Why I switched to a BlackBerry, and I'm not coming back

[Tenorsaw]

I went through a crisis of conscience and bought a Blackberry Curve 2 months ago.

I returned it less than 24 hours later.

And I'm sorry, unless you're work has BES, BB email is pathetic- no folders, and no way to even view emails that don't arrive in your Inbox after you set up email on the device. It was ridiculous. I was expecting some sort of revolutionary email experience and was extremely let down. Maybe I just didn't figure it out, but I found BIS a joke.

I did enjoy the "real" multitasking and the physical keyboard (the main reason I wanted to switch) but it was not nearly enough to make me want to stay. Not to mention what a dog the Curve 8800 is, sloooowwww.

The BB Bold is a beautiful phone though.

Ahhh! Thank you! I've been saying this all along. People get push email (which RIM is basically redirecting) and they think their life is complete. Meanwhile, they can't see three quarters of their email. They can't even see email that they sent from a desktop. No thank you. You can keep your device, RIM.

BIS is crap! I don't know where the OP got the native support for folders line from, but that's totally false. Maybe he wasn't referring to email.

 

[Maverickster]

Can you explain why you would want that?

Really? Well, if it's in the holster, I don't need it to ring because vibrate will do the job (after all, by definition, it's on my person), and chances are that I'm in a meeting or at (or going to) some place where it needs to be on vibrate.

If it's not in the holster, then I do need it to ring because vibrate won't do the job (after all, by definition, it's not on my person), and chances are that I'm in my office or at home where ringing is how I want to be notified.

Every cell phone I've ever used with a vibrate function, I turned vibrate on when it was in the holster or in my pocket, and turned it off when it wasn't.

My blackberry flipped this switch for me automatically.

I miss that.

--Mav

 

[Maverickster]

Ahhh! Thank you! I've been saying this all along. People get push email (which RIM is basically redirecting) and they think their life is complete. Meanwhile, they can't see three quarters of their email. They can't even see email that they sent from a desktop. No thank you. You can keep your device, RIM.

BIS is crap! I don't know where the OP got the native support for folders line from, but that's totally false. Maybe he wasn't referring to email.

That may be true, but BIS is sort of the red-headed stepchild. On an enterprise BES, the iPhone just can't compete (yet) with how well the push and notification systems work. Don't get me wrong, now that I have the 3GS, I would never, ever, ever go back (it just does too many other things entirely too well), but RIM has them beat in this department...for the time being anyway.

--Mav

 

[Tenorsaw]

That may be true, but BIS is sort of the red-headed stepchild. On an enterprise BES, the iPhone just can't compete (yet) with how well the push and notification systems work. Don't get me wrong, now that I have the 3GS, I would never, ever, ever go back (it just does too many other things entirely too well), but RIM has them beat in this department...for the time being anyway.

--Mav

I've set up enterprise on both the BB and iPhone. Push works just as fast for me on the iPhone, sometimes faster. Was your experience different? The notification part I do understand.

 

[Maverickster]

I've set up enterprise on both the BB and iPhone. Push works just as fast for me on the iPhone, sometimes faster. Was your experience different? The notification part I do understand.

Yeah, sort of. Let's put it this way, for many years, I knew when an email was going to hit my computer's Outlook in approximately 10 seconds by the fact that my BB would ding; it became so regular and so reliable that I had developed a pavlovian hear-bb-ding-switch-desktop-application-to-outlook-to-see-what-it-is response to it (which is o.k. since a healthy percentage of my job involves email). The iPhone is hit or miss; it's usually pushed to the iPhone between 10 seconds before and 10 seconds after when it hits my Outlook. It's still good, but not as consistently quick. Not a complaint I really have though. The holster thing, though...that's starting to bug me, but I'll get used to it.

--Mav

 

[Tenorsaw]

Yeah, sort of. Let's put it this way, for many years, I knew when an email was going to hit my computer's Outlook in approximately 10 seconds by the fact that my BB would ding; it became so regular and so reliable that I had developed a pavlovian hear-bb-ding-switch-desktop-application-to-outlook-to-see-what-it-is response to it (which is o.k. since a healthy percentage of my job involves email). The iPhone is hit or miss; it's usually pushed to the iPhone between 10 seconds before and 10 seconds after when it hits my Outlook. It's still good, but not as consistently quick. Not a complaint I really have though. The holster thing, though...that's starting to bug me, but I'll get used to it.

--Mav

That's understandable. I'm currently using both. My BB is work issued. It's a fine work device, but other than that I don't even look at it.

The thing that I respect Apple for is that they've made great strides with the iPhone and it's only been two years. They keep adding more and more features on a consistent basis, which I think is great. What other company does that with their phones?

 

[Maverickster]

That's understandable. I'm currently using both. My BB is work issued. It's a fine work device, but other than that I don't even look at it.

The thing that I respect Apple for is that they've made great strides with the iPhone and it's only been two years. They keep adding more and more features on a consistent basis, which I think is great. What other company does that with their phones?

Certainly not RIM. When the 3G came out and the firm I work for announced that they were going to support it, I gave it some real thought, but the lack of cut and paste, my carefully developed set of mad thumbing skillz, the holster thing, and a handful of other business-oriented issues made me wait. So, I waited for RIM to release device after device, month after month with maybe a minor feature change here or there, and then they released the Curve 8900 WITHOUT 3G and right around that same time Apple announced the 3GS with all of the 3.0 improvements and a few hardware improvements and that was it (holy run on sentence, batman). Man, am I glad the 8900 didn't support 3G...if it had, I wouldn't be on this board!

 

[OceanView]

As long as your happy, it's all good.

 

[kayno]

Like I said earlier, just giving my perspective on the switch - you never know who might come across this and find it helpful. I certainly would have a couple weeks ago.

Well I see your point, But I doubt that you will get anything but resistance in this forum. Majority of the people here are iPhone lovers and Mac users.. We stand behind our brand .. anyways I still think you made a mistake.. The iPhone since 3.0 and the 3GS is now the king of all smartphones.. Business and personal..

 

[scotland007]

i have a company Verizon Blackberry 8300 and have just personally bought the 3GS. I have my iphone synced via exchange for my company email and i find i get emails at the same time as my blackberry. What i love about the iPhone is my emails look the way they are supposed to and are much easier to read and storing the emails into my exchange folders is a breeze. Although the blackberry can multitask, it is so slow that it really becomes a waste of time. It appears that the whole multi-tasking thing is an issue for some but how i use my iPhone, i have no issue getting what i want to accomplish out the phone.

 

[GNice]

That's understandable. I'm currently using both. My BB is work issued. It's a fine work device, but other than that I don't even look at it.

The thing that I respect Apple for is that they've made great strides with the iPhone and it's only been two years. They keep adding more and more features on a consistent basis, which I think is great. What other company does that with their phones?

Exactly...I have a BB Curve supplied by my employer. I just use it for conference calls when I'm not in the office. It's not even close now with 3.0.

 

[jw nyc]

Cause once you go Mac.. you never go back.. iPhone included..

Completely not true. I switched to the Macbook Pro in 2007 and am already back to using a PC. I love my iPhone and wouldn't switch back to blackberry but in terms of computers, the Mac OS does not come close to competing with Windows 7. Too many things you CAN'T do on a Mac and virtually NOTHING that you cannot do on a PC. Plus if you know how to use a PC, it's just more fun to use. The only true benefit I found for using a Mac was that I didn't have to worry about viruses.

 

[uberamd]

Completely not true. I switched to the Macbook Pro in 2007 and am already back to using a PC. I love my iPhone and wouldn't switch back to blackberry but in terms of computers, the Mac OS does not come close to competing with Windows 7. Too many things you CAN'T do on a Mac and virtually NOTHING that you cannot do on a PC. Plus if you know how to use a PC, it's just more fun to use. The only true benefit I found for using a Mac was that I didn't have to worry about viruses.

Its taking all my will right now to not respond to this with a 55 page rant.

 

[jw nyc]

Its taking all my will right now to not respond to this with a 55 page rant.

Please...let's do it. I became so repeatedly infuriated using a Mac that I was forced to switch back to Windows VISTA (the worst Windows OS since Windows ME!) and since I switched to Windows 7 it has been nothing but a pleasure. I would love to hear you try and convince me (and most likely yourself) otherwise.

 

[steviem]

I think that must have been your problem, you didn't learn to use a mac. I use Windows (server, xp, vista, 7), OSX and Linux, graphically and in the command line and in my experience, OSX is the best for me when I want to play and record guitar, when I want to manage and edit photos, play video and now sync with an Exchange server!

What happened to infuriate you so much? The only way I would go back to a PC full time is if the creative apps in Linux improve, I'm not paying Microsoft anymore money (except for XBox 360 games).

 

[GfPQqmcRKUvP]

Completely not true. I switched to the Macbook Pro in 2007 and am already back to using a PC. I love my iPhone and wouldn't switch back to blackberry but in terms of computers, the Mac OS does not come close to competing with Windows 7. Too many things you CAN'T do on a Mac and virtually NOTHING that you cannot do on a PC. Plus if you know how to use a PC, it's just more fun to use. The only true benefit I found for using a Mac was that I didn't have to worry about viruses.

Hahahaha. I have Windows 7 and Leopard. Windows 7 is Vista, only a little more stable and with even fancier eye candy. It's search still sucks, there are still inconsistent UI elements, there's still that awful pop-up Action Center (yes, it's still annoying), it still has a horrendous registry, it still needs to be constantly maintained to be running smoothly, and it still doesn't come close to the simplicity of OS X.

I guess I just feel like there are too many inconsistencies in Windows. There are too many slightly different ways to do one thing, it takes too much effort to navigate around, and too much effort to find things. Have fun.

 

[uberamd]

Please...let's do it. I became so repeatedly infuriated using a Mac that I was forced to switch back to Windows VISTA (the worst Windows OS since Windows ME!) and since I switched to Windows 7 it has been nothing but a pleasure. I would love to hear you try and convince me (and most likely yourself) otherwise.

No, I don't want to recap the same thing over and over and over. I have already posted my reasons for being a full time Mac user after being a Windows user for years and dealing with Windows computers all day long.

Each to his own I guess.

 

[jw nyc]

I think that must have been your problem, you didn't learn to use a mac. I use Windows (server, xp, vista, 7), OSX and Linux, graphically and in the command line and in my experience, OSX is the best for me when I want to play and record guitar, when I want to manage and edit photos, play video and now sync with an Exchange server!

What happened to infuriate you so much? The only way I would go back to a PC full time is if the creative apps in Linux improve, I'm not paying Microsoft anymore money (except for XBox 360 games).

That's fair and I guess to each his own. For what I do, there were many things that a Mac wasn't able to do well. First, Microsoft Office (I use Excel, Word and Powerpoint religiously) are literally AWFUL on a Mac. I tried using iWork but most of my Excel formulas and all formatting didn't convert. That alone prevented me from using it in an office environment.

Adobe CS4 is also much more useful and significantly faster on a PC being that it utilizes the 64 bit architecture compared to just 32 bit on Macs. Now I know Snow Leopard is going to do a lot to help the Mac catch up and the fact that Exchange support is built in is great, but the native apps (Mail, iCal, Address Book) don't come close to matching Microsoft Outlook.

Next, when I had the Blackberry it was virtually impossible to sync the damn thing with my Macbook Pro. I even bought extra sync software that still failed to do the job as well as a PC. Just to update the firmware I had to use a friend's PC. Using the Mac on our network in the office was hit or miss AT BEST. Most of the time it couldn't even locate half of our servers and I would be unable to access my files!!

Lastly, the Mac Finder is a poor substitute for Windows Explorer. Explorer is so much more feature rich and intuitive than Finder. Now I understand that Finder is definitely more SIMPLE, but for people on this board (who I am assuming are technically savvy) the extra features in Explorer and definitely utilized and needed.

Saying I don't understand how to use a Mac is foolish b/c I dedicated two years to the OS and I tend to think of myself as an expert at this point. I would love to hear some counterarguments b/c I simply don't understand what the infatuation with the OS is. No reason to turn it into a Mac vs. PC battle but just want to understand.

 

[uberamd]

That's fair and I guess to each his own. For what I do, there were many things that a Mac wasn't able to do well. First, Microsoft Office (I use Excel, Word and Powerpoint religiously) are literally AWFUL on a Mac. I tried using iWork but most of my Excel formulas and all formatting didn't convert. That alone prevented me from using it in an office environment.

Adobe CS4 is also much more useful and significantly faster on a PC being that it utilizes the 64 bit architecture compared to just 32 bit on Macs. Now I know Snow Leopard is going to do a lot to help the Mac catch up and the fact that Exchange support is built in is great, but the native apps (Mail, iCal, Address Book) don't come close to matching Microsoft Outlook.

Next, when I had the Blackberry it was virtually impossible to sync the damn thing with my Macbook Pro. I even bought extra sync software that still failed to do the job as well as a PC. Just to update the firmware I had to use a friend's PC. Using the Mac on our network in the office was hit or miss AT BEST. Most of the time it couldn't even locate half of our servers and I would be unable to access my files!!

Lastly, the Mac Finder is a poor substitute for Windows Explorer. Explorer is so much more feature rich and intuitive than Finder. Now I understand that Finder is definitely more SIMPLE, but for people on this board (who I am assuming are technically savvy) the extra features in Explorer and definitely utilized and needed.

Saying I don't understand how to use a Mac is foolish b/c I dedicated two years to the OS and I tend to think of myself as an expert at this point. I would love to hear some counterarguments b/c I simply don't understand what the infatuation with the OS is. No reason to turn it into a Mac vs. PC battle but just want to understand.

Explorer and intuitive. I never thought I would hear those in the same sentence. Credibility out the window at that point.

 

[jw nyc]

Explorer and intuitive. I never thought I would hear those in the same sentence. Credibility out the window at that point.

Based on your replies, I'm just going to assume you have yet to try Windows 7.

 

[gloss]

For the record, I liked Windows 7, and would use it equally with Leopard if I were dual booting. We'll see if Snow Leopard pushes Mac OS X back into the lead.

 

[jw nyc]

I know what I'm about to say is going to make a lot of people want to bitch and moan but it is something I truly believe...

If Steve Jobs didn't come back to Apple and didn't make Mac computers SEXY machines, Apple would still have less than 3% market share right now. I truly don't believe the OS is the selling point for Apple. The OS is simple as hell and nice to use...until you need to do serious work. It's an OS that is GREAT for a child. No viruses to worry about and very simple. But for anyone who wants to get real WORK done, it just can't compete with a PC. Now Apple will continue to win market share b/c their computers look fantastic, but it's definitely NOT due to the OS.

 

[QCassidy352]

holy thread hijacking, batman!!

 

[gloss]

I know what I'm about to say is going to make a lot of people want to bitch and moan but it is something I truly believe...

If Steve Jobs didn't come back to Apple and didn't make Mac computers SEXY machines, Apple would still have less than 3% market share right now. I truly don't believe the OS is the selling point for Apple. The OS is simple as hell and nice to use...until you need to do serious work. It's an OS that is GREAT for a child. No viruses to worry about and very simple. But for anyone who wants to get real WORK done, it just can't compete with a PC. Now Apple will continue to win market share b/c their computers look fantastic, but it's definitely NOT due to the OS.

S'pose that'd depend on the sort of work you're doing now, wouldn't it?

 

[D1G1T4L]

I know what I'm about to say is going to make a lot of people want to bitch and moan but it is something I truly believe...

If Steve Jobs didn't come back to Apple and didn't make Mac computers SEXY machines, Apple would still have less than 3% market share right now. I truly don't believe the OS is the selling point for Apple. The OS is simple as hell and nice to use...until you need to do serious work. It's an OS that is GREAT for a child. No viruses to worry about and very simple. But for anyone who wants to get real WORK done, it just can't compete with a PC. Now Apple will continue to win market share b/c their computers look fantastic, but it's definitely NOT due to the OS.

So you feel that no real work can be done with OS X but must be done with a PC running Windows? Interesting.