Wednesday, October 20, 2010 11:33:35 AM
Apple has spoiled us with a 10in tablet and made us reluctant to accept a smaller one.
By Milo Yiannopoulos
Published: 12:13PM BST 20 Oct 2010
The BlackBerry PlayBook will be too small to be truly usable, says Steve Jobs
RIM, the manufacturer of BlackBerry, has hit out at Steve Jobs's assessment of the tablet computer market with a blog post attacking the "distortion field" that supposedly surrounds Apple. But the blog post doesn't answer any of the big questions about tablet computers, preferring instead to make cheap shots about Apple's quality controlled ecosystem and centralised design philosophy. And yes, we all know Apple massages its figures a bit. Can you point to a company that doesn't?
Never mind the criticisms of Jobs's recent "defensiveness": RIM makes no attempt to address the facts in its own crudely judged remarks. In fact, RIM's blog post is the strongest hint that Jobs is right, and that RIM knows it's about to preside over a disaster with the 7in PlayBook.
The thing is, 7in just doesn't make sense for any kind of application. It's too large for the device to be considered a personal organiser (perhaps just as well – in the age of the smartphone they're an embarrassment), but too small to make browsing the web a pleasurable experience. I can't help but think you'd be constantly wishing for those few extra inches, especially when watching video. Try it yourself by drawing a rectangle on a piece of paper with a 7in diagonal. It just looks wrong.
And gaming? Forget it. The PlayBook might be a similar form factor to a lot of hand-held consoles, but try talking the average developer into making a complex 3D game for BlackBerry's clunky OS and they'll laugh you out of their office. RIM "has a high mountain ahead of them to climb" if they're to convince developers to make apps for BlackBerry OS, in addition to Apple's own iOS and Google's Android, said Jobs on Monday. I'll say: developing for BlackBerry is "a world of hurt", according to one London development agency, which regularly turns down clients who want BlackBerry apps built because it's just too laborious to bother with. It remains to be seen whether the new QNX operating system that RIM is debuting on the PlayBook will perform any better. Don't hold your breath.
RIM is also betting on Adobe's Flash technology, claiming that it matters to their customers who want a "real" web experience – whatever that means. Another big mistake: had Flash been the remotest bit important to mobile surfers, the iPad and iPhone would not have become the fastest-selling consumer electronics devices in history. Something tells me the inclusion of Adobe's resource-hogging multimedia platform will make RIM's PlayBook one of the most buggy, freeze-prone mobile devices ever to be released. Besides, Flash will be obsolete, at least in the browser, in a few short years: video and advertising content online is hurtling toward HTML5 capability, which is compatible with the mobile version of Apple's Safari browser.
As for sniping about Apple's fourth quarter financial results: come off it. "Only" 8.4 million devices shipped? RIM will be lucky to sell that many of its devices in the whole first year of sale. As an avid BlackBerry user, I take no pleasure at all in that prediction: I only hope it doesn't finish the company off, because some of their recent handsets have been world-class and I'd be lost without my Bold 9700.
"We know", claims RIM, that 7in tablets "will actually be a big portion of the market". Forgive me, but how do they know this? Have they done any research at all? Because if they have, it isn't evident from a nano-rant that strikes me, frankly, as unbecoming of a chief executive.
Finally, is it just me, or are statements like: "We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple," ever so slightly patronising to consumers? I mean, sorry, but, first of all, credit me with enough intelligence to turn down an Apple product if I don't like the look of it (and I have done, many times), and second of all, change the record. The fact is that Apple makes the most seductive and gorgeous gadgets out there. No one else comes close on design, usability or sex appeal. Isn't that what RIM's really upset about?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/blackberry/8075611/Steve-Jobs-is-right-about-the-7in-tablet.html
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