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

miles01110 said:
Erm, Wifi-only? How does an initial WiFi-only model make any sense from an enterprise standpoint (if this actually targets "Business Users"). Wouldn't it need 3G to integrate with existing BESs?
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WiFi only:
1080P Video Conferencing. At work we have 2, soon 3 floors interconnected with WLAN in a state of the art concrete cemented building (less than 5yrs old) and wifi work in stair wells.
Seemless BES IT Policy interegration and with QNX incredible low overhead and secure POSIX OS built by the masters which was purchased by RIM. QNX OS is another Canadian company.

Hopefully this "video conferencing is now REAL" crap will be upgraded in future iPads and iPhones with PROPER resolutions!!

OH … odd how this news fails to mention the plethora of developer tools which will SOON include native SDK for Mac OS X using Eclipse!!! FINALLY!! Unfortunately for a RIM fan like me I've given up long before this news and looking forward to Objective-C coding.

Apple NEEDS to support on IOS with Exchange the following:
Sub-Folders and Public Folders.
Notes Sync'ing (so that personal notes do NOT get Deleted/Merged at users will).
Seemingly Application sharing.
AppWorld is second to AppStore for quality of content (too bad most worthy apps are business or social oriented and themes).

PlayBook actually resembles a failed promised concept that Palm Folio tried to deliver and didn't even remotely close to.

Has anyone also noticed just how close RIM's video advertisements are to Apple's own lately? Hmm. That with proper and sanctioned iTunes Syn'ching for playlists to BlackBerry via Desktop Sync.
 
RIM - A Year Behind The Times (As Usual)

People are impressed by this POS? Really? First of all, it's vaporware. We have no idea how it'll actually behave when and if it ever makes it to market. Performance, battery life, stability, usability, cost - all a mystery. The specs would have been impressive a year ago, but today? It's certainly nothing revolutionary.

This thing will debut in six months with no software library, and it'll be up against Version 2 of the iPad, plus whatever the Android clone army can throw at it. It's dead on arrival.

RIM needed to release this thing no later than November 1st of this year to stay in the game. As it stands, they won't be able to give it away.

That company is desperately in need of an executive purge. They're the next Palm.
 
Looks pretty nice. Apple really needs to enable bluetooth tethering to the iPad.

I always hated the BackBerry OS. Hopefully this one is better.
 
I like the idea that it's QNX based - QNX is a very nice and easy-to-program OS. But if the end user can't write binary applications for it, but must use HTML5 or Flash (can we use Javascript?), I'd tentatively call it... dead on arrival.:(

(edit) took too long to type it, sunspot beat me to it. As he points out, RIM takes almost forever to deliver things. The analogy with Palm is very apt.
 
This is the iPad competitor. But don't forget, Apple is rumored to be releasing a new iPad soon, as early as Q1 next year which is when RIM will be selling the PlayBook. RIM isn't competing with iPad 1 as much as iPad 2. This doesn't look like someone shoehorned some garbage onto a tablet form factor, like the current Android and Win7 tablets. I would buy this except there aren't many apps for it, or even the BB platform. It's a solid device and this is the competitor to the iPad. Not the Galaxy Tab. It fits into the BB platform/ecosystem very well just like the iPad. Unlike Android, whose platform is scattered all over the place.
 
Things I actually LIKE about this device (and would hope to see in the iPad someday):

  1. HDMI and 1080p out
  2. USB port
  3. Interesting web interface with a 'task bar' of recent or favorite sites
  4. Smaller, thinner and most likely a lighter case design
 
BC2009 said:
"Old and toy-like" seems like a strange impression to me based on the promo I saw of some product to be released at some undisclosed future date in 2011 at some unknown price with some unknown battery life and small selection of apps. Reminds of the folks touting "iPad sucks, just wait for the MS Courier or the HP Slate" before HP and MS threw in the towel on those projects.
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Hey what ever happened to 50+ the Pre-iPad killers demo'd at CES very early this year?

There seemed to be a ton of them shown off to take on the then un-announced iPad yet wiki only shows 6 including the iPad launched during the year.Even Samsung who make a lot of the parts for a tablet including Apples are only just getting to market now.

Ok so this isn't just a demo it's a developer sdk release which gives it a bit more weight as it would be a very bad move to offer developers are market then never deliver. They really do need to follow through on this.

Does seem like it could be a good competitor.
Dual-core A9 would be nice.

Any comments as yet on convertibility of iApps to Rocking Apps?
Prize to the first person to get Obj-C running.
 
RIM tablet...

YAWN...The 7" form factor is useless. Just a bulked up Blackberry phone...
 
Horus said:
OMG, they're advertising Flash support as a feature, how cute is that?
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They could have just said "four times the RAM of the iPad, cameras, real HD, real multitasking, actual connectors..."

"...and you don't have to use iTunes!"


But I agree that a wider tablet would make more sense. I never liked widescreen, even with laptops or external displays below 22".
 
Normally I would start this with: "is it me or...".
But no. It's not me.

The only reason this "kinda" looks good is because it looks like an iPad. Let's be realistic... if the iPad didn't exist, this thing would look totally different (or wouldn't even exist).
 
burgundyyears said:
Another thing, per Engadget, the demo models they were showing today are all locked behind plexiglass. No way to interact with them or even hold them. They could be showing little more than videos looping demos in the exterior shells at this point. Within 2 hours of iPad intro, tech press got to use them so you knew almost immediately what Apple had.

Is this thing really going to be ready as soon as January? I'm a little dubious. Guessing it will be later in the year.
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I'll agree it would've been smart to deliver physical products the press can interact with BUT:

1. Doing so gives the competition a heads up on WHICH cpu their using (Options is NOT hard to get to in order to see hardware specs).
2. POSIX is a very small and tightly worked endeavor and few key players. QNX has a patent by the parent company now owned by RIM. BTW, Cisco licenses 1 of the POSIX by the same company.

.:R2theT said:
What is early next year? Jan. 15th? Or Mar. 15th?

Nice video, but it's still just vaporware. And vaporware with some key specs. missing at that.
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Read # 2 above … I think you NEED to research. RIM has not EVER lead users astray with vaporware. Apple took over 12 months to deliver PUSH Notifications; although eventually they did it seemed VERY much like vapourware and its cloud & software hosted. That's really bad, but its history now.

2008 - Crank has ported WebKit to QNX Neutrino, and since web browsers and graphical applications go hand in hand these days, we plan to provide assistance and support on this technology.

2009 - (recall RIM's efforts to Sync'ing in the car recently?)
QNX and Pandora team-up to bring internet radio to the car

3/2009 - QNX CAR – the start of something big

Coding Building Boost.Python 1.42 for QNX 6.4.1

Source for the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX

n the late-1980s, Quantum realized that the market was rapidly moving towards the POSIX model and decided to rewrite the kernel to be much more compatible at a lower level. The result was QNX 4. During this time Patrick Hayden, while working as an intern, along with Robin Burgener (a full time employee at the time), developed a new concept for a windowing system. This patented concept was developed into the embeddable GUI named the QNX Photon microGUI. QNX also provided a version of the X Window System. Due to the POSIX interface, porting Unix and BSD packages to QNX became much easier.

Along with the Neutrino kernel, QNX Software Systems made a serious commitment to tooling, and became a founding member of the Eclipse consortium. The company released a suite of Eclipse plug-ins packaged with the Eclipse workbench in 2002 under the name QNX Momentics Tool Suite
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Lastly, Food-For-Thought:
1.
Along with the Neutrino kernel, QNX Software Systems made a serious commitment to tooling, and became a founding member of the Eclipse consortium. The company released a suite of Eclipse plug-ins packaged with the Eclipse workbench in 2002 under the name QNX Momentics Tool Suite
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2.
In 2004, QNX Software Systems announced it had been sold to Harman International Industries. Prior to this acquisition, QNX software was already widely used in the automotive industry for telematics systems. Since the purchase by Harman, QNX software has been designed into over 200 different automobile makes and models - not only in telematics systems but in infotainment and navigation units as well. The company has since released several middleware products including the QNX Aviage Multimedia Suite, the QNX Aviage Acoustic Processing Suite and the QNX HMI Suite.
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I highly doubt this will be vapourware - pundits thought the SAME thing when RIM left C++ code for the OS and went to Java instead of going with Windows Mobile 2nd Ed. (or whatever it was called).

RIM was careful not to show "The Emperor's Clothes" too much into detail without fully shipping. Right now they're fixing bugs in OS6. To be honest I was hoping OS6 would be ditched until this OS comes down into the smartphone market: Cortex A9 is just so sweet - not as good as Cortex A15 but its shipping by Samsung, Texas Instruments (OMAP 43xx/44xx series) and a few other manufacturers.
 
How wrong you are.

cube said:
16:9 is not practical, specially for a tablet that is supposed to be business-oriented.
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The smaller the tablet the more a wide aspect ratio makes sense. Especially for a device targetting business.
 
Me too

Hey look, we can make an iPad too :p Nice hardware specs, but wonder what the battery life is like. Maybe Apple will have the next iPad out by that time.
 
Look at the old rumors about iPads. Apple designed multiple iPads with different sizes. The 7" must be one of them. Jobs decided the 9.7" will be the only model. There must be reasons.
 
Awesome, I hope it sells, aswell as that Samsung one so Apple may feel enticed enough to ad some features to the iPad. Bring on HDMI/USB ports, and an OS thats more dedicated to the size of the iPad.
 
cubist said:
I like the idea that it's QNX based - QNX is a very nice and easy-to-program OS. But if the end user can't write binary applications for it, but must use HTML5 or Flash (can we use Javascript?), I'd tentatively call it... dead on arrival.:(

(edit) took too long to type it, sunspot beat me to it. As he points out, RIM takes almost forever to deliver things. The analogy with Palm is very apt.
Click to expand...

Such dribble. SPitting out verbatim from the same analysts that are flacky on RIM 1 month then when beating analysts reports for recent quarter revenue their back in love with them and raising next quarters estimates. Asian & Indian markets … RIM has the youth already not TRYING to get them.

RIM we all know invented Email, but also delivered intranet sites and applications (although requiring server and internal support within your IT/Programmers) delivered BEFORE anyone else in the market. They also delivered SAP to smarpthones … still not yet done by competitors.

Sorry many of you don't support RIM infrastructure and only know about BB's from a BIS perspective and from other blog/forum sites and haven't worked in varying infrastructures where its deployed to see what it offers. YES its complex, but RIM is changing that.

RIM delivered updates to BIS properly and within fails when the ON switched on; sure NOC issues occur (the most I think was 3-5days) but its been more stable than a few provincial governments' exchange '03 servers for INTERNAL Windows deployments - I know this first hand!

All in all RIM is NOT trying to be flashy but robust and smooth transitions so that users do NOT have to rely on a charged IT call for support (ahem, Microsoft). RIM has done smooth transitions in the past and have survived & thrived doing this for the past 10 years. 12 month target with 7mth delivery of OS X to x86 is complex but doing a smooth transition with 1 hardware release per month AFTER the 1st year announcement is really not too different. There is an entire infrasture they support and fully test BEFORE they just jump out and say HEY THIS IS our new TOY & lookey what WE GOT. RIM takes pride and care in their infrastructure & their products not unlike what Apple does; so don't spit verbatim, please.
 
tzeshan said:
Look at the old rumors about iPads. Apple designed multiple iPads with different sizes. The 7" must be one of them. Jobs decided the 9.7" will be the only model. There must be reasons.
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Without knowing those reasons, the arguements for a 9.7", or the validity to back up those reasons its not even worth mentioning against a 7" LCD nor even rebutting the issue. That said I'm too very curious about the 9.7" only ideal … and with this being the 3rd announced tablet to ship with a 7" SWVGA LCD the economies of scale favour this size for cheaper hardware costs/sourcing & thus more volume and higher revenue (also based on slightly lower R&D for the 1 off LCD).
 
Interesting, anyone ever notice that Apple shows the working product first, then they show its commercial? (ok, maybe they release a photo to a rumor site, but I digress)

Everyone else spends more time on the promotional video then the actual product.

This is vaporware. They are in panic mode in my opinion.

Can you imagine what Apple's internal promotional videos of future products must look like? Flying iPhones, cappuccino making iPads, invisible Macs....
 
I am surprised by the small about of bashing I see here.

It has my attentions. Battery life on the device will be good for no other reason than it is RIM. RIM has mastered the art of making most out of a battery. They can throw in a smaller battery than any one else and still pull out a day usage while others are struggling with a larger battery and making it threw the day.

I can see 7" being a good size because for bussiness users you can throw it in your chest jack pocket and it will fit. Or throw it in a smaller pocks of a back pack or brief case. Both of which an iPah 10" size will not fit.

Also do not say this is a copy of the iPad. One thing you have to know about RIM is they tend to have long development cycles so this was more than likely in the works for well over a year.

It seems like something can can complement a cell phone really well.

I do not think I will get one but it shows a lot of promise.
 
kernkraft said:
They could have just said "four times the RAM of the iPad, cameras, real HD, real multitasking, actual connectors..."

"...and you don't have to use iTunes!"


But I agree that a wider tablet would make more sense. I never liked widescreen, even with laptops or external displays below 22".
Click to expand...

So they should spout tech specs to compare to an iPad that will likely be a year old when the Playbook comes out? I would hope they will have better specs.

I love all the labels too... Real HD, Real this, real that. WTF does that mean.
When the Playbook comes out and has 4 hours of battery life can we say the Apple iPad has REAL battery life...?
 
A reactive solution, like so many

Who take no time to actually pro-actively research the market and develop going forward...
All these companies will find the patent trap waiting for them when they try to implement touch interface gestures...
;)
 
Rodimus Prime said:
Also do not say this is a copy of the iPad. One thing you have to know about RIM is they tend to have long development cycles so this was more than likely in the works for well over a year.
Click to expand...

And the iPhone began internal development as the iPad before becoming a phone first. Which came out in 2007. So yeah, RIM is copying the look.
 
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