4 ms·

The new OS version is coming out shortly I believe. But what exactly is it in need of? My only complaint is their menuing system is not very pretty.

by mrtron 16y ago

elblanco 16y ago
It reeks of "don't care". It's clunky in places, everybody has to roll their own gui toolkit to make anything that looks halfway decent, performance isn't that great (maybe the devices are slow), crap is buried in long lists of settings, I can use a microSD card with it but it's pointless because I can't install anything to that card, restarting the device is a pain since I have to approve a dozen security policy dialogs that don't fit on the screen, typography is a disaster. I once accidentally his the wrong security setting when installing Opera on mine and I have no idea how to change it, after a year of poking around and a full system wipe. So now, every time I go to surf the web, I have to spend 5 minutes fighting past security authorizations. All this was okay in 2000, but the devices haven't evolved one bit since then. I got mine new, just on the market, in '08 from my company. Really, even with a new OS, the devices need to get with the times. Buying WebOS would give them a halfway decent, well thought out OS, and force their hand with the crappy hardware.
- mrtron 16y ago
  Really? This sounds pretty weak reasoning to buy a company for a half-decent OS. a) Performance is never bad on blackberries - what are you talking about? Always far better performance than my iphone. b) You are complaining about a 3rd party app's security settings? c) You can't install to a microSD card but is that a problem? There is good reason to not allow app installations on a hotswappable card obviously. They provide plenty of room for app installs on the internal memory. d) Use a 2000 era device and then use a new bold 9700. You cannot be serious claiming the devices themselves haven't evolved. Blackberries are amazing devices, it just seems like a small group of people love to hate on them for unknown reasons. Just like a different group loves to hate on iPhones. What you are saying here is like saying Apple should buy Palm because their OS is garbage because it doesn't support multiple applications and you can only sync through itunes.
  - pedalpete 16y ago
    'performance' is relative mrton. elblanco could be talking about web performance which really is way behind the times on Blackberry. But they are releasing a new webkit browser in the fall. The reason they should by Palm is that the Palm webOS is a very modern and well built OS. It could really do great things for RIM in the consumer (non-business user) space. I always attributed Blackberry's OS issues (performance, capabilities, etc) to the fact that the entire OS is written in Java, but a friend tells me that that isn't really the issue. I don't know. If you were to write an OS for a mobile device, would Java be your development language of choice?
    - mrtron 16y ago
      The OS isn't written in Java. Apps and layers on top of the OS are in Java.
  - zyb09 16y ago
    Hi, I develop for both iPhone and BlackBerrys. The iPhone is way ahead in performance, although the hardware is similiar - BlackBerrys just don't have a dedicated GPU and therefore no OpenGL acceleration. Also everything on RIM OS is running in a JavaVM with GC, while iPhone Apps, being in (objective-)C, run much closer to the hardware itsself. Now the funny thing is, despite programming in a higher-level languages on BlackBerrys, iPhone programming is actually easier due to the thoughtful API-design.
    - mrtron 16y ago
      iPhone app APIs are naturally simpler since the devices are very uniform. BB has to support a range of devices, like android. Agreed - no openGL, but I don't think that is a big issue. Blackberries are better at business applications, worse at media applications. Look at mail on the blackberry - it blows iphone mail out of the water. If you have multiple email accounts you are diving into layers of menus to check inboxes on both. Account 1 -> inbox -> msgs -> back out -> back out -> back out -> Accunt 2 -> inbox -> msgs. Blackberries allow you to use the central queue. Now look at media on the iphone. It is as great as ipods, enough said. Look at media on the blackberry - it is like a windows 3.1 player. There are tradeoffs on both iphone and bb platforms.

The new OS version is coming out shortly I believe. But what exactly is it in need of? My only complaint is their menuing system is not very pretty.

by mrtron 16y ago

The new OS version is coming out shortly I believe. But what exactly is it in need of? My only complaint is their menuing system is not very pretty.

elblanco 16y ago

It reeks of "don't care". It's clunky in places, everybody has to roll their own gui toolkit to make anything that looks halfway decent, performance isn't that great (maybe the devices are slow), crap is buried in long lists of settings, I can use a microSD card with it but it's pointless because I can't install anything to that card, restarting the device is a pain since I have to approve a dozen security policy dialogs that don't fit on the screen, typography is a disaster. I once accidentally his the wrong security setting when installing Opera on mine and I have no idea how to change it, after a year of poking around and a full system wipe. So now, every time I go to surf the web, I have to spend 5 minutes fighting past security authorizations. All this was okay in 2000, but the devices haven't evolved one bit since then. I got mine new, just on the market, in '08 from my company. Really, even with a new OS, the devices need to get with the times. Buying WebOS would give them a halfway decent, well thought out OS, and force their hand with the crappy hardware.

mrtron 16y ago
Really? This sounds pretty weak reasoning to buy a company for a half-decent OS. a) Performance is never bad on blackberries - what are you talking about? Always far better performance than my iphone. b) You are complaining about a 3rd party app's security settings? c) You can't install to a microSD card but is that a problem? There is good reason to not allow app installations on a hotswappable card obviously. They provide plenty of room for app installs on the internal memory. d) Use a 2000 era device and then use a new bold 9700. You cannot be serious claiming the devices themselves haven't evolved. Blackberries are amazing devices, it just seems like a small group of people love to hate on them for unknown reasons. Just like a different group loves to hate on iPhones. What you are saying here is like saying Apple should buy Palm because their OS is garbage because it doesn't support multiple applications and you can only sync through itunes.
- pedalpete 16y ago
  'performance' is relative mrton. elblanco could be talking about web performance which really is way behind the times on Blackberry. But they are releasing a new webkit browser in the fall. The reason they should by Palm is that the Palm webOS is a very modern and well built OS. It could really do great things for RIM in the consumer (non-business user) space. I always attributed Blackberry's OS issues (performance, capabilities, etc) to the fact that the entire OS is written in Java, but a friend tells me that that isn't really the issue. I don't know. If you were to write an OS for a mobile device, would Java be your development language of choice?
  - mrtron 16y ago
    The OS isn't written in Java. Apps and layers on top of the OS are in Java.
- zyb09 16y ago
  Hi, I develop for both iPhone and BlackBerrys. The iPhone is way ahead in performance, although the hardware is similiar - BlackBerrys just don't have a dedicated GPU and therefore no OpenGL acceleration. Also everything on RIM OS is running in a JavaVM with GC, while iPhone Apps, being in (objective-)C, run much closer to the hardware itsself. Now the funny thing is, despite programming in a higher-level languages on BlackBerrys, iPhone programming is actually easier due to the thoughtful API-design.
  - mrtron 16y ago
    iPhone app APIs are naturally simpler since the devices are very uniform. BB has to support a range of devices, like android. Agreed - no openGL, but I don't think that is a big issue. Blackberries are better at business applications, worse at media applications. Look at mail on the blackberry - it blows iphone mail out of the water. If you have multiple email accounts you are diving into layers of menus to check inboxes on both. Account 1 -> inbox -> msgs -> back out -> back out -> back out -> Accunt 2 -> inbox -> msgs. Blackberries allow you to use the central queue. Now look at media on the iphone. It is as great as ipods, enough said. Look at media on the blackberry - it is like a windows 3.1 player. There are tradeoffs on both iphone and bb platforms.