5 ms·

I have yet to find anything anywhere near as good as the unified messaging interface on the Z10 and Z30. Absolutely everything was in a single inbox. I had one

I have yet to find anything anywhere near as good as the unified messaging interface on the Z10 and Z30. Absolutely everything was in a single inbox. I had one though most of my university years. Eventually had to give it up as apps like Uber surged in importance. Now I spend far more time hopping around apps on my iPhone.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
alphabettsy 5y ago
I never used one of those, but unified messaging on the Palm Pre was pretty amazing when it came out.
Lorin 5y ago
The BlackBerry Hub still exists on Android. That being said I miss the BB10 OS interface, although I'm unsure of its practicality on large phone screens.
- mattowen_uk 5y ago
  Unless you have a Android Blackberry device (KeyOne or Key2 etc) the free version of the hub is feature restricted, so you have to pay (an ongoing sub) to get the full Hub experience.
- jesterson 5y ago
  Have you used it? If so, how was the experience comparing to BB10? If it's something similar I'd probably consider moving to android
johnzim 5y ago
The same pain many users felt with the end of a lot of federated chat services. It's even worse now that most desktop chat applications embed entire web browsers to render their UI. In fact I can only think of iMessage/Messages as being a native app. * insert usual boilerplate about not hating on Web Technologies for App dev/delivery, just Electron's bloat *
- mjevans 5y ago
  Some IRC clients are still native apps. That XKCD comic is more relevant every day. https://xkcd.com/1782/ https://xkcd.com/1782/
- paavohtl 5y ago
  Telegram has a native desktop client based on Qt. There's also a separate macOS version based on Cocoa.
  - DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
    problem is that it's Telegram. Telegram wants to appeal to security minded folk but their crypto is snakeoil so the only people who use it for "sEcUriTy" are crypto bros and ISIS recruiters. Apart from being "herbalife cryptography", telegram doesn't roll out security patches. Instead security fixes are bundled within the regular release process, so the new version is always a mixed bag of new features and fixes. Yikes on very basic software engineering process & principles: https://mtpsym.github.io/ https://mtpsym.github.io/
    - core-utility 5y ago
      Telegram seems to have put themselves in a weird spot. Seeing which of my contacts sign up for telegram and/or signal, Telegram has definitely won in terms of market adoption. They saw the opportunity after anger with WhatsApp and decided to be the new WhatsApp platform. "We might not be the best at security, but at least we're not Facebook"
passerby1 5y ago
How they did messaging experience so solid and complete so early? I never used blackberry as a user, but only developed some small compatible j2me apps for the platform in the early 2000s. But I was impressed with UI and overall service completeness.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  In a way it was their undoing. BlackBerry never managed to think of phones as more than communications devices.
  - marcodave 5y ago
    and it was a successful business. "don't fix what works and bring money" ...until someone comes and disrupts you and all the assumptions that keeps up your business
  - lproven 5y ago
    I would dispute that. BB was perfectly aware of the changing market, and it did all-touchscreen devices and things. It also did BBM for Android. But I don't think the company realised how much smartphones were surpassing them, so they were very late to move to a smartphone platform. When they did, it was to QNX – the basis of BB10 – and it was a very good OS, but it was too late. It reminds me of Palm and PalmOS. When it became clear that they needed to move to ARM, they talked to Symbian about using it as the basis of the new ARM PalmOS. That would have been a killer platform – but they didn't do it. https://www.theregister.com/2000/11/14/palm_cto_rubbishes_3000_man/ https://www.theregister.com/2000/11/14/palm_cto_rubbishes_30... The company decided against an absolutely superb option which would have given them a major technological advantage. Instead, the replaced their bought-in 68K kernel Kadak AMX, which actually did multitasking but Palm didn't pay for that option (!) – with their own emulator thing, MCK, meaning that ARM PalmOS (PalmOS 5 "Garnet") was still single-tasking with almost no multimedia support. Then PalmSource bought the remnants of Be, using it to make PalmOS 6, "Cobalt". https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18956 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18956 I read a lot about Cobalt and it looked amazing for 2003-2004. But nobody shipped phones with it – not even Palm itself. Instead, they... licensed Windows CE. A second disastrously bad decision. Few companies survive their first, but Palm did it and survived long enough to do it again.
jesterson 5y ago
This. Miss BlackBerry Hub a lot.
vincvinc 5y ago
FYI former YC partner Eric started Beeper, a chat app to get the unified inbox back. Built on the federated Matrix network, with 'bridges' to all popular chat networks. the Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25848278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25848278
gnuj3 5y ago
I have exactly the same experience as you. Z10 was absolutely great because of the BlackBerry hub and on top of that I miss the physical keyboard of the older models. I’m absolutely terrible at typing on an iPhone, I literally cant go a sentence without having red line under half of the words.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

alphabettsy 5y ago

I never used one of those, but unified messaging on the Palm Pre was pretty amazing when it came out.

Lorin 5y ago

The BlackBerry Hub still exists on Android. That being said I miss the BB10 OS interface, although I'm unsure of its practicality on large phone screens.

mattowen_uk 5y ago
Unless you have a Android Blackberry device (KeyOne or Key2 etc) the free version of the hub is feature restricted, so you have to pay (an ongoing sub) to get the full Hub experience.
jesterson 5y ago
Have you used it? If so, how was the experience comparing to BB10? If it's something similar I'd probably consider moving to android

johnzim 5y ago

The same pain many users felt with the end of a lot of federated chat services. It's even worse now that most desktop chat applications embed entire web browsers to render their UI. In fact I can only think of iMessage/Messages as being a native app. * insert usual boilerplate about not hating on Web Technologies for App dev/delivery, just Electron's bloat *

mjevans 5y ago
Some IRC clients are still native apps. That XKCD comic is more relevant every day. https://xkcd.com/1782/ https://xkcd.com/1782/
paavohtl 5y ago
Telegram has a native desktop client based on Qt. There's also a separate macOS version based on Cocoa.
- DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
  problem is that it's Telegram. Telegram wants to appeal to security minded folk but their crypto is snakeoil so the only people who use it for "sEcUriTy" are crypto bros and ISIS recruiters. Apart from being "herbalife cryptography", telegram doesn't roll out security patches. Instead security fixes are bundled within the regular release process, so the new version is always a mixed bag of new features and fixes. Yikes on very basic software engineering process & principles: https://mtpsym.github.io/ https://mtpsym.github.io/
  - core-utility 5y ago
    Telegram seems to have put themselves in a weird spot. Seeing which of my contacts sign up for telegram and/or signal, Telegram has definitely won in terms of market adoption. They saw the opportunity after anger with WhatsApp and decided to be the new WhatsApp platform. "We might not be the best at security, but at least we're not Facebook"

passerby1 5y ago

How they did messaging experience so solid and complete so early? I never used blackberry as a user, but only developed some small compatible j2me apps for the platform in the early 2000s. But I was impressed with UI and overall service completeness.

MattGaiser 5y ago
In a way it was their undoing. BlackBerry never managed to think of phones as more than communications devices.
- marcodave 5y ago
  and it was a successful business. "don't fix what works and bring money" ...until someone comes and disrupts you and all the assumptions that keeps up your business
- lproven 5y ago
  I would dispute that. BB was perfectly aware of the changing market, and it did all-touchscreen devices and things. It also did BBM for Android. But I don't think the company realised how much smartphones were surpassing them, so they were very late to move to a smartphone platform. When they did, it was to QNX – the basis of BB10 – and it was a very good OS, but it was too late. It reminds me of Palm and PalmOS. When it became clear that they needed to move to ARM, they talked to Symbian about using it as the basis of the new ARM PalmOS. That would have been a killer platform – but they didn't do it. https://www.theregister.com/2000/11/14/palm_cto_rubbishes_3000_man/ https://www.theregister.com/2000/11/14/palm_cto_rubbishes_30... The company decided against an absolutely superb option which would have given them a major technological advantage. Instead, the replaced their bought-in 68K kernel Kadak AMX, which actually did multitasking but Palm didn't pay for that option (!) – with their own emulator thing, MCK, meaning that ARM PalmOS (PalmOS 5 "Garnet") was still single-tasking with almost no multimedia support. Then PalmSource bought the remnants of Be, using it to make PalmOS 6, "Cobalt". https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18956 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18956 I read a lot about Cobalt and it looked amazing for 2003-2004. But nobody shipped phones with it – not even Palm itself. Instead, they... licensed Windows CE. A second disastrously bad decision. Few companies survive their first, but Palm did it and survived long enough to do it again.

jesterson 5y ago

This. Miss BlackBerry Hub a lot.

vincvinc 5y ago

FYI former YC partner Eric started Beeper, a chat app to get the unified inbox back. Built on the federated Matrix network, with 'bridges' to all popular chat networks. the Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25848278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25848278

gnuj3 5y ago

I have exactly the same experience as you. Z10 was absolutely great because of the BlackBerry hub and on top of that I miss the physical keyboard of the older models. I’m absolutely terrible at typing on an iPhone, I literally cant go a sentence without having red line under half of the words.