Linked List: May 1, 2012

Tuesday, 1 May 2012

‘We’ve Seen This Before’ 

Jan Libbenga, writing for The Register back in November 2007:

The iPhone? Undoubtedly a very nice product, but there is no virtual substitute for a real keyboard, reckons RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis: “Try typing a web key on a touch screen on an iPhone, that’s a real challenge. You cannot see what you type.”

Lazaridis told European reporters in Waterloo, Canada last week, that he isn’t too impressed with Apple’s iPhone and it won’t be a threat to the success of BlackBerry’s smart phone (with over 10.5 million users).

“The iPhone has severe limitations when it comes to effortless typing. Of course you have more screen space, with more artistic interactions, but that’s not enough. We’ve seen this before when Palm tried virtual keyboards. When they launched the Treo they licensed our keyboard.”

I don’t know what a “web key” is, but I do know what good claim chowder tastes like, and this is it.

Update: Best guess, submitted by a few readers, is that Lazaridis said “WEP key”, not “web key”, and was misquoted.

Amateur Hour Is Still Over 

Ian Austen, reporting for the NYT:

Research in Motion on Tuesday unveiled prototypes of the new BlackBerry 10 phone and operating system that the company hopes will be its salvation, in a form that looked quite rough around the edges. Among the features missing on the test phones given to software developers was the ability to actually make phone calls or access wireless networks.

Shocking, from the company that sells a tablet that doesn’t do email.

The incompleteness of the phone only becomes apparent when it is switched on.

Is this the dumbest sentence I’ve read all day, or is The New York Times getting a sense of humor?

Update: That sentence has been (wisely) removed from the article, but it was there when I linked it.

2008 Claim Chowder: ‘Top 10 Reasons Why the iPhone Is No BlackBerry’ 

Some tasty claim chowder circa 2008, from Al Sacco at CrackBerry:

I could go on, but for me, the feature that takes the cake is the full QWERTY keyboard found on many RIM devices.

But the real gem is #1 on his list, “The iPhone Third-Party Apps Debacle”:

Sure the iPhone SDK has been released, and there might be some great apps in the works, but in my opinion, that’s too little, too late, as they say.

Times Change 

From a 2008 story by Brad Stone for the NYT:

There’s a reason that R.I.M. is averse to the iPhone’s glass pad. “I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,” says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.”

Mr. Lazaridis thinks that e-mail-dependent BlackBerry owners demand the reliability and tactile feedback of a keyboard.

BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha Developer Testing Device 

Reminds me of some other device. Can’t quite put my finger on it.

RIM, Not Samsung, Orchestrated Phony ‘Wake Up’ Protest at Australian Apple Store 

Even better than their “Amateur Hour Is Over” campaign.