On the BlackBerry, some PDFs don't even render right at all. Those that are mostly text sometimes just show up as pure text without the formatting of the PDF. And so they have 3rd part apps like RepliGo that try to fix the problem for a yearly subscription fee. They don't hold a candle what the iPhone does right out of the box.
You have to buy 3rd party software to see basic images and html in the email. Yeah, they are fixing that right now. But right now, the iphone's email is perfect. I see JPEGs and PDFs in my email. It's much more like my Mac client software than mobile software. And that's the difference.
I've used the BlackBerry as a business tool for a solid year. I have used ToDo Matrix from RexWireless for ToDos which is the BB's best app I think. And I have used Ascendo DataVault as my mini DataBase app. They have a few good apps. But stock tracking is awful. Just the little stock gadget on the iPhone is better. And the flood of apps we're going to see in June are going to re-write the book on what a quality mobile application truly means.
I don't see that BB9000 or any BB phone besting even the current gen iPhone. Come on, it's like comparing a DOS PC to a Mac. BLackBerry is old news. You just don't see it right now because you don't visualize all the apps on the horizon. Look at that Spore game for example. Yeah it's a game, but it shows how much more advanced this phone is. You are not going to see that kind of complexity on the BlackBerry.
All the BB does well is non-rendered text email and security, supposedly. But even the email in my humble opinion is not nearly as good as the iPhone. I see email the way it should be seen on my device. They do not. End of story.
Alex Alexzander
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