Research in Motion's 7-Inch 'PlayBook' Tablet to Target Business Users

Thex1138 said:
Yes thats fine but 18 months ago they weren't thinking it was any kind of viable solution, nor how it should nor could be delivered...
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That's true in many cases. In other cases, they've been wanting something like this for quite a while; something in between a phone and a laptop, that also fits into their current security infrastructure.

Unlike the relatively recent consumer interest, enterprise mobile apps (touchsceen as well) have been around for well over a decade.

Price will be a consideration.

In any case, "mobile" is a hot buzzword these days, and every rising executive wants to help write that part of the... yes, this is the right phrase... corporate playbook of their employer.
 
People saying the name is not professional. I ask you this back when blackberry was first release. Blackberry sure as hell does not sound professional. Now days using a blackberry or saying let me get my blackberry, sent from my blackberry ect all sound just fine in the professional world.

How is playbook any different than blackberry.
 
Frankly, I'm happy that other companies follow Apple's style of presenting stuffs:
The black background (opposed to Apple's traditionally "white" one), the music ambiance, the animations or behavior of the apps on the screen, the way the tablet turns and all, must truly be flattering for Apple after 13 years of struggle to get on top.

Respect :apple:
:cool:
 
Rodimus Prime said:
How is playbook any different than blackberry.
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Blackberry, like Apple, is a piece of fruit. It has no connotation (good or bad) in a business sense, and thus can be defined as you wish.

The word "play" very much has an anti-business connotation. It's moderated by pairing with "book" since "playbook" has a known business purpose. But it's a bit awkward when you are trying to sell a business tool and the first syllable out of your mouth is "play."
 
Nord said:
Frankly, I'm happy that other companies follow Apple's style of presenting stuffs:
The black background (opposed to Apple's traditionally "white" one), the music ambiance, the animations or behavior of the apps on the screen, the way the tablet turns and all, must truly be flattering for Apple after 13 years of struggle to get on top.

Respect :apple:
:cool:
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Following what? They showed some rendered videos not even showing a mockup of a hand interacting with it, they showed some tech specs, an executive held one on stage, and then people got to stare at prototypes through plexiglass. That's not following Apple's style at all.
 
NebulaClash said:
The word "play" very much has an anti-business connotation. It's moderated by pairing with "book" since "playbook" has a known business purpose. But it's a bit awkward when you are trying to sell a business tool and the first syllable out of your mouth is "play."
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That's hyper analyzing it. Are people going to react in horror when you say "play" and then breath a sigh of relief when you finish the word and say "playbook"?

What the name does is invoke sports - but specifically - coaches. They aren't playing. They are planning and managing.

IMO, it's a smart move. It invokes both work AND play. People use these tablets for more than just board meetings, so I think it's a well thought out choice.


I still won't buy it though. No app store muscle behind it! ;)


Nord said:
Frankly, I'm happy that other companies follow Apple's style of presenting stuffs:
The black background (opposed to Apple's traditionally "white" one), the music ambiance, the animations or behavior of the apps on the screen, the way the tablet turns and all, must truly be flattering for Apple after 13 years of struggle to get on top.
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Apple didn't pioneer whitebox photography or product visualizations like that. They just popularized it with the public. It was around for years before Apple adopted it as a style. The earliest uses of that I saw were in car commercials for expensive brands. Apple uses it to associate a premium product but they were hardly the first to do so.


*LTD* said:
This is gonna play out like the iPod.

The next "iPad Killer" is the next iPad.
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Yup. COmpanies keep showing products that are ages away. By the time they release anything, Apple will have the iPad 2 to market.
 
Pilgrim1099 said:
Why? Simple.

MILITARY. GRADE. OS. It's designed to kill. your. a$$. dead. Is Apple involved in the military/industrial complex? No. There's a real reason for that and their OS is too "childish" to use. What the military has used is going to RIM and it's been around since TRON came out in 1982 ;).

End of line.
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This gets a great big "huh" from me!

The only parts of QNX that are going to be shared between the Playbook and the military/industrial devices are going to be the low level parts. Maybe this will mean that those parts are more reliable than iOS or Linux OSs. I'm not sure how important that is though; the whole OS on my iPad has never completely crashed.

However the parts of the Playbook that the user will interact with, the UI and the applications, will have very little in common with the military devices. Maybe these parts will be reliable and maybe not; however you can't make that assumption just because they run on top of QNX.

It's like saying that my Linux desktop will be reliable because my Android phone is.
 
MacBoobsPro said:
My thoughts exactly!

It also sounds like a PlayBoy eBook or something. :confused:
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I work for a large corporation. They call their "Stragetic Goals" their "Playbook."

What so unprofessional about that? Playbook is a tool to use to have a set of ideas to go in a specific direction for a specific outcome.

I think it fits perfectly.
 
rjohnstone said:
Why?
Considering most presentations are simple PowerPoint slides or a short video, what more would you need?
If it can eliminate the need for me to drag my laptop to a meeting then I'm all for it.
All our projectors at work are HD, so all I would have to do is plug in via the HDMI port and go.
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I presume he meant on the actual device, no outputting to a larger display
 
GekiRed said:
I'm not a Blackberry fan but this new device has promise, especially if it forces Apple to step up their A-Game.

On another point, if it's true that the PlayBook supports Flash out of the box, hopefully it'll prove to Steve Jobs and all the other Flash naysayers that Flash CAN work on a tablet device.

Look at it this way; HTML 5 is NOT the future when it comes to viewing certain forms of content as like all other forms of HTML, it'll be never fully complete.

I resent being told that I should create two versions of a website; one for viewing on regular devices like a PC and one for the iPad just because Herr Jobs doesn't like Flash and he wants to push HTML 5 as the future.

If I create a website and people want to view it on a iPad, they'll have to view it on a iPad faults and all because there's no way I'm going to all the trouble to create a separate version just to appease a tiny minority of people who are viewing it on a iOS system.

At the end of the day, it's all about competition and if Apple want to stay in the tablet market, they'll have to bring genuine innovation with future iPads because I can guarantee you that the majority of iPad purchasers won't buy a product which has minor upgrades every year compared to a product that has at least a 2-year lifecycle.
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Or just make one version in HTML 5 and be done with it...

THAT'S THE POINT..
 
Rodimus Prime said:
if you read it that article has nothing to do with security. Everything they put out over that app has been declassified or is not classified.
So not a good example.
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A very good example, if you had only bothered to see what I was responding to. The earlier commenter said the military doesn't use Apple products because they viewed the OS as a toy. Not true, as I proved.
 
iPad Rival or Hype?

Yet another supposed iPad rival......

Looks like an overdone commercial for a product the "might" be coming to the market. How about actually producing something instead of "it's going to have this and its going to have that", and "its going to be so much better than the iPad."

After the hype dies down, many of these companies don't actually have any kind of a device...

Like the old saying goes, I'll believe it when I see it....:D
 
kdarling said:
Every device does not have to target the same type of customer.

Just as with Blackberry phones, the Playbook won't need lots of consumer apps to become a favorite in the business world.
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So what are they gonna do with it? Buy it and sit it on their desks and just stare at it? Multipurpose computing devices are defined by the apps they run. No apps, no point in purchasing.

Being able to playback Flash presentations gives it one business edge already.
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I've been in business for 20 years working with senior executives. I have never in my life seen a "Flash presentation". You need to get out of your mom's basement more often. If Crackberry is counting on the "Flash presentation" market to peddle this POS, they're delusional.

The whole idea you'd run a presentation off of one of these things is ludicrous. The vast majority of presentations are done in PowerPoint. You run them off of the laptop you created them on. That's not going to change for years to come.

On the contrary, it's going to reduce the chances of other tablets getting larger footholds in enterprises.
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Why? It has no software, doesn't have a keyboard (which is what all the Crackberry fans love, their crappy little keyboards), has a dinky little screen with a bizarre aspect ratio better suited to watching movies than doing actual work, and won't be available for six months.

The iPad and the Android tablets will own the entire space by the time this oddball dud makes its debut.

(I can't count the number of corporate clients who have asked me over the past year when a RIM tablet was coming out. As with IBM in the old days, no one gets fired for recommending a Blackberry solution.)
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Uh-huh. Nobody will buy this thing, dude. It serves no business function, right down to its wonky form factor. Too small to do useful work on, wrong aspect ratio for working with documents, no keyboard and no apps. The Canadian gang that can't shoot straight takes yet another shot at Apple and manages to shoot itself in the foot.

If this thing works well at all, it'll become a major complementary managerial and sales device, carried in the inside jacket pocket of every executive.
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Along with a Zune, right?

Ha!
 
Try finding what the battery life is for this thing, it's like a national secret that RIM is keeping.

All of those power hungry features and a smaller battery. The iPad gets 10+ hours of battery life. I'd be surprised if the PlayBook managed 1.5 hours without being plugged in.
 
Kenrik said:
Or just make one version in HTML 5 and be done with it...

THAT'S THE POINT..
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If every browser supported HTML5, he could. Maybe. As of now, Flash is no doubt far more universal and has better tools.

RIM is smart by coming up with tools to create HTML based apps for their Playbook, along with allowing Adobe AIR apps and Flash.

If Apple really wants to support HTML5, it needs to come up with comparable creation tools. Everybody keeps pointing out how rich Apple has gotten off its customers, well do something with that money. HTML5 tools could be contracted out.
 
The Market Has Spoken

RIM's stock is off 5% this morning following the announcement of their "Playbook".

Looks like Wall Street has the same take on this dog that I've got. Dud. Dead on arrival (whenever that is).
 
sunspot42 said:
RIM's stock is off 5% this morning following the announcement of their "Playbook".

Looks like Wall Street has the same take on this dog that I've got. Dud. Dead on arrival (whenever that is).
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The Playbook is an oversized BB. The market is worried how RIMM can make money selling it at about the same price as a BB. This is my opinion.
 
tzeshan said:
The Playbook is an oversized BB. The market is worried how RIMM can make money selling it at about the same price as a BB.
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It's worse than that - it's an oversized Crackberry without 3G, without cellular service and without a keyboard. You know, the three things that are core features with virtually all Blackberry users.

Epic fail.
 
NebulaClash said:
The military doesn't respect Apple? Are you kidding me? Doesn't anyone bother to read the news?
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That link is old news. I knew about this a long time ago. I knew about the story of American soldiers using iPod Touches to share information with iraqi locals and show photos of wanted terrorists to communicate better with them. But what Apple has is NOT the main eco-system the military uses exclusively nor primarily.

What they use is far more advanced than what Apple has.
 
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