The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will soon be ditching their BlackBerrys in favor of iPhones and iPads. We’ve seen several examples recently of large enterprises, even major multinationals like Halliiburton, going all-in on iOS, and it’s interesting to see the other half of BlackBerry’s traditional base, government, do likewise.

According to Joseph F. Klimavicz, NOAA Chief Information Officer and Director for High Performance Computing and Communications, they will support the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 running iOS 5 and above.

Going forward employees will no longer be supplied with BlackBerrys but iPhones and iPads instead, though it’s not specified when employees would the change over would begin.

Good enough used to be a mantra for both government and enterprise, and it used to mean user experience. Sure, the software wasn’t the best, but it was good enough, cheap enough, and ubiquitous enough that no one would ever get fired for buying more of it. But that’s begun to change, and Apple, with very little in the way of a business sales force, seems to be instigating that change.

I remember a few years back when I was working in a corporate environment that supplied BlackBerry, we weren’t allowed to use our iPhones even if we purchased them ourselves. RIM had a stronghold when it came to corporate clients. Now those same companies are looking for alternatives, testing iOS and Android and more often than not choosing iPhones and iPads.

Predictability and security are still big for government and enterprise.

Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10 devices will certainly have something to say about that in the future, but with almost all of the Fortune 500 companies already testing or deploying iOS devices in one manner or another, momentum is certainly in Apple’s favor right now.

When you look around the desks and conference tables at your place of business, what devices are you seeing most often?

Source: The Loop

Halliburton, one of the world’s largest energy corporations with over 70,000 employees worldwide, will be making a huge move away from BlackBerrys, and converting their employees to iPhones. For those still not convinced about the iPhone and iOS’ place in enterprise, this decision comes after Halliburton did significant research into both Apple’s platform and the Android, and decided Apple was the way to go.

BlackBerry is undoubtedly still the best communications device on the planet, but increasingly users and businesses alike are requiring more than just communication — they’re requiring mobile computing platforms.

To give a sense of the breadth of this change, Energy Services Group (ESG) is Halliburton’s largest business segment and provides technical products and services for petroleum and natural gas exploration and production. Up until now Halliburton employees had been given BlackBerries. If they wanted an alternative the only option they were given were Windows Phones. BlackBerry have been part of Halliburton’s IT policy for over 10 years. Right now Halliburton supplies about 4,500 of their employees with BlackBerry smartphones.

BlackBerrys have long been the staple of enterprise — they performed well and lived up to what enterprise customers have come to expect. The iPhone and iPad have made great strides over the past several iterations of iOS in order to provide better support for business users. And it’s paying off.

More and more companies are starting to support iOS in enterprise on a regular basis, while others are letting the users choose with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) initiatives.

Apple recently announced that pretty much all of the Fortune 500 were testing or deploying iOS devices within their organizations, which is startling considering how slowly enterprise usually is when it comes to responding to new technologies.

Even RIM has made moves to provide BlackBerry enterprise support for iPhone and iPad. Now we just need RIM’s new CEO to provide full on BlackBerry Connect functionality before other companies, like Good ride iPhone and iPad success to an insurmountable lead.

Are you using your iPhone in the enterprise? Let us know how wide iPhone and iPad deployment is where you work, and how they’re affecting productivity.

Source: AppleInsider

Asymco has compiled the profits, revenues, and unit shipments among all of the major manufacturers, and as you can see in this graph, Apple is still kicking everyone’s behind when it comes to smartphone profit share. Though the revenue share gap with Samsung is a bit smaller than the one for profits, Apple is still decidedly in the lead. After all is said and done, Apple is claiming 75% of the profit share, 40% of the revenue share, and 9% of the unit share of the mobile market (though that last number might be closer to 8%).

After Apple’s monstrously successful first quarter it’s no surprise that Apple is profitable. Heck, it’s no surprise they’re the undisputed God-King of the mobile industry, and they probably have a giant pool of money where employees can get all Scrooge McDuck on lunch breaks. However, the fact that Apple is pulling in so much money out of the entire industry really illustrates just how successful the iPhone has become. Of course, if you ask any Android fan, financial success doesn’t necessarily equate to product quality (and I’m inclined to agree with them), but you can’t argue with the results. There’s another great graph here that shows just how much the iPhone’s market share has increased on multiple fronts since launch in 2007.

With this much of a lead, how much does Apple really have to worry about? Will it suffer death by a thousand cuts from a bajillionty Android devices? Or will Windows Phone eventually come into its own and give iPhone a run for its money? Looking at this graphs, it’s hard to imagine either of these things happening. The best the competition can reasonably hope for now is to get comfortable in second place. Let’s put it this way — what would the competition have to do to win you over?

Source: Asymco

It’s actually happened — after bringing BlackBerry from pager to the top of the smartphone world only to see the iPhone and Android all but demolish their share, RIM today announced founders and co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie would be stepping down, and current operations head Thorsten Heins would be taking over as the new, unified CEO.

And one of his first official acts was to call our own Kevin Michaluk, founder of CrackBerry.com and #1 BlackBerry fanboy.

It’s hard to express just how big of a change this is for RIM. Let’s put it this way. Since launching CrackBerry.com in 2007 I have been wanting to get an interview with RIM’s CEOs. It has never happened. With Thorsten, it happened in literally minutes, and it wasn’t even me who asked for it to happen, but rather it was the CEO wanting to do it. I have nothing but the utmost respect for Mike and Jim and all they have done for BlackBerry over the years, but it’s clear that for BlackBerry to thrive again RIM needed a shake up, and I think Thorsten is going to do an amazing job leading the way.

With their marketshare continuing to slide, lackluster PlayBook sales, and QNX/BlackBerry 10 superphones still months away, it’s clear RIM needed to do something to reassure investors and enthusiasts alike. Here’s wishing Heins every success. Strong BlackBerry competition is good for everyone. Bring it on.

Source: CrackBerry.com

ChangeWave has a new survey out indicating that 54 percent of near-term smartphone buyers are planning on picking up the iPhone 4S over competing devices.

The late December survey looked at smart phone demand trends going forward, and finds Apple iPhone demand remains incredibly strong more than two months after the iPhone 4S release. Among respondents planning to buy a new smart phone in the next 90 days, better than one-in-two (54%; down 11-pts) say they’ll get an iPhone. Apple has never dominated smart phone planned buying to this extent more than two months after a major new release.

The survey, conducted in late December, studied 4,000 North American consumers with the results suggesting huge demand for the iPhone 4S even with it being more than two months old. Based on ChangeWave’s history, this also advocates the iPhone 4S as being Apple’s most popular release, as they’ve never covered the spread of planned smartphone purchasers this far after a major iPhone release.

In addition, Apple continues to lead smartphone satisfaction rates with 76 percent being very satisfied with their iPhone, compared to the nearest competition coming in at around 47 percent with Samsung.

Source: ChangeWave

According to a group of hackers in India, Apple, RIM and Nokia could be providing backdoor access to the Indian government, allowing them to monitor user data. The Indian government might be insisting on this access in exchange for allowing Apple and other smartphone vendors to offer their products and services in India, they have allegedly given them access to cellular communications. The agreement appears to be called RINOA (Rim, Nokia, Apple).

Several documents have been found referring to RINOA and how information was gathered from some of these government bodies. I know India is a large country but I’m not quite sure what is more damaging — not having a presence there at all or betraying your customers’ trust by allowing the local government to access data without their knowledge.

Source: ZDNet

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Ashley, Georgia, and special guest Kim talk RIM execs on a plane, Penny Arcade vs. bad marketers, the dangers of sex chat gone public, and games and accessories for iPad. This is Girls Gone Gadgets!

Grab Bag

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The new ban is an extension of the Argentina Ministry Industry’s March 2011 decision to eliminate the automatic import license of certain smartphones, forcing Apple and RIM to wait 60 to 180 days for Customs Authority approval to sell their devices.

Source: Apple Insider

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Chris, Ed, and Rene talk Apple value, RIM’s latest results, the uptake of Android, webOS going open source, Microsoft’s mobile chances, HTML5 platforms, the future of LTE, and the year ahead. This is Mobile Nations Stock Talk.

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RIM today announced BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, something they’re touting as “The Next Generation Enterprise Mobility Solution for BlackBerry, Android and iOS Smartphones and Tablets”. Really. Says so right here:

We are pleased to introduce BlackBerry Mobile Fusion – RIM’s next generation enterprise mobility solution – to make it easier for our business and government customers to manage the diversity of devices in their operations today,” said Alan Panezic, Vice President, Enterprise Product Management and Marketing at Research In Motion. “BlackBerry Mobile Fusion brings together our industry-leading BlackBerry Enterprise Server technology for BlackBerry devices with mobile device management capabilities for iOS and Android devices, all managed from one web-based console. It provides the necessary management capabilities to allow IT departments to confidently oversee the use of both company-owned and employee-owned mobile devices within their organizations.

While RIM is still struggling to get PlayBook to 2.0 and BBX superphones into the hungry hands of the CrackBerry Nation, this could be an interesting way to hedge against Enterprise BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trends that skew users away from traditional BlackBerry’s and towards iPhones.

Still, consumers would probably still prefer BBM for iOS…

Source: CrackBerry.com

Apple had their big Let’s talk iPhone event a couple of weeks ago and have now released [iOS 5](http://www.imore.com/iOS 5) and iCloud, and launched the iPhone 4S — now it’s RIM’s and Google’s turn.

Kevin and Adam from CrackBerry.com are live at BlackBerry Dev Con 2011, hoping to get their keyboard-crunching hands on a next generation BBX (QNX) based superphone and Playbook OS 2.0.

• Full BlackBerry Dev Con 2011 coverage

Phil and the gang over at Android Central are waiting for the big Ice Cream Sandwich and Galaxy Nexus (Prime) reveal from Google and Samsung tonight.

• Full Ice Cream Sandwich and Galaxy Nexus coverage

Keep an eye on both, then run — don’t walk! — back here and tell us how you think they compete with iOS 5, iCloud, and iPhone 4S. Did they raise the stakes?

A new UBS survey suggests Apple currently holds the top spot in smartphone retention rates by a long shot, holding a strong 89% rating over the nearest hardware competitor HTC at just 39%. Apple also had no trouble beating out the Android platform in general, although being a platform gave Google an added “stickiness” of around 60% retention among consumers.

Despite Android holding a higher rate than most other hardware manufacturers in this space, roughly 31 percent of current Android device owners are planning on jumping ship to the iPhone as their next purchase.

UBS also noted that the app catalog for platforms has had limited importance in the determining factors involved when consumers choose their next smartphone. That really says something about the iPhone 4 specifically, of which the hardware is over a year old yet still continues to beat out the newest, cutting edge smarthphone offerings.

[AppleInsider]

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Phil, Kevin, and Rene beta test a new video rig, survive technical problems, and talk RIM results, BlackBerry striking back, next generation Android phones, Windows 8 tablets, and a tale of two iPhones. This is Mobile Nations!

Agenda

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Thanks to the Smartphone Experts network of store for sponsoring this podcast, and to our fantastic live chat members for keeping us honest and making us smart!

BlackBerry maker RIM is opposing Apple’s trademark filing for WebKit, the open source browser rendering engine they developer based on Linux Konquerer/KHTML. WebKit has become the most popular browser engine in Mobile, powering iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad Safari, as well as BlackBerry’s Torch Mobile, Google’s Android, Palm’s webOS, and other browsers — as well as Apple Safari and Google Chrome on PCs. So popular, in fact, that RIM couldn’t wait to advertise they’d finally joined the modern internet by getting a WebKit browser.

Could that be part of the reason for the opposition, fears that Apple would try to restrict use of the trademark? Even CrackBerry.com doesn’t seem to know for sure.

Now in what appears to be an odd move (as far as timing is concerned), RIM filed their opposition to the application on August 15th 2011, with an extension granted 3 days later that allows them to officially submit their Statement of Opposition by November 22nd of this year. This claim can be found on the Canadian Intellectual Property Office website. Right now we can only speculate as to why this is happening now. Torch Mobile was one of many developers that were widely known to further develop WebKit. Remember what happened in August of 2009? Well, RIM acquired Torch Mobile, which then enabled them to include a WebKit-based browser on their BlackBerry devices. It will be quite interesting to see what kind of opposition RIM can offer- hopefully it will carry a little more weight than the recorded “Used in CANADA since at least as early as November 2003.” We’ll be sure to report more on this claim as it develops.

Ditto.

[CrackBerry.com]

Jonathan Geller, the Boy Genius, reports that Mike Lazardis was convinced of BlackBerry’s superior design and feature focus, long after the proverbial ship hit the not-so-proverbial iceberg:

Picture yourself sitting in an executive briefing at Research In Motion. You’d hear Mike Lazaridis unequivocally state time and time again that BlackBerry smartphones would never have MP3 players or cameras in them because it just does not make sense when the company’s primary customers were the government and enterprise. “BlackBerry smartphones will never have cameras because the No. 1 customer of ours is the U.S. government,” Mike Lazaridis would say in meetings. “There will never be a BlackBerry with an MP3 player or camera.”

Compare and contrast with Steve Jobs who put sneaker to stage at WWDC 2007 and showed off the original iPhone, a device that eschewed the design of the market leaders of the day, RIM’s BlackBerry and Palm’s Treo line. Unlike almost everyone else at the time, the iPhone dropped the keyboard, and replaced the stylus with the finger and multitouch. RIM?

“When you hear Mike talk about the latest and greatest, it’s been the same thing for ten years: security, battery performance, and network performance. RIM has positioned battery life and network performance for years. People are not concerned with iPhone battery life,” one source told me. Network performance, to Mike, trumps any innovation a device like the iPhone offers. “Mike is convinced people won’t buy an iPhone because battery life isn’t as good as a BlackBerry,” a different source said. Mike apparently is in disbelief that people can use over 15GB of data on their iPhone and Android devices, and he feels that people will buy smartphones based on network efficiency, even though carriers with tiered data plans in developed markets love customers who use monstrous amounts of data.

Never mind that they eventually, reluctantly backtracked and shipped camera totting, MP3 rocking, Bold-ly branded, type-on-glass BlackBerrys of their own. They failed to see where the market was going, dismissed where it was, and seemed to only angrily react to where it had long since been. (And whether or not management has come to the personal realizations necessary to turn that around remains unclear.)

To their credit, Google rapidly switched Android from a BlackBerry clone to an iPhone clone. To their detriment, RIM just kept making BlackBerrys, the same ones that owned the world in 2006, long after the world had moved post-2007.

Steve Jobs, meanwhile, probably isn’t waiting on anyone to obsolete the iPhone. He likely has all of Apple working on doing that themselves.

[BGR]

Nixon went to China. Reagan went to the Berlin Wall. Moses went to pharaoh. Now our own Mr. Michaluk has gone to Waterloo, the “Cupertino of Canada” as he calls it — the BlackBerry mothership. Ostensibly there for the RIM shareholder event — and perhaps to break, Mission Impossible style, into their labs and liberate a BlackBerry Bold 9900 — odds are Kev will also see the first signs of whether or not BlackBerry is headed towards RIMAGEDDON, or if it’s finally time for the RIMPIRE to strike back. (If so, he’s already got the t-shirt!)

Firebrand that he is, the students of Waterloo are already gathering around him, ready to rise up against the Android onslaught they feel threatens their beloved BlackBerrys. But here’s the thing — with iOS 5 on the horizon, and the iPhone 5 (and maybe even a second new iPad) heading their way like a freight-train in a couple months, what can RIM pull out of their PlayBook just to keep pace, never mind catch up?

Keep your eyes peeled to CrackBerry.com for a week of thrills, chills, and device spills, and we’ll see just what 3 COOs, 2 CEOs, and the world’s number one fanboy can do to breathe new life into the BlackBerry brand.

[CrackBerry.com]

According to Reuters, a consortium of tech companies, including Apple, BlackBerry maker RIM, Microsoft, EMC, Sony, and Ericsson have won the auction to acquire Nortel’s mammoth $4.5 billion dollar mobile patent portfolio. How much of that will come from Apple is currently unknown, though RIM is on the line for $770 million and Ericsson, $340 million. The companies are expected to pool the patents and use them both to protect against patent lawsuits and, of course, launch lawsuits of their own.

The patents cover “wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, Internet and semiconductor technologies”, with the LTE 4G patents expected to become extremely valuable as networks and devices are upgraded to that standard.

If you noticed one major mobile company conspicuous by their absence, you’re not alone. Google appears not to have been part of the winning bid, which is perplexing since, as a new entrant in mobile, they have one of the weakest existing patent portfolios.

“Google lost an unprecedented opportunity to acquire a major bargaining chip that would strengthen it at the mobile industry’s intellectual property negotiating table.”

“I’m afraid it won’t get a similar opportunity in quantitative and qualitative terms any time soon.”

Android manufacturers are already paying Microsoft licensing fees for Android, and are being sued by Apple. Android developers are being sued by Lodsys and while Apple has filed to intervene in the iOS-related lawsuits, Google is still missing in action.

What that means going forward is hard to say, but manufacturer and developer confidence is part of the currency of any platform and it needs to be invested in and protected.

[Reuters]

When Apple next announces their financial results, they should have close to $70 billion in the bank, which according to Asymco will be enough to buy all their manufacturing competitors with the exception of Samsung. That includes HTC, Nokia, RIM, LG, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson. (Google and Microsoft aren’t manufacturers, they’re platform vendors.)

The more remarkable thing is that as market values of phone vendors continue to decline, Apple’s cash will continue to grow dramatically. Indeed, a time may soon come when Apple’s cash will be worth more than the entire phone industry.

I’ll say it again — North Carolina isn’t a data center, it’s a money bin.

[Asymco]

During yesterday’s Senate subcommittee hearing on location tracking, Apple was asked why they haven’t pulled a number of DUI checkpoint apps like Fuzz Alert which notify users of nearby law-enforcement checkpoints.

Four U.S. Senators, including Sen. Charles Schumer, sent letters to Apple, Google and Research in Motion in March requesting that the companies remove apps notifying users of police sobriety checkpoints their respective application stores. Schumer raised the issue again at Tuesday’s Senate subcommittee hearing on privacy.

VP of Software Technology Guy Tribble told senators that Apple is currently looking into the legality of these apps and would remove them from the App Store if they were deemed illegal. He also commented that these apps are only “publishing data that’s actually first published by the police department”, to which Senator Charles Schumer responded claiming he was unaware of any police departments who published this information in realtime.

Apparently these DUI checkpoint apps have continued to anger senators after watching RIM pull similar apps from their App World while Apple and Google make sure it’s actually warranted before pulling the trigger.

What’s your take? Do you think DUI checkpoint apps should be allowed to remain in the App Store or should Apple get rid of them? Sound off in the comments below!

[AppleInsider]

Research in Motion has announced BlackBerry Enterprise Server support for iOS — namely BES and RIM’s newly acquired ubitexx technology, will soon be able to provide management and security features for iPhone and iPad.

“The multi-platform BlackBerry Enterprise Solution is designed to address a growing market and respond to requests from enterprise customers who want a secure multi-platform device management solution from a company that already delivers the gold standard for enterprise mobility,” said Peter Devenyi, Vice President, Communications Platform Group at Research In Motion. “We recognize the opportunity to continue leading in the enterprise market by providing customers with a common platform to help simplify the management of a variety of mobile devices.”

iOS — and Android for that matter — won’t get all the fancy features BlackBerrys on BES enjoy, including the new BlackBerry Balance feature which silos work from personal content, but they’ll get enough to make it very interesting for IT departments.

Microsoft once faced the choice of keeping ActiveSync a competitive advantage for Windows Mobile, hurting their platform but helping their devices, or licensing ActiveSync and gaining infrastructure share at the expense of device share. They chose the latter and now ActiveSync is a key part of iOS, Mac OS X, GoogleSync, and many Android devices. RIM had chosen to keep their technology for themselves… up until now and it begs the question — if they’re going to let BES go cross-platform, could BBM follow?

And what if any increased competition will Apple’s new “iCloud” services offer in the enterprise space?

Full BlackBerry World PR after the break! Anyone counting the days until you can hook your iPhone or iPad into BES?

[CrackBerry]

RIM Announces Multi-Platform BlackBerry Enterprise Solution for Smartphones and Tablets Device Management Solution to Provide Security, Management, and Control of BlackBerry Devices, Plus Secure Management for Other Mobile Devices

Waterloo, ON – Research In Motion (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM, TSX: RIM) is announcing today plans for a multi-platform BlackBerry Enterprise Solution for managing and securing mobile devices for enterprises and government organizations. The solution will make available the market-leading management, security and controls of BlackBerry® Enterprise Server and BlackBerry® Enterprise Server Express for BlackBerry® devices plus, through RIM’s pending acquisition of ubitexx (creator of the ubi-Suite device management solution), the solution is expected to incorporate secure device management for Android and iOS based devices and tablets, all managed from a single web-based console.

“The multi-platform BlackBerry Enterprise Solution is designed to address a growing market and respond to requests from enterprise customers who want a secure multi-platform device management solution from a company that already delivers the gold standard for enterprise mobility,” said Peter Devenyi, Vice President, Communications Platform Group at Research In Motion. “We recognize the opportunity to continue leading in the enterprise market by providing customers with a common platform to help simplify the management of a variety of mobile devices.”

The single web-based console is being designed to provide IT administrators with a simple and efficient way to distribute software and manage policies, inventory, security and services for BlackBerry devices, as well as other mobile devices. IT administrators will be able to manage devices over-the-air, including activating devices, distributing software and applications, locking or wiping devices, enforcing and resetting device passwords, setting IT policies, and managing optional mobile applications for end users. Certain features are expected to remain exclusive to BlackBerry devices because such capabilities are built into the design of a device’s operating system. Examples include RIM’s industry-leading push technology, network and data usage efficiency, behind-the-firewall access to enterprise applications and systems, and many of the over 550 IT policies available through BlackBerry Enterprise Server. The recently-released BlackBerry® BalanceTM technology (see separate press release issued today), which supports the use of a single smartphone for both work and personal purposes without compromising the security of corporate content or the privacy of personal content, will also remain exclusive to BlackBerry devices.

Overall, as is largely understood in the enterprise market today, organizations can expect a range of security, manageability and controls depending on different device platform capabilities, with some devices further limited by the design of their operating system.

The multi-platform BlackBerry Enterprise Solution will be comprised of optional architectural components based on the configuration of an organization’s mobile deployment and their operational needs. Optional components will include BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express for BlackBerry devices, and a separate, secure device management server for Android and iOS devices (based on the foundation of ubi-Suite from ubitexx). It will be possible to deploy multiple components in a virtualized environment on a single server. Note: Registration for a product preview of the ubitexx solution is open today at www.ubitexx.com/preview. The multi-platform BlackBerry Enterprise Solution is planned for general availability later this year.

This year is turning out to be a big one for Apple. They recently passed Microsoft in net income earnings at $5.99 billion compared to $5.23 billion from Microsoft — mainly due to iOS devices like the iPad 2 and iPhone 4 driving sales and raising profit margins. The iPhone, iPad and iPod touch currently represent roughly 65% of overall sales for Apple, with the Verizon iPhone helping push demand even further as Android growth seems to be at a plateau.

Apple and Verizon had a very successful launch of the iPhone 4, which allowed the iPhone to expand its market share that was previously held back by its prolonged carrier exclusivity with AT&T [...] some of that growth came at the expense of Android operating system

Apple has now edged out HTC, Motorola and RIM as the third-largest smartphone maker in the US with a 14% share of sales, and they don’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. They just released the white iPhone 4 with reports of lines forming at Apple Stores — all for a device that’s already been on the market for 10 months, just in a different color. And with WWDC 2011 just around the corner for Apple to reveal iOS 5 to the masses, it seems they have nowhere to go but up from here.

But can the iPhone and iPad help sustain Apple’s growth given how determined the competition is at beating them in the smartphone and tablet markets? Sound off in the comments below!

[NPD, TechCrunch, Asymco]

BGR is reporting that BlackBerry maker RIM is looking into offering their BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service on other platforms, including the iPhone’s iOS.

As far as what Android and iOS users can look forward to, we’ve been told RIM will offer stripped down versions of the BBM experience BlackBerry owners know and love. That way, Android and iOS users can communicate with practically anyone who has a smartphone using BBM, but they might not be able to share photos, location, or videos (when RIM crosses that bridge). Users who want the full BlackBerry Messenger experience will still need a BlackBerry smartphone to get it. At the same time, RIM could own the entire messaging app category on every major smartphone OS platform and could potentially draw new users in because it has given them a taste of what BlackBerry Messenger is all about.

This is perhaps in response to apps like Kik, Whatsapp, and Facebook’s newly acquired Beluga offering very BBM-like apps on multiple platforms already, threatening to take over the space created by BlackBerry.

CrackBerry Kevin wrote an impassioned article about this several weeks ago and TiPb followed suit to see how popular the idea might be.

Android seems likely to get it first — um, why? — but iPhone could be on the roadmap.

Let RIM know whether you want it or not in the comments!

[BGR via CrackBerry]

Despite hundreds of thousands of iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps in the App Store, there are still some huge gaps, and major apps missing from the big players, including Apple themselves, Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and BlackBerry maker RIM. Some of the best known software on the market simply isn’t available for iOS. We’re hoping that changes in 2011, and after the break are the apps we’re hoping help make the change!

Apple: Files

I wrote at length about the need for a Finder app and amended it to a Files app in 2010 and now, at the beginning of 2011, it still tops my list for new iPhone and iPad apps I want from Apple. The reason is simple: document access on iOS as it currently stands is a nightmare. Apple’s own iDisk and third parties like DropBox and Box.net offer functionality that really should be native and as off-line as it is on. Again, the Photo app is the model. It preserves the sandbox by providing a central repository for files, and allows them to easily be opened via the Picker in any other app. What Photos does or images and video, Files should do for documents (and both should do via Safari so we can upload to the web, just saying…). Apple, make it happen.

Also want:

• iWork for iPhone. We have it for iPad, we’ve seen it teased for iPhone, it can’t possibly not be released in 2011.
• iPhoto for iOS. Create albums, move photos between them, do basic editing like crop and red-eye removal, and sync selected photos. We got iMovie for iPhone (and hopefully for iPad 2 soon), give us iPhoto.

Adobe: Flash Player

For years people have been angry at Apple for the lack of Flash support. And that’s ridiculous. It’s entirely Adobe’s fault for coasting on shoddy code for the last five years and only delivering a workable mobile Flash, in beta, near the end of 2010. But deliver it they have. It’s not great; I’ve disabled it on my Nexus One, but Adobe is working on it fearfully hard, and Google and Palm and RIM have chosen to support it (and in so doing slowed the switch to HTML 5. Jerks.), so it’ll get good enough. I don’t think Apple would allow a Flash plugin like on other devices — it’s a security risk and a user experience hit — but a Flash Player? Apple could work with Adobe to create a Flash app much like the YouTube app. A single app that, if it detects Flash video anywhere else on the device, especially Safari, it can take the handoff and play it in its own little, highly optimized, hopefully hardware accelerated, Flash-cookie-free sandbox. (Much how the QuickTime player handles H.264 video). It’s not 2007 anymore, and 2011 isn’t Flash free, so it’s time to bite the bullet on this one.

Also want:

• Creative Suite Viewer That I can view AutoCad docs on my iPhone and iPad and not Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign is a disgrace. Get on that, Adobe!

Google: Gmail

I don’t want to come off as greedy, since my mind is still blown by getting Google Voice and Google Latitude in 2010, but in 2011 I really, truly would like a native Gmail app that can handle things like attaching pictures and video (and Files.app, right Apple?). In a perfect world Google would have made Gmail more compatible with other mail systems, seamlessly handling labels as folders and stars as flags. In a perfect world, Apple would actually handle things like stars/flags in the built-in Mail app. But keeping with the pragmatic theme of this post, and acknowledging how annoying separate email apps are on Android, I’d still like a native Gmail app for iPhone and iPad. If it gets decent push notifications built in, like the Google Mobile app, I won’t even have to worry about iOS not having a “set default mail client” setting.

Also want:

• Google Navigation When Android got this for free we heard rumors iPhone would be getting it as well. Then not. Then again. Then not again. Google, just do it.

(If you could somehow get Apple to add those newfangled vector graphics to the Google-powered, built-in Maps app, we’d appreciate that as well).

Microsoft: Office

Documents to Go is great. QuickOffice is grand. Even Google Docs is usable over the web. But Microsoft, baby (can I call you baby?) none of those are Office. Sure, Office is a beast of a suite, as frustrating as it is fantastic, but it’s the standard and it belongs on iPhone and iPad. You’ve built it for Windows Mobile. You’ve built it for Windows Phone. You’ve even built it for Mac and are working on it for Nokia. You know how to do Apple and you know how to do mobile, so it’s time to do Mobile Apple. Sure you lose a differentiator for your own OS, but you had no problem doing that for Exchange, did you? Microsoft, stop teasing us and make 2011 the year of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for iPhone and iPad. Okay?

Also want:

• Outlook ActiveSync is okay but for hard core Exchange users a native Outlook app is every bit as important as a native Gmail app is to Googlers. Let’s get that sync’ed.
• Zune Pass Apple hasn’t done subscription music yet but they have sold a gazillion iOS devices. Get those users on Zune Pass before iTunes.com launches.

RIM: BlackBerry Connect

CrackBerry Kevin already laid out why, in a post Kik-world, RIM would be better off owning the cross-platform instant messaging space than sitting on the sidelines while some third-party service breaks the crack off from the berry, so I’ll just echo his sentiments here. BlackBerry Connect used to bring BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) to other devices; it could do the same again. Do I expect to see Big Mike bound across a WWDC stage any time soon? No, but Apple did announce a Microsoft ActiveSync license at the iOS 2 event in 2008, so announcing a BlackBerry Connect license in 2011 wouldn’t be unprecedented.

Also want:

• BrickBreaker. Kidding! Give me BBM and I’m good.

Your picks?

Those the top 5 big name apps I’d like to see come to iPhone and iPad in 2011. What are yours? (Besides Facebook for iPad, of course!)

Over the weekend a former RIM employee stated that when Apple unveiled the first iphone at Macworld 2007, RIM had several emergency meetings which culminated with the BlackBerry maker deciding Apple was lying — the iPhone wasn’t possible. In RIM’s opinion a phone with all of the 2007 iPhone’s functionality and large touchscreen could not be used without being near a power supply at all times. Shacknews poster, Kentor, heard from his former colleagues:

The iPhone couldn’t do what [Apple was] demonstrating without an insanely power hungry processor, it must have terrible battery life. Imagine their surprise [at RIM] when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it.

RIM’s “Apple Killer”, released as the BlackBerry Storm in 2008, was their response, but it wasn’t until 2010′s Torch that they began to close the multitouch and web browser gap. 2011 will see the introduction of their next generation platform, the QNX-powered BlackBerry Playbook, though in tablet form, not smartphone.

Could RIM, Microsoft, and Palm really have been in denial about the iPhone in 2007? Could Apple be in denial about any competitors today?

[ Electronista ]

Why is RIM running away from BlackBerry in order to try and keep up, never mind compete, with Apple’s iPad, never mind iPhone? Georgia, Chad, Ally and I spoke about this at length on last Sunday’s iPad Live! podcast but given RIM’s financial results and accompanying comments this week, I think it’s appropriate to get some text behind it now as well.

Note: I’m not going to use direct quotes in this piece. I need a translator to understand RIM’s co-CEO’s, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. They don’t speak any language I’m familiar with, not English, French, Klingon, or marketing. There’s no app for translating what they’re saying lately, and certainly no web service (zing! reserved, as you’ll see later). I’ve read what CrackBerry Kevin and Sascha Segan, geniuses both, have managed to extract but I’m still baffled. Or RIM is still baffling. I think it’s the latter.

End of life equations

BlackBerry is the ultimate communications device for those whose hierarchy of needs are founded on communication. While competition from third-party IM apps is growing, for those who need instant, addictive, information exchange and the best tiny keyboard in the business, BlackBerry still has no equal. It also has no future. It grew from a pager and has been bound and gagged and kept from growing further by the increasingly outdated, increasingly restrictive Java2ME-based architecture. Push-wise their technology is fantastic. Hardware-wise their build quality is among the best. OS-wise they’re dead in the water.

Apple faced this with OS 9, bought NeXT, and now we have Mac OS X and iOS. Microsoft faced this with Windows ME and Windows Mobile 6.5, merged NT on the desktop and re-architected on the mobile side, and now we have Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7. Palm faced this with Palm OS and the Treo, went back to the drawing board and came out with webOS and the Pre. Google began making a BlackBerry clone, took one look at iPhone, switched gears, and now we have Android 2.3 Gingerbread (and Chrome OS, perhaps after seeing webOS).

In each of those cases a company whose core technology was at its end of life brought in or rebuilt a new foundation to take them forward another step with their core products. Apple didn’t buy NeXT and launch a gaming console. Microsoft didn’t bring in NT and launch a walkman competitor. Palm didn’t build webOS to get into the printer game (listening HP?), and Google — well, Android was additive for them; their advertising business is doing just fine thanks. RIM has done the first part, they’ve bought QNX but instead of using that to build a 14 million a quarter selling iPhone competitor, to make a better BlackBerry… they’re deploying it on a tablet to take on the 5 million or so a quarter selling iPad. Instead of using it to regroup, retrench, and relaunch, they’re using it to branch out and buy time. And they’re making incredible compromises to do it.

Webapps for that

First, RIM is playing the HTML5 card for developers, the one Palm played with webOS 2 years ago. Now HTML5 is great for webapps and maybe webapps are the future but we’re nowhere near that future yet. RIM’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie suggested Apple’s App Store-class apps are only necessary on iOS because iOS can’t handle the web as well as the PlayBook (a product which does not yet exist for consumers). He said “you don’t need an app for the web”.

Except of course you do. The browser is an app, a generic frame app that’s good for most things but not great for all things. My Mac and Windows PCs can all handle the web well — better than any PlayBook real or imagined — and I like many others still use native apps all the time. (MailPlane does things with Gmail that Gmail.com stuck in a browser just can’t do.) Google, the king of webapps, makes all sorts of native apps because they — being the king — they understand the internet pipes better feed native apps at this point than the browser. (Witness the exception that proves the rule — Chrome OS.)

It’s become a cliche but when Steve Jobs announced sweet, sweet webapps as the original iPhone 2G SDK back in 2007 he was met — rightfully so — with the jeers and condemnation of the developer community. Now it’s 2010 and mobile apps have proven so successful that web browsing is actually down on iOS. People like using apps better than the web on mobile because internet-enabled apps currently work better than the web browser on mobile devices.

Destiny dependent

Second, RIM is using Adobe’s AIR as stop-gap SDK and Flash as a presentation layer. While that’s great news for Flash developers because it allows for the mythical “code once, run anywhere” travesty that’s tortured users for over a decade, it’s the same trap RIM was was in with Java2ME on BlackBerry OS. It’s an intermediary, code-intepreting layer based on outdated, historically poorly performing technology that RIM can’t control. If AIR and Flash languish and fall far behind the curve, as Adobe has let them do in the past, or if Adobe takes AIR and Flash in a direction that’s at conflict with RIM and their users, what can RIM do? They’re once again not masters of their own destiny, something Apple, Microsoft, Palm, and Google decidedly are.

Forgetting phones

Third, QNX and the AIR layers don’t seem to be able to run on phones, which are RIM’s core business. It demands too much processing power and consumes too much battery life to actually power the products RIM sells. In 2010. iOS has been powering iPhones well since 2007. Android, UI challenged as it was, worked fine on the 2008 G1. webOS did wonders with the Pre in 2009. Microsoft, who had their head in the sand (to put it politely) for years still managed to launch a new OS that ran on phones by 2010. That it took one or two years post-iPhone is understandable. That it took three is perplexing. That RIM will take four, maybe five is as flabbergasting as the PlayBook itself.

The BlackBerry inexperience

Fourth, given RIM doesn’t have a native development environment of their own or a next-generation OS that can run on current generation phones, the tablet-style PlayBook might seem like a smart, place-holder play to keep the BlackBerry faithful, well, faithful.

Except the PlayBook is a BlackBerry in name only. As I mentioned at the beginning, BlackBerry, OS-challenged as it is, still leads the industry in enterprise push, messaging, and overall communications. Those are their core strengths and competencies. Say what you want about the BlackBerry OS user experience — and I’ve said plenty, as have lots of BlackBerry lovers — tens of millions of people use it everyday. And the PlayBook is nothing like it. The PlayBook, which RIM can only hope to sell to Enterprise and BlackBerry addicts, has a user experience completely alien to BlackBerry. It’s interactivity is all Apple iPad and its UI metaphors are all taken from Palm’s webOS.

Apple was criticized for not doing something more original with the iPad, of simply scaling up the iPhone. But that’s exactly right and Apple said why at the introduction — there were already tens of millions of users who knew how to use iPhone and would instantly know and feel comfortable using iPad.

How many BlackBerry users will instantly know PlayBook based on their BlackBerry use? BlackBerry users are BlackBerry users — if they’re still BlackBerry users — because they don’t want iPhones or Pres. They want BlackBerrys. If they wanted iOS they’d have already gotten iPads and if they want webOS they’ll wait for a PalmPad.

PlayBooks sound like they’re for play. BlackBerrys are known, trusted, and loved for work. Even the name shows the utter disconnect at the core of this device, and at the core of RIM.

Love is blind

Like Ballmer at Microsoft and Colligan at Palm, Lazaridis and Balsillie at RIM probably thought they were so entrenched, so far advanced, that no upstart like Apple (or Google) could challenge them. By the time they did start responding with their “Apple killer”, the BlackBerry Storm in 2008, the negative reaction should have shown them that what they were doing wasn’t and wouldn’t work, that they needed to think different and leap ahead.

I’ve always thought Android and Windows Mobile suffered because the CEOs of Google and Microsoft didn’t care about them. They’re just another screen that needs to be owned. Steve Jobs loves the iPhone. Jon Rubenstein went to Palm to make the Pre. Lazaridis and Balsillie obviously love the BlackBerry (maybe even more than Kevin). But the love that can launch and platform can also blind a company to the platform’s decline. Founders have a tough time recognizing when change is needed. Witness the BlackBerry Torch.

It’s taken RIM over three years to recognize the trouble they’re in and since they wasted so much time they’ve now become desperate not to waste any more. That’s why Balsillie is firing away at Apple and that’s why Lazardis came off so poorly when interviewed by Mossberg and Swisher at the Dive into Mobile conference. Unable to show off anything but the PlayBook prototype, unable to concede the failure of the Torch and risk the Osborn effect on existing BlackBerry OS devices, and unable to tell a story about smartphones that can’t be told until next year at the earliest, he’d have been better off not doing the interview at all.

Why is RIM running away from BlackBerry to battle Apple?

RIM doesn’t have Windows and Office, or online advertising to keep them afloat while they (re)invent their smartphones. They’re like Apple when Jobs came back or Palm when Rubenstein came in, only it’s not then it’s now and the space is accelerating faster and the climate is more competitive than ever before.

That’s why RIM has to make so many compromises, playing the HTML5 card, getting in bed with Adobe, going with a tablet instead of a phone, and creating an alien experience, and why they’ve had to run away from the Blackberry to battle Apple — because today’s BlackBerry has proven can’t battle Apple and tomorrow’s BlackBerry is still way more than a day way.

They waited too long and now they’ve bet on the PlayBook to to keep them going until chips and batteries let them re-enter the smartphone game. It’s a huge gamble and not one that’s guaranteed to pay off .

According to the latest data from The Nielsen Company, Apple’s iOS for iPhone and RIM’s BBOS for BlackBerry are neck-and-neck for total U.S. smartphone operating system market share sitting at 27 percent each. Android OS, which powered a bunch of phones from Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and others, is hot on their heels now sitting at 22 percent of total U.S. Market share.

Among users planning to get a new smartphone, current smartphone owners showed a preference for the Apple iPhone (35 percent), while 28 percent of both smartphone and featurephone planned smartphone upgraders indicated they wanted a device with an Android operating system as their next mobile phone.

Featurephone owners planning to get a smartphone are less likely to have made up their mind about the OS they will choose: 25 percent were “not sure” what their next desired OS might be compared to 13 percent of smartphone owners. Those over 55 were markedly less certain than younger mobile users, with 27.8 saying they weren’t sure what kind of device they wanted next, compared to 12.2 percent of those 18 to 24.

Apple’s iPhone and devices with the Android operating system were the “most desired” among likely smartphone upgraders, with Apple showing a slight lead among those age 55+ , 18 to 24, and 25 to 34.

Women planning to get a smartphone are more likely to want an iPhone as their next device, with slightly more males preferring Android.

We know if you’re reading TiPb you probably like the iPhone but what’s your opinion on the survey, do the results match what you’re seeing with your friends and colleagues?

[ Nielsen via Engadget ]

According to Gfk’s recent survey, iPhone users remain the most satisfied and claim they’ll stick with their iPhones instead of jumping ship to another smartphone platform. Out of all the users surveyed, only 25% of them plan to stay loyal to their current smartphone platform while 56% of those surveyed plan to keep their options open when buying their next smartphone. Out of those users who say they’re staying loyal to their current smartphone platform, Apple users made up 59% of that number. Microsoft phones showed the lowest user loyalty base at only 21%. RIM, Nokia, and Android fell between the 24-35% ranges.

Lead analyst, Ryan Garner had this to say about smartphone loyalty -

“Loyalty with a handset is a lot more complicated these days in that people buy into experiences at the high-end level,”…”If a phone doesn’t do what it says it will do or what the owner hopes it will do, the maker will lose loyalty.”

Most smartphone users rely on owning a smartphone that’s not only user friendly but reliable and stable. Those are the types of things Apple has managed to nail. Not to mention Apple having the most extensive choice of applications available via their App Store. These things all combined could be what keep Apple users loyal. I know a huge factor for me is the amount of money I’ve already invested in the platform through purchasing applications. If I switched platforms, those applications would be rendered useless to me. So to all the members of the TiPb community, what is it that keeps you loyal to the iOS platform?

[via Reuters]

The Wallstreet Journal is reporting that Apple has been poaching sales staff from RIM in order to better compete in the enterprise sector with the iPhone. Some of these converts have been high-ranking members of RIM’s staff.

In the past 18 months, at least five members of RIM’s enterprise-sales team have left the company to join Apple. This includes Geoff Perfect, who served as Head of Strategic Sales at RIM for nearly five years before leaving in April 2009 and joining Apple a month later as Head of Enterprise iPhone Sales, according to LinkedIn, the online networking service for professionals.

In addition, Joe Bartlett, Steve Marshall and Peter Decker from RIM all transferred over to Apple earlier this year.

Although Apple has been making recent headway with respect to the enterprise sector, they’re clearly on a mission to step things up even more. But will taking staff from competition be enough?

[WSJ]

Today RIM posted a video of their PlayBook vs. Apple’s iPad to demonstrate the browsing ability and speeds the PlayBook has to offer. The results are interesting but seemingly skewed as well.

There were three different tests RIM used to compare the browers on the two devices. They went head-to-head in raw web-site rendering, Acid3, and Java.

To start out they are both directed towards UEFA.com and then CBS.com. The PlayBook clearly finishing loading and rendering both web-sites faster than the iPad. The CBS site however has flash content on it and obviously will not fully load on the iPad.

On the Acid3 test both devices managed to score 100/100 but RIM boasts that the iPad has an HTML error during this test.

The funny thing about these tests are that the iPad is over 6 months old compared to the PlayBook not even being out yet for sale. Also an interesting note is the fact the PlayBook is running on QNX which is Adobe Flash and AIR programs so naturally it will run flash sites as compared to the iPad not having flash capabilities.

It will be far more interesting to see the 2nd generation iPad pitted versus the PlayBook as the two devices will be on a much more level playing field. Do you think this test has any validity given the fact the iPad is real and the PlayBook is still technically vaporware or do you think this is Apple’s chance to step up their game and blow the PlayBook out of the water?

Check out the video after the break!

[ CrackBerry ]

Did BlackBerry maker RIM just buy DataViz, maker of Documents to Go for iPhone and iPad (and other platform)? CrackBerry.com has multiple sources saying they did, and for about $50 million cash.

This might just be why Docs to Go has cancelled their webOS app before ever releasing it. What does this mean for the iPhone and iPad version? We don’t know yet. We like having it as an option and with 120 million iOS device on the market, there’s a lot of money on the table for DataViz… er… RIM if they want it.

Apple has made iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) for iPad already, and rumors persist of an iPhone version. There’s also QuickOffice, though with Microsoft have Office mobile, Google having Docs, and now RIM having Docs 2 Go, HP might just want to snatch them so they’re not the only platform without a home grown office suite.

UPDATE: DataViz has told Macworld that RIM bought some of their assets and hired the majority of their employees to work on the BlackBerry version of Documents to go. They have since updated Docs to Go for iOS, but we’ll see what kind of support that gets going forward.

Kevin has done his usual monstrous job of reviewing RIM’s new BlackBerry Torch 9800 and BlackBerry OS 6. It almost seems hard to remember but before Android came around almost every competitive article here on TiPb was BlackBerry focused, and with the Torch 9800 RIM is hoping to regain that mindshare. Will they succeed? It’s $199 and exclusive to AT&T — familiar ground to US iPhone users. Then they took the best-in-class BlackBerry Bold 9700 keyboard and melded it with the, well, not-so-classy Storm touchscreen, absent SurePress, and gave it a Palm Pre-style slider. Is it the best of all worlds, sum better than the parts?

We’ll have to see. The specs don’t impress but RIM’s genius has always been battery and push messaging, not duking it out with the Apple’s and Android’s of the world on hardware. Is BlackBerry OS 6 then enough to keep the BlackBerry faithful happy? To bring those who have strayed back to the fold? To convert iPhone 4 users? Check out CrackBerry.com’s review then come back here and let us know your thoughts…

BlackBerry maker RIM has registered BlackPad.com. No, I’m not making that up.

Research In Motion has recently taken over the domain name “BlackPad.com”. Now, despite what you think of the name itself, many folks are eluding to the fact that this URL could be one of many used for the rumored upcoming BlackBerry Tablet. Now while we here would like to believe that as well, the fact is Research In Motion owns over 4,000+ registered domain names already.

Phew. But so help me if this time next year we have iPad, PalmPad, and BlackPad — someone’s getting punched in the marketing department.

[MobileCrunch via CrackBerry.com]

While iPhone accounts for only 3% of handset market share by unit volume, Finacial Times reveals some Goldman’s numbers that show it’s set to capture a stunning 2X the profit share of Nokia, RIM, and Sony — combined.

And Goldman only showed those numbers by way of saying how enthusiastic they are about iPad doing the same thing to the PC industry. That sounds crazy, but iPad almost equalled Mac sales numbers this quarter and while its margins are less than the Mac’s, they’re higher than the razor-thin netbook and bargain basement PC industry where much of the volume rests.

TiPb’s been saying for a while Apple only cared about market share as much as it meant increased profit share. Looks like that’s working out for them.

[Financial Times via Business Insider Daring Fireball]

Co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have released an official response from RIM to Apple’s iPhone 4 press conference yesterday and Steve Jobs’ demonstration of a BlackBerry Bold 9700 suffering from similar signal-drop when death-gripped:

“Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation. RIM is a global leader in antenna design and has been successfully designing industry-leading wireless data products with efficient and effective radio performance for over 20 years. During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage. One thing is for certain, RIM’s customers don’t need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity. Apple clearly made certain design decisions and it should take responsibility for these decisions rather than trying to draw RIM and others into a situation that relates specifically to Apple.”

CrackBerry Kevin ran a death-grip poll on CrackBerry.com and as of this writing 14% had the death-grip, 72% did not, and 14% saw bars drop but come back.

When you factor in that we don’t know how RIM calculates bars, what dropping and coming back up means, and add the crucial crazy that makes iPhone 4 antenna issues so maddening — that not everyone has them, and the whole situation has snowballed into equal parts fact and frenzy,

Steve Jobs might have done better mentioning the industry-wide death-grip problem as a bullet point and saving the videos for the Q&A if he got called on it because there was every chance it could come back to bite him in the a$$. Likewise, RIM might have been better off not making a public statement, going with humor, and letting the public weigh in for a while because this can now come back and bite them in their own co-a$$es. Why?

Same reason Steve Jobs’ should never have sent that “hold different, get a case” email response. RIM has now cued everyone in a weak signal with a BlackBerry to rev up their YouTube engines and start asking for free cases. TiPb’s already getting email:

I reported last week to [that] I could do just what Apple said in their news conference today, it was nothing against Blackberry. I own a Bold 9700 and a iphone 4 and my statement was it was no big deal. This is my third Blackberry and third iPhone. For you to say you have avoided the problem is in fact a misstatement. Your phone does the same thing without a case on it that the iPhone does and it does no harm to either phone.

Now for the big question Since my Bold 9700 does what the iPhone does are you going to fix my phone because it must be defective.

Thank You, Dwight

TiPb’s own Alli Kazmucha, who’s in a weak signal area, has been able to reproduce the BlackBerry Bold 9700 death-grip as well:

I managed to replicate [the death-grip] on a 9700 in less than 15 seconds, and on a 3GS.

We have bad coverage around a certain area in town, and like Apple said, in poor coverage areas it can be replicated. People forget that key point.

I’ve replicated it on my iPhone 3GS as well.

Nokia and RIM have both chosen to respond. We’ll see if Samsung does as well, and if HTC and Motorola decide to get into “antennagate” as well. One thing’s for certain, Phil Nickinson from Android Central is right when he says any new phone that gets released from any company now is going to be under increased — and in some cases ridiculous — antenna scrutiny.

Good.

Video after the break.

Update: Boy Genius shows the BlackBerry 9650 on Verizon dropping to one bar when death-gripped in the second video after the break…

[CrackBerry.com]

Apple has shown off iPhone OS 4 and now BGR has the first preview of BlackBerry’s attempt to maintain their messaging advantage and close the web-browsing and UI gap with BBOS 6.0.

BlackBerry is an email and BBM monster, no two ways about it, but until now we’ve been able to make fun of their ridiculously bad web browser and their inability (like Android) to store a large amount of large-sized apps (infinite app potential, tiny little onboard storage). And their java-based OS.

The bad news (for BlackBerry-faithful, good news for Apple) is that RIM doesn’t seem to have fixed the core problems behind the increasingly outdated OS, but the good news (for BlackBerry, decidedly not for Apple) is that they seem to have done more than enough to make those problems theoretical and almost complete non-issues for current users. (There don’t seem to be enough large apps to make the app limit a problem yet either — we’ll see when they get their texture-mapped OpenGL games on).

The biggest news looks to be the WebKit browser, based on the same engine Apple uses for Safari, along with complete OS-wide support for rubber-banding, pinch to zoom, and other multitouch gestures and user interaction behaviors. (Which raises the interesting issue of whether or not Apple decides to sue RIM the way they’re using HTC, or if RIM has enough patents to hold them off, like Palm presumably does).

There’s a lot more as well, including swipe-able homescreens, RSS in email, etc.

So what do you think? Did either Apple or RIM take a new-OS leap over the other, or will 2010 be much like 2009 — two devices still top of their respective categories, keeping up but not taking the lead?

[BGR via CrackBerry]

When the first Apple Tablet (now iPad) rumors hit years ago, I made the little mock-up above as a way of having some fun with our buddies over at CrackBerry.com because there’s no way RIM would ever make BlackBerry Tablet, right?

Right?

This week I received a bunch of emails, phone calls and BBMs from industry contacts seemingly out of the blue that were all to the tune of So what’s this I hear about a BlackBerry Tablet?! It took a little digging to figure out where this BlackBerry Tablet stuff was coming from all of a sudden, but I got to the bottom of it. The source is from a research firm that specializes in component supply chain information – and the company sent out a brief report this week touting “RIMM to Launch Own Tablet in Late 2010″ which got the industry insiders buzzing. The text in the image above that was sent in to us is from that report, which states three sources have confirmed that RIM has placed an order with supplier Hon Hai for 8.9″ displays for use in a tablet.

So let’s pretend the StormPad is for real, what could they bring to the table to compete with Apple’s iPad? BES/BEX/BIS integration and a BBM client are obvious. Full hardware keyboad (BoldPad?) is a possibility. Anything else?

Research firm Crowd Science says that almost 40% of Blackberry owners they polled are willing to ditch their device for an iPhone when next they need new hardware, and 32% said they would jump ship to a Nexus One. That leaves a dismal 28% willing to rough it with their Blackberry.

“These results show that the restlessness of Blackberry users with their current brand hasn’t just been driven by the allure of iPhone,” said John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science. “Rather, Blackberry as a brand just isn’t garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems.”

There are two main reasons that Blackberry users are wanting to jump ship. For years Blackberry has always been known as a business tool and not a device someone would purchase for regular day to day use. RIM has made two attempts to embrace the growing full-screen form factor, the original Storm and Storm 2, but neither have managed to catch on.

Then there is the lack of apps available for Blackberry devices. 7 days prior to the survey, 67% of Blackberry users did not download a single free app and 91% did not purchase any apps. Now when compared to Apple hitting the one billion download mark last April or even the successful Android market, things don’t look that good for RIM in app terms.

Before this survey was completed I personally witnessed this trend take place while spending a lot of my time within our forums as well as the Android Central forums. I was astounded to see so many people abandoning their Blackberry for a Motorola Droid or iPhone 3GS.

When it comes to iPhone and Android users, 90% plan on being loyal with their current platform for their next phone upgrade.

How about you, did you come to the iPhone from a BlackBerry?

Hot on the heels of Verizon pretty much burying the Storm2 in favor of their latest lust, the Droid, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion used their annual developer conference to announce a few improvements for the platform. No, not word one about a next generation BlackBerry OS (hey, Palm spent their time in the desert to get to webOS, and Microsoft is still trudging towards Windows Mobile 7, so RIM needs to pick up that canteen and get to stepping!).

Still, Kevin and the CrackBerry crew have been tearing up the coverage, so check out their DevCon 2009 liveblog, and here are a couple more handy links to help you keep track of all the pushy news:

• Open GL ES Support, Java GUI Builder and Theme Studio to Help BB Developers Generate Dynamic User Experiences
• BlackBerry Application Platform Enhancements to Foster Rich Content Development
• RIM Unveils New Services Platform for BlackBerry Developers
• RIM and Adobe to Simplify Delivery Of Rich Content and Applications for BlackBerry Smartphones
• RIM Announces BlackBerry Academic Program

So, what do you think, in the face of iPhone 3.x, Android 2.0, and webOS 1.x, is RIM doing enough to keep the BlackBerry competitive?

BlackBerry Storm2, RIM’s second bite at Apple’s multi-touch, black slab iPhone form factor, is just about ready for prime time, and as always, our sibling site CrackBerry.com has the complete Storm2 review. Kevin sums it up thusly:

The Storm2 fixes many of the BlackBerry Storm’s outstanding issues and makes a ton of incremental improvements, all of which add up to something that feels noticeably better. In a way that never quite applied to the original Storm, the Storm2 could legitimately be called the flagship BlackBerry.

Sounds fair to us! The Storm too got little-to-no love for RIM, even from RIM, but Storm 2 sounds like it fixes a lot of what went wrong the first time around. The build quality is better and that monstrous single-button screen of carpal tunnel has been replaced by a more sophisticated, and natural-typing friendly multi-press technology.

Sure, it’s still got that trusty, rusty BlackBerry J2ME OS and middling browser (for now) but with App World this time around, and Verizon’s network power (hey, it’s better than their chart-making power!) behind it, those users whose venn-diagram intersects CDMA with BlackBerry with touchscreen might finally have a usable option.

Check out the full review, then let us know if Apple has anything to worry about, berry-wise…

While TiPb is still waiting for an iPhone 3.1.1 bug-fix update, not to mention iPhone 3.2 betas to start dropping, it looks like the competition is getting their OS on this week:

• Palm webOS 1.2 didn’t re-enable the iTunes hack (kudos Palm!) but did bring some nifty new features including Amazon MP3 downloads over 3G, the foundations for paid apps in the App Catalog, improved cut and paste, and much more.
• Android 1.6 Donut is expected to hit now’ish as well. A new Android Market is coming with it, but not multi-touch — at least not yet.
• BlackBerry OS 5.0 still doesn’t seem to be official, but is leaking out all over the place (would that Apple had such porous pipes!). It’ll make your Berry more Berry, though it doesn’t seem to integrate a real browser yet, despite what the commercials say…
• Windows Mobile 6.5 might be on 30 Windows Phones by 2010, though even Ballmer is finally admitting Windows Mobile 7 should have been out this year. Bottom-line, it’s a skin-job, and even though it looks hawt’er than a old style centurion, it’s still a machine on the inside.

What does that mean for the iPhone? Even if RIM looks locked in stasis, Palm and Microsoft appear to have up-hill battles re-gaining their traction, and Android is still slowly ramping up, Apple can’t afford to coast. A new OS from RIM, a Palm-style rebirth from Microsoft, and webOS and Android gaining marketshare are all possibilities. Many of these updates have interesting new features that hopefully Apple is looking at and working their own magic on.

So, let’s get on with the 3.2… and 4.0. March is only 6 months away, after all, and Apple needs something else to wow Smartphone buyers with at the next SDK event…

CrackBerry.com is reporting that RIM has acquired Torch Mobile, makers of the WebKit-powered Iris mobile browser.

Apple-backed WebKit is the open-source rendering engine behind Mac Safari and Google Chrome, which isn’t a very large segment, all told. Mobile WebKit, however, powers the portable world with the iPhone (and iPod touch) Safari, Google Android Chrome Lite, the Palm Pre/webOS browser, and some Nokia devices. Add BlackBerry to the mix and it pretty much looks like the mobile world vs. IE6 on Windows Phone — strangely inverse the desktop landscape where IE dominates and Firefox brings up the rear. (FireFox’s mobile Fennec browser is still in development).

It was just a couple weeks ago that RIM promised an iPhone-class browser from BlackBerry by next summer, and it looks like this might just give them one heckuva jumpstart in getting there.

We’re not surprised. Obviously. Apple plays the product cycle and media hype engines to perfection. Still, it’s interesting to see Electronista‘s take, based on ChangeWave data:

A mid-June study from the research group has 14.4 percent of those tracked looking to buy some kind of smartphone within the next 90 days, a record high and a large jump from 11.2 percent in March. Of these, a full 44 percent now plan to buy an iPhone compared to 30 percent just three months earlier.

As the above graph shows, Palm went from 4% to 8%, BlackBerry from 37% to 23%. Android, Nokia, and Windows Mobile weren’t shown

Other device makers likely know this, explaining why we’re seeing so many iPhone-style devices hitting the market. TiPb still thinks it’s more than a set of features, however. Sure, iPod halo and Apple brand help, but in the end the iPhone is all about usability and user experience for the consumer market, and that’s not as easy a task to duplicate.

In a write up nonchalantly titled “Lies, damn lies, statistics, and Apple…“, our good friend Phil Nickinson over at sister-site WMExperts rightly points out that Apple gave Windows Mobile a full on shunning during the WWDC 2009 keynote:

Windows Mobile isn’t even mentioned. Sure, Microsoft hasn’t yet launched its dedicated app store, Windows Marketplace for Mobile. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t stores from which to buy apps – ahem, here’s one – and it’s an insult to all of the developers of the 20,000 Windows Mobile applications available.

Windows 7 did get a mention (and a ribbing, as usual, from OS X head Bertrand Serlet), but in the smartphone space…?

Nothing.

That might seem callous from Apple’s part — but here’s the worse problem for Microsoft: Windows Mobile was missing from a lot of post-WWDC analyst and media commentary as well.

Apple still owns significant smartphone mind-share and the Palm Pre has captured the attention of the blogsphere and, since RIM is holding fast, that’s coming at the expense of Microsoft (and maybe Android, which was last year’s next big thing).

Realistically, with so many platforms now, when someone writes “Apple iPhone and…” “BlackBerry and…” and now “Palm Pre and…” there’s only room for so many others in the sentence, and those places are becoming increasingly competitive.

With Windows Mobile 7 pushed out until 2010, and 6.5 not in consumer hands yet either, and with iPhone 3G S about to hit, things might not be changing any time soon either…

While the iPhone vs. Palm Pre is the current darling of the blogerati (we’re not sure anyone in the mainstream is even aware of it…), we can’t forget that most iconic of rivalries: iPhone vs. BlackBerry. Not when Infoworld has written up the provocatively titled: “Deathmatch: BlackBerry versus iPhone — It’s time for us to bury the BlackBerry and move on to modern mobile — even for e-mail”.

In the massive, 8-page-jump article, the author contends that while the BlackBerry still scores points for security, non-Exchange email, hardware keyboard, and lack of good web browsing (for bosses who don’t want their employees using WebApps), the summation states:

For everyone else, the BlackBerry is yesterday’s mobile messenger, way past its prime and heading toward retirement. The iPhone is light-years ahead of the BlackBerry on almost every count. RIM should be ashamed.

Ouch. We’re sure our friends over at CrackBerry.com would beg to differ, but… ouch.

Can RIM fight back with new devices like the BlackBerry Tour and impending Storm 2, or — like Palm with the Pre and Microsoft with Windows Mobile 7 — will RIM have to “spend time in the desert” and come out with a rebuilt, revamped, new BlackBerry OS for the next wave of mobile computers?

[Thanks to Matt and everyone who sent this in!]

No, we’re not talking about Bono. Sigh. We’re talking about Don Lindsay, who was, according to Apple Insider:

Design Director of the Mac OS User Experience Group, he led what was called the “Mac OS X interface concept project” and directed the design team responsible for the user experience of Mac OS X 10.0 “Cheetah” through Mac OS X 10.3 “Panther,” which included the company’s first-generation of iLife digital lifestyle applications.

From there he was hired away by Microsoft to create — wait for it! — Vista. More specifically, AERO Glass, Flip3D, and Windows Calendar. Redmond start your copiers, indeed.

So what do you get if you copy a copy? Aside from artifacts and banding galore, RIM’s new VP of user experience, it seems. There’s only one problem with this, of course, and it should be obvious to RIM or to anyone who’s seen Vista or the Star Wars prequels.

Great artists need great editors. The best kindergarten teachers know when to pull the paper away from the kids. Steve Jobs is a great editor, a great kindergarten teacher. Word is he would scrutinize the UI down to the pixel level.

Hiring the guy who was already hired away by the other guy doesn’t give you the iPhone. It gives you the Storm. And RIM already learned how that worked out. Vista on the Storm… Good luck with that.

If you’d like a better idea, instead of trying to get the guy Microsoft got from Apple, and trying to dupe the dupe that is Vista, find someone new. Find something new…

Think different!

Our public frenemy number 1, CrackBerry Kevin, tipped us to RIM revealing details of their latest “innovation”, the BlackBerry App Store (and no, we’re not jaded that the company that once said touchscreens were a non-starter is now high-five’ing themselves silly over winning the self-awarded “breakthrough” prize for the Storm’s SurePress at Mobile World Congress — iSigh).

Them new CrackBerry App Store details? (And no, we’re not going to call it the CrApp Store, thanks you very much!) No themes allowed, which are apparently quite popular (not that we non-Jailbroken iPhone owners have any idea what they are, right Apple?). WebApps will be showcased alongside native apps, which is interesting given how WebApps on the iPhone have languished in terms of the Apple spotlight since the iPhone App Store launched.

Unlike Apple’s free SDK or $99 registered SDK with tethering, RIM will charge devs $200 per 10 apps submitted to the store. How the effects free apps (or rejected/re-submitted apps?) is unknown. Like the iPhone App Store, support will be the responsibility of the developer, which some hope will encourage more stable code (and not just less supportive developers).

Also important to remember in all this, however, is that while an iPhone can hold up to almost 16GB of Apps, BlackBerry’s are severely limited — only onboard app storage can be used, after the OS takes its share. We’re talking a 30-100MB at most (and single iPhone Apps can be bigger than that).

So what do we think? Dieter wanted Apple to copy-back the Ovi Store’s recommendation engine. Anything Apple should copy-back from RIM? WebApp category?

This. Is. iPhone JEOPARDY!… Judges Round!

Way back on March 14 we covered some of the bold, bodacious pontifications the CEOh-no’s of Microsoft, RIM, and Palm had made about the iPhone. Quick-on-the-buzzer as always, it’s time once again to go back to our judges and see how they did!

“Why We’re Not Worried about the iPhone” for 100

Ed Colligan:

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

Daily Double-Talk

Steve Ballmer:

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”

Final Jeopardy!

“Mike Lazaridis”:

“Talk — all I’m [hearing] is talk about [the iPhone's chances in Enterprise]. I think it’s important that we put this thing in perspective.” [...] “Apple’s design-centric approach [will] ultimately limit its appeal by sacrificing needed enterprise functionality. I think over-focus on one blinds you to the value of the other.” [...] “Apple’s approach produced devices that inevitably sacrificed advanced features for aesthetics.”

And to top it all off:

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.”

Judges?

10 Million iPhones sold in 2008, almost 7 million in Q4 alone. More units of a single SKU moved than all RIM SKUs combined, and more than (we think!) WinMob licenses as well. 200,000,000 App Store downloads, 5500 Apps available, and now being copied by Microsoft, Google, and RIM. Form factor and touch-centricity copied by both Microsoft-OEMs and RIM (who’s also introducing a no-keyboard Blackberry Storm!). And Palm? Er… Anyone heard from Palm lately?

And the Winner Is!

None of the players today.

For the Pundit Round, be sure to check out Daring Fireball’s awesome set of links, and MacDailyNew’s Compendium of iPhone Naysayers.

[Here's a bonus TiPb of the Iceberg for you this week, courtesy of the humongous news coming out of Apple's Quarterly Conference Call]

Tuesday’s news that the iPhone has been selling well stupendously well, in case you weren’t paying attention, was really big. It’s tough to express how big. Some of the bullet points:

• They exceeded their sales goal of 10 million iPhones in 2008 already, with the holiday season still ahead of them
• They sold nearly 7 million iPhones in three months.
• They sold more iPhones than RIM sold BlackBerrys (yes, that’s the proper plural spelling)
• Based on revenue from iPhones, Apple was the #3 cellphone maker last quarter, behind only Nokia and Samsung.
• They achieved all this in 15 months.

Now, there are caveats to these numbers: there was pent-up demand for the iPhone 3G so these numbers almost surely won’t hold; RIM’s sales were depressed because of delays releasing the BlackBerry Bold. Don’t let these caveats mislead you, though, what Apple did with the iPhone 3G in the past three months is unprecedented in the mobile industry, it was pretty much unprecedented in any industry.

The most recent numbers we have show that RIM and the BlackBerry enjoy the undisputed lead in US Smartphone marketshare, while Nokia has the undisputed lead worldwide. Apple may have its work cut out for it going after Nokia, but it seems very clear that they are on track to seriously challenge RIM in the US market.

What’s amazing about that possibility is that RIM and Apple have very divergent strategies. RIM has dozens of different BlackBerry models aimed at nearly every demographic imaginable: from the Pearl Flip and Pearl for the low end all the way up to the Bold and Storm for the high end. They have phones available on every carrier. Most importantly, they have practically locked-up the enterprise market and are as effective as anybody (but Apple, perhaps) at targeting the consumer market.

To counter that broad, multi-pronged strategy, Apple has one model on a single carrier. Steve Jobs:

Well, I wasn’t alive then but from everything I heard, Babe Ruth had only one homerun, he just kept hitting it over and over again. So I don’t think that — I think the traditional game in the phone market has been to produce a voice phone in a hundred different varieties. But as software starts to become the differentiating technology of this product category, I think that people are going to find that a hundred variations presented to a software developer is not very enticing and most of the competitors in this phone business do not really have much experience in a software platform business. So we are extremely comfortable with our strategy, our product strategy going forward and we approach it as a software platform company, which is pretty different than most of our competitors. [Seeking Alpha]

Apple’s dedicated to presenting the iPhone as a single platform as much as possible. That strategy appears to be working. Not only is it easier for developers to target a single device (or, if they do indeed introduce an iPhone HD, a single device with multiple resolutions), it’s radically easier for Apple to continue to develop the platform.

RIM’s platform challenges are much bigger. As Mike and I discussed in this week’s Podcast (forthcoming!), RIM’s BlackBerry Operating System may need to be completely overhauled in the coming years, but the recent BB Developer Conference did show that it has more legs than I previously gave it credit for. Still, BlackBerrys have a confusing array of Operating System versions that vary from device to device, from carrier to carrier, and from region to region. On top of that, they’ve recently added the Storm to the mix, which features a touchscreen and requires a different UI.

Although RIM does have an aggressive development roadmap that’s clearly a response to Apple, it remains to be seen if they’ll be able to roll out their improvements quickly enough to counter the iPhone onslaught.

In short — Apple has not only hit the ground running like a Formula 1 racer, they also are not towing a trailer full of backwards compatibility and multiple-device compatibility issues. If this were the entire story, I would have little hesitation in simply saying “Game Over, Apple Wins.”

But there is one area where Apple is still going to have a tough time of it: the enterprise market. There are a couple of reasons for this, but both of them have to do with companies feeling ‘locked in’ to the BlackBerry ecosystem. The first (and perhaps smaller) lock-in is BlackBerry Messenger, a BlackBerry-specific IM-like protocol that does indeed see heavy use. Our friend CrackBerry Kevin noted that while he was in New York he met a ton of people who purchased BlackBerrys specifically so they would be “in” with all the Wall Street types who use this form of communication extensively.

The second, and bigger, lock-in is the array of features tied to the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry Internet Server (BES and BIS). This includes not only push email and PIM, but comprehensive device management, enterprise applications, and (soon) a protocol to push any information whatsoever to a BlackBerry (much like Apple’s now-late push notifications). Much has been said about the iPhone’s Exchange support, but push email via Exchange isn’t a magic bullet. In fact, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile has had Exchange support for several years now and they recently introduced MSCMDM, which offers comparable device management to the BES. These features haven’t so much helped Windows Mobile gain traction as they have helped stem the bleeding. Of course, we can have another discussion about why Windows Mobile isn’t gaining traction against RIM (Hello UI), but for now I’ll just make the smaller point that simple Exchange integration doesn’t cut it.

Apple also has not traditionally be able to ‘get’ enterprise on the Mac front either — fundamentally many see them as a company that’s not focused on the enterprise. That may continue to be the case — in fact I think it will be — so don’t expect RIM to be forced to close up shop as quickly as Apple has established themselves. This is a fight that will go on for awhile.

Wither Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm, and Android? I honestly believe all of the above have the potential to become more than 15%-ish players in the US smartphone market, but I don’t think any of them will be able to pull it off in the next year or so. Heck, even if they never pull it off, 15% of the US smartphone market is totally legitimate given its rapid growth. But for right now, the big boys are Apple and RIM.

One last thing to mention: as John Gruber notes in his excellent analysis, if you dig a bit into the numbers it becomes clear that the iPhone is soon going to be Apple’s biggest business and the platform will soon become their most important platform:

So the question is: Despite continuing strong iPod sales and record-breaking Mac sales, how long until the iPhone is undeniably the primary product and platform made by Apple?
My answer: Not long.
And I think Apple’s executive team sees it the same way.

Agreed. Looking back, it’s amazing we didn’t see this coming the moment Mac OSX became a great platform with 10.2. The Mac is an elegant operating system with a creative and engaged developer community; it’s only sold on incredibly good hardware; it ‘just works’ and rarely crashes. That’s exactly what has long been needed in the smartphone market.

Whereas the Mac faces a market where the superstructural elements prevent it from rapidly gaining marketshare, the smartphone market is much more fluid. It’s no surprise that the iPhone is coming on strong when you think of it in this light. It seems surprising because we assume that the smartphone market is like any other market that has come before — it’s not. People can switch phones more easily than they can switch computers if only because of the lower prices, and they do.

Companies are different, though, they hold on to their platforms — both PC and Smartphone — for 4-5 years before they consider a change. Now that we have number portability, the last real thing keeping people from switching smartphone platforms every few years is Enterprise lock-in. RIM’s managed to get it, Microsoft less so, and so the question becomes twofold:

1. Will that lock-in hold?
2. If the iPhone can’t crack Enterprise, will the consumer / small business market be enough to push them up to #1?

The answers are “For at least a few years” and “Yes.”

No, it’s not Deja Vu. No one has reset the Matrix (we think…) It’s just another Apple follow-along. To paraphrase Bertrand Serlet: Waterloo, start your photocopiers!

Not content with merely iCloning the iPhone look with the Bold or touchscreen with the Storm, during the Blackberry Developer Conference today, RIM basically repeated Apple’s iPhone SDK Roadmap Event announcements from back in March, note for note.

App Store? Check. Push Notification Service? Gotcha. Integrated Development Environment? Why not! iFund? App-solutely!

Scott Forstall, was that just the sound of you flinging your iPhone 4G through the screen of your 30″ DisplayPort Cinema Display? I think it was.

Check out the live blog now at Crackberry.com, and if you miss it, they’re sure to have all the news and roundups shortly thereafter.

Pop quiz. You announce the hawt new tic-tac-tile handset in May for a Summer release yet Summer comes and goes, and one of the largest carriers in one of the largest geekphone markets in the world (that’d be AT&T in the USA) keeps rejecting your firmware — over and over again.

Do you push (ha!) back and tell AT&T to first fix their 3G networks, which many now believe amount to the old 2G networks with rabbit-ears welded on top? Do you tell them to shove it up their UTMS and pour all your efforts in the risky virtual keyboard you’re hoping will take Verizon by storm (ho!)? Or do you try to shift focus to the device that forced you to take the risky virtual keyboard risk in the first place, the device that hasn’t yet touched (hee!) your market share, but sucked every inch of mind share out of your smartphone space?

What do you do? Well, if you’re internet dead-pan funny man Mike Lazaridis, CEO of RIM and maker of the sales-leading Blackberry business-monster, do we really even have to ask?

Says Lazaridis (via Crackberry.com):

“There’s great scrutiny, as you might know, on that network and a certain device. So I guess everyone wants to be sure on every last test.” [...] Lazaridis appeared confident that the Bold would not be subject to the iPhone’s problems. “We’re very meticulous about what our product does.”

You mean like after Crackberry Kevin brought a Rogers Bold to New York?

Jump off the plane at La Guardia, and within 48 hours of roaming on AT&T my BlackBerry Bold randomly rebooted itself 5 times, dropped 6 calls while talking (and 3 dropped after only one ring before I could answer) and at one point gave me an Invalid SIM Card error for no reason at all (soft reboot fixed it). Furthermore, my battery life tanked – the Bold was regularly switching between 3G and Edge which I think soaked back a lot of the juice. All in all, I wasn’t happy. It wasn’t the same phone that I was using when I boarded the plane, and the only thing that changed was the Network.

So, er, yeah… What’s causing them delays again?

The iPhone shook up a very complacent smartphone world, but if we think it exists in a vacuum, if we think the other big players won’t respond (no matter how embarrassingly long it might take them), and if we don’t hope that they do — hardcore style — to prevent Apple from one day getting just as complacent, then we’re not doing our jobs as bloggers or consumers.

With that, splinter-like, in mind, witness RIM launching the Blackberry Thunder, their first touch screen device. If you ever wondered how brilliantly Apple handled the release of the iPhone, from Steve pulling it from his pocket to the first videos and commercials, wonder no more. RIM’s shows us by way of terrible — near Microsoft’ian — example, how badly that could have gone… (Though Mike Lanman certainly makes a convincing Doby to Lazaridis’ Gollum…). Couldn’t have hired them Virgin folks again?

We’re still not sure about the whole-screen’s-a-button approach. And the newly launched GDGT podcast is right on when they say RIM needs new software and they need it now (and tell a very funny story about how RIM’s co-CEO really doesn’t get that… scary…)

Head on over to Crackberry.com to watch the full video.

The. Whole. Screen. Is. A. Flipping. Tic. Tac. Tile. Button.

Seriously. We kid you not (though RIM could be kidding us all?). Sister-site Crackberry.com has all the deets, but…

Seriously? Who’s the usability wizard who came up with this one? Who came up with the single-click point of failure concept? The one mechanism to break it all?

We get that haptics are hard, but the iPhone pretty much showed the industry how to do Touch, and rather than just add the Blackberry messaging powerhouse to that buttery goodness, RIM went and grafted on an mechanic straight out of every 1980s playschool game?

Bravo for challenging Apple (they certainly need it). And kudos for being brave enough to push the metaphor, to take the next step, to propel technology forward. But — seriously? — we hope the feel is light-years beyond the look on this one, and not just for Crackberry Kevin’s sake… Otherwise most annoying gadget innovation of the decade awards beckon…

We guess a certain internet dead-pan funny man was right on the “button” when he said:

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.”

Presuming he was really talking about the ThunderStorm…

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

This week: Zilch again. Nadda. We’re too busy getting ready to cover the no doubt universe denting news Apple will unleash at “Let’s Rock” on Tuesday. And, frankly, so is the competition. Face it, they’ve been quiet as little blue-OLED mice lately.

Blackberryboss Lazeridis is all dressed up like Leo Laporte and is already lining up in San Francisco to find out what Apple’s releasing this year… so he can release it next. Palm-Top Colligan’s not releasing anything new until Nova ships sometime in 2012, and Larry and Sergey have shifted the focus off Android and onto their new Chrome browser, which we just know they’ve been running on gLinux in-house for years but is somehow only released (in what will not doubt be perpetual Beta) for Windows.

And speaking of Windows, Steve Ballmer’s off preparing an extra-special CES-sized Monkey Boy dance (YouTube it) for his first adult Keynote since Bill Gates retired to make $10,000,000 mockumentaries with Jerry Seinfeld (Wikipedia him).

No doubt they’ll return to their usually scheduled schedules next week, and so will we!

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

This week: Boldly browsing (or not), AppClones, HTC’s dreaming, and Treo requiem.

The Bold and the Buggered

We can’t even make fun of this. Seriously. It harshens even our mellow. Crackberry Kevin spent days and days simply trying to get a freaking javascript enabled website to load up on his state-of-the-RIM Blackberry Bold, and basically every other Bold he could get his addicted fingers on, and word is he’s still waiting for the progress bar to hit 2%.

Yeesh, who does RIM think it is, shipping a buggy, clearly pre-release firmware on one of the most hotly anticipated handsets of the year? Apple?

Official List of Blackberry OS 4.6 Features and Enhancements

First!

Okay. Fine. Crackberry.com deserves some bragging rights over predicting the new RIM iClone… er… Touchscreen Blackberry would be called both the Thunder and the Storm. However, as any long term reader of this column (hi mom!) knows, WE were the first ones to bust out ThunderStorm and it’s inherent brando-confuso. NOT them. Us. So on behalf the the TWiSS nation:

Nailed it!

(And when Microsoft finally unveils WinVistaZuneMob for Windows Live! (Technology Preview), we’ll be right back to claim credit for that to!)

That Ain’t a Browser

While they may handle Javascript better than the Bold (and likely Flash better than the iPhone!), Crackberry claiming Nokia leads in “Mobile Bowsers” just because they’ve jammed a WAP rendering engine on 8 kazillion frighteningly insecure feature phones is like claiming Microsoft Paint is the premiere graphics package in the world just because it ships on every Windows PC since 3.1 (Take that, Photoshop!).

When it comes to the really realz browser champion of the world, if Crackberry even dreams of calling it any other way, they better wake up and apologize to the iPhone…

Putting the Carts Before the Stores

First came the iPhone, then came the iClones. Next came the App Store, so now we’re getting the Aped Stores. Kinda. Google is doing one for Android called Market (because it’s not a store, get it?), which has no production units yet, and it looks like Microsoft is doing one for Windows Mobile Se7en called SkyMarket, which has no modern SDK.

We suppose it stands to reason that, what with the App Store making developers money handset over fist, all the commodity OS makers would try to duplicate it. Would that they would spend half the time or effort, however, duplicating the innovative spirit and business prescience that drove App Store.

(And seriously, SkyMarket?! To fit in so perfectly with Xbox Marketplace and Zune Marketplace? What, we’re supposed to believe Windows Mobile Marketplace was taken? Does it tie in to SkyDrive, and leverage Mesh? Could Microsoft’s branding be anymore broken? We can’t even make fun of it anymore, because every week they come out with something funnier than we ever could… yeesh!)

Does Android Dream of Engadget Peeps?

We’ve got to give full faith and credit to HTC, they actually made manifest a handset that so totally embodies the palette and yet completely misses the spirit of the Google home page. Bravo-oh.

Given the 87 fold out slider keyboards this gPhone sports, however, why couldn’t they squeeze in a hardware button for “I’m feeling lucky”?

Xperia’ncing Delays

HTC must be super busy pumping out phones for Google, Palm, and… themselves, what with Sony being pushed back to 2009 (which can feel like decades in gadget time). We could joke that they’re waiting on WinVistaMob for Windows Live! Se7en (Technology Preview) to hit, but that’s more likely to be 2012 on the outside… What’s especially confusion is that Dieter actually used the Xperia waaaaaaay back in April and it seemed to be working fine. His thoughts on the delay?

Good luck to ya, SE, given how long you’ve been working on this since we saw it, we suspect you’re going to need it.

You Only Look Twice, Mr. Bohn

Speaking of Dieter, his mega-super-ultra-everything-plus-the-kitchen-sync-and-pipes Treo Pro review is now online, finishing the “beauty and beast” double feature that began with the 800w a month back. As we’re unlikely to see any more Treo’s out of Palm this year, and certainly nothing rocking NovaOS 2.0 (What comes after Garnet and Cobalt anyway… Kryptonite?) it’s be best to savor these. The truly masochistic among us might even want to join Malatesta for second look…

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

This week: A day late but sadly no jokes short, Boldly browsing, unboxings galore, big love from HTC, who does Rubenstein really work for, and ZOMG! a new Android beta!

b.engadget.com…

…the Blackberry specific, RIM-browser optimized version of one of the most popular tech blogs on the planet… doesn’t exist. Neither does t.engadget.com for those of you who’ve actually figured out how to load a semi-functional browser on a Treo.

Nope. Turns out one of out-going Editor-in-Chief Ryan Block’s final acts at Engadget was to set up the iPhone, and the iPhone alone, with the keys to its own special gate. We wonder why…

(Hint: Palm Treo 755p: 0.1% share. Blackberry Anything: didn’t even make the list…)

And special well wishes to Mr. Block, with thanks for all the hard work he put in at Engadget, and best wishes for whatever he chooses next. Health, happiness, and much success!

Speaking of Blackberry Browsers

Lots of brouhaha this week over some dodgy iPhone vs. Blackberry Bold browser battles. Crackberrians cried foul, saying the Bold was hamstrung by a pre-release ROM and faulty WiFi connection. The initial test was against the original, iPhone 2G, however, and subsequent tests run on the iPhone 3G still smoked the poor little Bold. Admittedly, the Bold was again a pre-release ROM, however anyone who’s ever used an iPhone 3G running 2.x knows that’s pretty much a pre-release ROM as well, every bit as buggy. So until Crackberry.com runs some of their own tests, no doubt against a specially prepared iPhone, we’re calling it fair fight, and iPhone by complete domination.

Attention Blackberry Developers

Remember RIM’s answer to Apple’s iFund? You know, the VC pool established to fund Google-class iPhone App development? Yeah, us neither. But Crackberry.com has confirmed what we’d already forgotten: Even though “Blackberry” is in the name, RIM has nothing to do with it (just like Apple really has nothing to do with the iFund, we swear), and — get this — neither does the Blackberry.

Just tell the money-bin that one day you might possibly (wink) consider thinking about maybe porting (wink wink) a future beta of your hawt new iPhone App to the Blackberry, and you’re golden. Literally.

The Hunt for Bold All Over

Congrats to Crackberry Kevin on actually finding a Blackberry Bold in stock somewhere in the harshest hinterlands of Canada. With RIM reportedly only shipping 1 or 2 units per metric googlometer, his threats of SMASH no doubt precipitated Lazaridis to pull up in front of Crackberry HQ, fresh new Bold offered atop a red velvet cushion.

Palm-Treo Games

Likewise, congrats to Dieter on getting his already over-phone’d hands on a Treo Pro. Though his story wasn’t as blog’d out as Kevin’s, it was probably every bit as Tom Clancy-worthy in its own right. And if you’re into fringe smartphone Pr0n, check out WMExperts Treo Pro vs. Everything video. They even sacrifice it to an iPhone 3G, poor little [redacted].

Speaking of [Redacteds]

Last time we asked why the Treo Pro bore little-to-no resemblance to it’s 700 series forefathers. Turns out the 700 series might not have been any of its fathers. Mamma Palm, it seems, went and dallied with HTC. Given how the 800w turned out, however, can you really blame the old girl?

The HTC Xperia’nce

Sparing us all some overly obscure Foxworthy-esque joke about the HTC Palm Treo Pro and HTC Sony Xperia getting divorced but remaining cousins (whoops, so much for sparing), we’ll just point out that the next in a long line of nouveau-chic Windows Mobile handsets that were announced ages ago but have yet to actually ship, has now been announced to still eventually actually ship. One day. In Europe.

For those who don’t remember that far back — and who can honestly blame you? — yes, this was the banana slider Sony abandoned Sybian and cozied up to Microsoft for.

What’s the UI Equivalent of a Paper Bag Over the Face?

Seems to be a third party shell or launcher. And if you’ve been afraid to take your Windows Mobile out in public looking like its been beaten with the Redmond stick, Brian heartily recommends this… er.. iPhone “inspired” full facial replacement.

Looks good to us. Now how do you fix the OS?

All Rubinstein, All the Time

Rubinstein helped Steve Jobs and Apple launch the iPod to the stratosphere, and while Jobs’ second mobile act, the iPhone, has pretty much revolutionized the industry, Rubenstein’s has… er… had somewhat less of an impact.

The man who left Apple when he wasn’t allowed to jam a tic-tactile keyboard on the elegant, full screen iPhone, is now overrunning Palm (or, at least, serving as plenipotentiary most excellent to Lord Bono), canceling “several” Treo’s, and tweaking many others (though sadly not the cosmetics on the 800w…).

Why? Not to make an iPhone killah. Oh, no. That might harshen Poppa Jobs’ mellow and lead to the resurgence of Palm. No, Rubinstein simply wants to kill Treo make a killer Treo. Even if that honor currently belongs to HTC…

(Anyone bother to check and see if Rubinstein is really off Apple’s payroll?)

Another Beta

No, not the 4th release of Apple’s iPhone 2.1 Beta in almost as many weeks, but the first new beta build of the Android “platform” in Google knows how long. (And no, we’re not counting those secret builds given to select privileged elite developers while the common mundanes were left to wonder what “open as in beer” really meant to the folks in Mountain View).

Dubbed 0.9, this new beta, which seems prepped to give Gmail’s beta period a run for its money, may eventually set the possible stage for the OS that finally ships one day with HTC’s Dream handset (2nd cousin once removed to both the Treo Pro and Xperia for those charting smartphone genealogies at home).

And no, we’re not poking a little fun at Andorid here. Android is poking a lot of fun at all the developers and users who really, truly want something to keep Apple competitive. Let’s hope they get serious sometime that is soonish.

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

This week: All Bold all the time, spy pics, HTC gets red, and happy five-oh!

Rogers Hoses Hopeful Bold Hosers

When notoriously gouging Rogers Mobility in Canada gave its 11th hour reprieve on data rates to save its July 11th iPhone 3G investment, we all kind sorta knew it would someday, somehow, come back and bite us in our wallets. Well, it didn’t. It bit Crackberry Kevin in his instead. Rogers official price for an iPhone 3G 16GB on 3(!) year contract? $299. Rogers semi-official price for a Blackberry Bold 0GB on a 3(!) year contract? Priceless. Or dang near. $399.

No doubt news reports of a giant green Crackberry yelling “Kevin Smash!” and laying waste to Rogers HQ will follow shortly.

And good on that.

All Bold All The Time

Or at least it seems that way. Canadian pricing fiasco aside, the Bold little buggers are really taking the cake these days. Popping up everywhere. Maybe Crackberry’s right? They’re going to be huge.

Just not at HSBC…

Kickstarting the Pearl

Of course, the iPhone 3G isn’t the only handset Rogers is likely subsidizing out their vice-clenched assets. The new Pearl flipberry (nee KickStart) is going for a relatively tiny $49. They’re likely targeting the same new users that the Palm Centro has been so successful at attracting lately.

Given RIM’s brand power and compelling messaging on… er… messaging, seems like a can’t miss, doesn’t it? Especially with the ever increasing femal demo. Extraspecially if Virgin Canada keeps helping out…

Uber-Hawt New Spy Pics Leaked!

The intertubes FTW! Fresh new spy pics of still undisclosed, unreleased, unauthorized smartphone hawtness. And what do we get? Sleek, elegantly curved black form-factor, flush screen(!), brand-defining centralized button navigator with oh-so-easy to hit task buttons radiating outwards, above a killer tic-tactile keyboard combined with enterprise-class “push” technology!

Luddites to Gentoo-men, we present the:

Treo Pro! er… Blackberry Javelin… er… Treoberry Javepro???!!!

Seriously, this is a “bold” new step for Palm away from the locked-to-Treo-600 design-dearth of yore. Given Rubenstein and all the other Apple droppings they’ve picked up lately, it makes perfect sense the Pro should resemble a… Blackberry. We mean, hey, while everyone else and their OEM is lately — and lamentably — iCloning themselves to innovation-less stupors, here comes Palm stepping up the WinMob side of their Harvey Dent-esque product strategy with something at least on par with the latest/greatest from sales leader RIM.

It’s about time.

HTC Dazed and Con-Fuze’d?

Seems like AT&T might be all set to launch the artist formerly known at the HTC Touch Pro, now re-dubbed the HTC Fuze. Yeah, we had to look it up too. Turns out it’s an iClone slider…

Word to HTC marketing: While you may have had Fusion on the brain (something Palm nailed years ago with the Treo brand, and again just recently with Centro), never leave ambiguity enough in your product name to conFuze perspective buyers or they’ll just reFuze to take you seriously. No way to deFuze it now though. Thankfully, at least, Moto must have had FUZR pre-marked (or was that BeastWars?)

Diamond Already in the Red?

So WMExperts would have us believe. If he didn’t have his wee mits all over the Treo Pro, we’d suspect Bono was [Product]-izing just in time for the holidays…

Still, red being the color of Blood, and this Touch being branded as the Diamond, perhaps another word needs be taken with the marketing geniuses over at HTC…

Blackjack II vs. Q9h

Is sort of like the battle for 53rd place in the Olympics, isn’t it? At least “Atila” has a shot at making it a three-way race…

Palm Set to Unleash the Hounds

No, not of the long, long, did we say loooooong?, promised Palm OS 2.0 (?!) Nova-based handsets. Just tons of new WinMob devices. Yay?

When those of us who loved the Palm OS first saw Bill Gates hoist a 700w up on stage at CES, even with all the talk of more options and better business plays, should we have recognized it as Colligan really just opening the seventh seal of stop-gapocalyps?

Signs point to yes.

Happy Anniversary

The TreoCentral Treocast got all golden on us this week, celebrating its 50th episode. May the next 50 be just as grand, and we look forward to hearing you on episode 100…

…probably covering the possible impending future potential pre-launch of Nova (beta).

And to Mike and Dieter — the premiere duo in smartphone coverage — Congratulations mobile accomplishers!

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

This week: Pearl gets kicked, ZuneNokia cometh, Android isn’t late (again!) and… a Centro clone?!

Blackberry Developers Conference…

…Now taking registration. For anyone who still wants to code for Java Micro Edition. Seriously. All 2 of you.

And for the record, no, this isn’t a panicked attempt to re-court developers who may be considering jumping ship to the modern, Objective C, desktop class iPhone SDK, what with all the money to be made there (and the FreeRiders still waiting — and waiting — on the various LinMo initiatives).

Of course, serious Blackberry developers (aka the ones who work for RIM and thus have access to the actual APIs) are waiting on the next gen OS anyway, currently scheduled for some time after the square of the date Palm’s Nova hits divided by the root of the tangent of Android’s first handset’s delivery…

KickStarting the Pearl

When we joked that Blackberry had more code names for their KickSeaStart-tacWolfRAZR flip phone than Microsoft had Vista SKU’s, little did we know yet another — and at the same time much, much older — was about to be grafted on for release.

Yup, say hello to the… Pearl.

WTF is right. With the flip putting the actual pearl on the inside, shouldn’t this be more properly branded the “oyster shell” ?

Blackberry Curve Price Cut

Just in time for consumers to cut it from their shopping list.

Reason? Not iClony enough, what with the ThunderStorm now firmly on the horizon… er… Verizon.

Still, given that Amazon was paying people to take Blackberry’s off their hands just a short time ago, isn’t this still $199 to much?

Crackberry.com Says Show Your Blackberry How Much You Loves It

By yanking out the battery. We concur.

Crazily enough, however, they actually suggest you put it back in right quick thereafter…

It’s Not the First Sip That’s Going to Kill You…

Delicious Monster’s Wil Shipley takes on what he considers to be the poor science and worse concept behind Microsoft’s “Mojave Experiment”.

The bottom line? Try a little sip, then go watch Super Size Me.

What does this have to do with smartphones? See Diamond, HTC Touch…

ZunePhone’s Coming, and… Nokia is Coming With It?!

Probably not so much, what with Nokia being all SymbiLinMo But then again, Nokia is ditching Blackberry for Exchange as part of the Grand Plan to actually get people off of one buggy, proprietary, outage prone service (no, not MobileMe… grumblegrumble…) and into another even buggier, proprietary, distributed outage prone service. But why do all the hard core punditry ourselves when, in grand bloggy tradition, we can just quote/link to it!

Nokia is already trying to establish its own Ovi portal as a mobile music store. It needs Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace as much as it needs another Symbian virus. Not only is the Zune Marketplace a sleepy, deserted mall with no customers and scant merchandise, but it has absolutely zero traction (or attraction) in Europe or other markets where Nokia sells its phones. The Zune is only sold in the US, where Nokia has minimal uptake. Adding the Zune Marketplace to its phones would do nothing for Nokia apart from making its own store look sidelined and associating the company with another megafailure brand. Nokia already has NGage for that.

Android Isn’t Late!…

…At least when it’s compared to WinVistaMob Se7en.

Okay, so the spin is Android is still on schedule but as anyone who’s ever tried to run a simple school function by committee knows you can’t settle on themes and decorations, much less deploy a brand new OS across multiple OEMs using different form factors and semi-secret SDK revisions on the backs of already beleaguered developers without a schedule more flexible than the whichever girl wins a heap of gymnastic medals this week. It’s simple chaos theory.

And, sure, WinVistaMob Se7en isn’t technically behind schedule either, unless you consider releasing an OS in 2009(ish) that’s meant to be almost (squint and tilt head) competitive with what Apple released out-of-the-gate in 2007, as not being behind something…

Alert Custer

Motorola has just totally ripped off his strategy.

From the once mighty empire that ruled the world with the first RAZR, comes pinning their final, futile hopes on WinMob 6.6.6. And to think, Moto, people have accused you of running the company into the ground…

How To: 2 Tips to Make Windows Media Player on WM Suck Slightly Less

Yank out the battery. Oh, sorry, we covered that already under Crackberry… wait… here it is… Dieter claims there might just be a way.

Attack of the CentroClones… Er… CloneTros… Er… ?

No, we don’t mean the Blackberry Javalin (that’s more a Treo 680 clone, n’est ce pas?), we mean this poor confused little OQO G900.

Hey, we appreciate them giving the iPhone iCloning a rest, don’t get us wrong, and when Palm sold 2 million of these lowest-end smartphones, it pretty much guaranteed some uber-cheaper knock off would be spun up. But, irony of ironies… what if it’s actually more profitable than the real thing?

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

This week: Bold, Bull. Bull, Bold. WinMob Can’t Count to 20, and Colligan Loves the iPhone

It’s Cosmo Cramer, Cracky!

We had to suffer Krakow’s silly iPhone spewings, so it’s only fair our sister site, Crackberry.com gets the the man who pushes market o-spin-ion almost as well as RIM does email.

So, yeah, bullish on Bold. Just sell before he does.

We Who Are About to Dial Salute You!

It is BlackBerrious TicTactilous Maximus, Leader in smartphone sales, email pusher extraordinaire, loyal enabler of the one true unpaid overtime, mate to workaholic partners, child to absentee parents, and in this generation or the next it will totally pwn you.

Fair enough, then, that Crackberry.com tortured the tyrannical little handset to death in retaliation.

Well done.

Flipping the Berry, Part Deux

KickSeaStart-tacWolfRAZR exclusive video reviews continue. Watch them fast before RIM NOC’s them off!

WinMob to Sell 20M Licenses… Eventually

Sorry… we’re… reporting… near… Redmond… and… have… to… keep… ducking… to… avoid… flying… furniture…

Whew! Ballmer finally blue-screened. Anyway, seems when Microsoft said they’d infect 20M units this year, seems what they really meant was that they wouldn’t infect 20M units this year, because, well, they didn’t. Still, 20M is a HUGE number. 20x what the iPhone sold in one weekend. Though the iPhone only has one model still on the market, by one manufacturer, running on one technology (GSM), in 22 countries, mostly on exclusive carriers. And, well, while we’re admittedly mathlexic, we seem to remember there are more than 20 weekends in a year?

Maybe that’s why:

iClones Becoming iCliches

Stop it. We mean it. The first dozen or so iPhone wannabes were at least mockable. Now they’re just a mockery. We’d tell you to fire your industrial designers — if we thought for even a moment you actually employed any. Bad enough Palm’s been rereleasing the Treo 600 for what seems like 10 years now. How long do we have to put up with the iClones? Lazaridis? Colligan? Ballmer? Little help?

Bad Branding: Microsoft Advanced Studies Program

Does the tech industry have their own special version of the Razzies? They must, given how badly Microsoft keeps gunning for one. Last week we jokingly suggested Redmond would rebrand their struggling handset business as WinVistaXZuneMob Se7en Cairo Edition Phones for Windows — LIVE! And little did we know that was actually BETTER than the stuff Microsoft could spittle out on their own, at least if the new names WMExperts.com says they’re kicking around (quite literally) for Live Search!

Look upon their words ye mighty and despise:

• Bing
• Hook
• Kumo

Too. Many. Jokes. Crashing. Server.

Statler & Waldorf Dept.

Fear not, dear listeners of our sister podcast, WMExperts has not been secretly taken over by pod-people far more concerned with film, books, weather, shower habits, or basically anything even remotely NOT having to do with Windows Mobile, it’s still firmly in control of Dieter and Malatesta — who just happen to be far more concerned with film, books, weather, shower habits, or basically anything even remotely NOT having to do with Windows Mobile.

But seriously, given the previous news items, can you blame them? We can’t.

Colligan Gets His Tech Checked!

TreoCentral.com informs us that Palm CEO Ed Colligan sat down for chat, and sure, typically we’d tear apart whatever non-sensical, factually challenged, anti-iPhone rhetoric bullet points he was fed by Ruby, Bono, et al. but turns out that — wait for it — he likes it! Okay, so he can’t figure out how to email with it (hint: try the envelope icon), but overall he has some love for the design and innovation.

Unfortunately for Palm, the market pretty much agrees with him.

Could Palm Have an Earnings Surprise in FY Q1?

No.

Treo 800w: Selling a lot or Not enough to sell?

That’s why.

Maybe they should drop the price below cost? It’s working for the Centro…

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

This week: ThuderStorms, iClone Double Feature, Dead Treo’s, and Open Marriages!

Crackberry Dubs the New Blackberry: ThunderStorm…

…Only 3 days after we did. Congrats, sister siters. This week we’re all about the KickSeaStart-tacWolfRAZR. We look forward to seeing it Monday!

(WinVistaXZuneMob Se7en Cairo Edition Phones for Windows — LIVE! is already dibbed by WMExperts. Sorry.)

Introducing the iClone Nano!

Dear reader Kevin sends in these spy shots from “the wilds”. Is it the long-rumored iPhone Nano? Nope, just an iClone Nano, courtesy of the usual suspects at Research in Motion. Seems like gloss black and silver trim is this years gloss black and silver trim…

If only Waterloo could iClone the interface and iTunes experience, eh?

Introducing BlackBerry Media Sync

D’oh! Well, we guess it’s technically not iClone iTunes if RIM just stoleded it outright, right?

Your Music on Your BlackBerry Smartphone. It’s That Simple. Easy to Update

Because it’s connecting to iTunes, of course. Imagine if Apple hadn’t tried to roll their own MobileMe service and just hacked their way into RIM’s NOC (Network Operations Center). Who’d have functional push then, huh? Who?

(Sorry, not having had email for two weeks makes us a little prickly…)

Speaking of Little Prickles…

Yes, we do listen. We appreciate the feedback. And we’ll redouble our efforts. Much love.

Attack of the iClones: WinMob Supplement

WMExperts is masochistic kind enough to show us a real life, side-by-side comparison between the iPhone 3G and the iClonic Samsung Omnia and HTC Touch Diamond, and what can we say? Good job with the screen quality there. 1 degree viewing angle must be an industry record of some kind, right?

(Actual photo at top of post. Thanks for sparing us any photoshopping this week, OEMtards!)

Enter… the ZunePhone!

May want to hold on to them tats a smidge longer there, Zune-dude. WMExperts reports (and we spin) that Microsoft is all shook up, and along with throwing chairs, Ballmer may just throw a ZunePhone our way as well…

Good luck with that. We hope it’s like totally as successful as the Zune proper. Sincerely.

TreoCentral Asks:

Will the BlackBerry KickStart be a Centro Killer?

Yes.

(Unless you hate flippies. Then no. But yes.)

The More Treo’s Change

The Treo 755p is dead. Long live the… er… ah…

When’s Nova exploding again?

And in No Other News

Analysts, which is increasingly another word for those who lost employment within an industry and now make even more money spouting even worse nonsense from without, are saying the troubled “Open” Source Android platform may be merging with the soon to be troubled “Open” Source Symbian platform.

And if you believe that, we’ve still got that second bridge left over from WWDC to sell you…

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

This week: Blackberry device outages, Android SDK, Palm launches Treo 700 v3

Bold Behind, ThunderStorm Downgraded

Congrats to sister-site Crackberry.com for breaking the first images of the Blackberry ThunderStorm’s soft, virtual keyboard (you know, the one RIM’s CEO can’t use and would never make). Might just be a sticker, though, as NERDFIGHT or no reports continue to say the latest iClone just don’t work yet. (But dig the UI work! Jonathan Ive must be quaking in his elegant yet understated ash black #7 boots…)

No problem, right? Because the Bold is launching any day now? Er… no so much either… Looks like it doesn’t work so well either yet. Radio code, they say. That or RIM’s desperate scramble to try and launch their iClone double punch as fast — and loose it seems — as possible.

Chill guys. Take your time. Get it right. And here’s a thought — why not innovate something of your own while you’re at it?

Asked… And Answered!

Crackberry.com asks:

How come every new big BB app is running into such teething problems!?!

And Crackberry.com responds:

RIM just updated their site with BlackBerry JDE 4.5

Ahem.

When you have scads of devices scattered across multiple outdated OS versions all based on Java Micro Edition, you have a development nightmare that makes Windows Mobile look, well… not completely horrible by comparison.

Memo to Waterloo: In addition to innovative handsets, let’s add a real OS to the list. You know, something that couldn’t run a RAZR. We hear LinMo is the rage with all the cool kids these days…

Crackbettey Brings Less Hawtness to the Blog…

And dang right, ours is better than yours.

But we could teach you to use an iPhone, L-Loh, now that Fake Steve is no longer in charge…

AT&T Crackspiracy Redux

We covered this story early in the week (and of course Crackberry.com iCloned it with a rapidity that would make RIM proud).

Way to go, tic-tactile-tards. Next time just be honest. Tell them you ran out of iPhones and you’ll order them some when Apple can find your out-of-nowhere parking-lot kiosk. Better to be embarrassed than humiliated.

Does Android Dream of Exclusive Sheep?

Huge surprise. Mega. Potential Android developers (yup, some people are still waiting for their iPhone App Store acceptance and have to keep busy somehow) are growing impatient with the lack of SDK updates coming out of Mountain View.

Only not so much. Turns out there hasn’t been a lack of updates at all — they’ve just been reserved for specialer, more privileged partners.

Non-disclosure agreements and selective access to development tools are hardly emblematic of an open ecosystem. Google has intentionally disadvantaged many developers and kept the broader Android community in the dark about the progress of the platform. Google’s failure to fulfill its commitment to openness has eroded one of the principle differentiating factors that made Android a relevant alternative to Apple’s iPhone operating system. If Google cannot change course, the lack of transparency in the development process will likely push disenfranchised developers towards other mobile platforms.

Way to embrace the spirit of “open” there, eh, Google? Not evil phase all past us now then?

Making an OS is hard, even when you have a CEO on the Apple board and the iPhone to use as a blueprint. Making an OS by committee is even harder. Making an OS by committee and expecting it to work on multiple, different handsets from OEM partners is something that probably still gives Bill Gates night sweats.

Hate to say we told you so… not.

Live Mess

At least we figure the “Mesh” thing must be a WMExperts typo, given the state-of-the-art-of-1990 GUI…

Opera… Oprah. Oprah… Opera

The browser you’ve all been waiting… and waiting… for to replace the massively outdated Pocket Internet Explitivor is finally here. If one of the many known issues isn’t a deal breaker. And if it’s available for your device. And if you don’t mind resource hogs.

Maybe they should pull a Krakow and just license LinMo and WebKit?

Palm Releases a Treo!

Stop the presses… er… posters! Palm has released a new Treo! No, we’re not joking, TreoCentral.com even has a review!

It’s the 700w v3 800w, which sees the antenna become an intenna, and the Treo finally getting some WiFi. (Yeah, we fainted too). Screen’s still recessed, form factor’s still jurassic, the OS ain’t Palm or Nova, but hey — it’s a NEW TREO!

And in No Other News

Pop quiz: You’re Motorola and you’ve recently been all but Icah’ned apart. Through lack of vision and hubris-filled mismanagement, you’ve lost more ground than even the RAZR bump ever gave you, and now, facing the iPhone, what do you do? Beg back the designers and engineers that once made you great? Take a RSK on making something new and wonderful? Or just sue one of the poor souls who jumped ship before it broke itself open on the RKS?

The latter of course. You’re Moto, right?

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

In this week’s edition: What? Surprised we’re here? Thought we’d be taking this edition off so we could play Super Monkey Ball or Bomberman Touch, or otherwise just hide in our tasteful Cupertino estates drooling over our totally awesome new, glossy plastic backed iPhone 3Gs? We did that last time. We totally had the device before Mossberg and like 99% of the people at Apple. Totally.

We’re having a bit of weekend, is all. Maybe you heard about it? MASSIVE failures. Epic. Keep reading on to find out why its all Microsoft and RIM’s fault!

Thanks Bill! Now Who’s Running the Asylum?

Confession: Apple had to use Windows on iPhone 3G launch day. Embarrassing, of course, but due to monopolistic abuses, Microsoft has just totally wormed their way into the carriers. Do you know how distressing it is to have UK Apple Stores running VMWare Fusion because O2 can’t connect to anything but Internet Explorer? Putting ActiveSync on the iPhone is one thing — Sun Tzu told El Jobso he’d have to make some deals with the devil if he wants to break into enterprise — but IE on iMacs? It’ll take weeks of iTunes meditative podcasts to restore their sense of wonder.

And hey, Rogers up in Canada, what’s the sound of a million Canadian IE6 browsers cr@pping out? Sales Central Down?! What’s running the back end, a 386 on Windows for Workgroups? How about next time we pay our ISP bill on time, b’okay?

Of course, iPhone firmware 2.0 dropped at the same time, and since like some huge percentage of iPhone users are Windows users, so all those quirky we-had-to-make-them PC iTunes fired up trying to grab it all at once… At Infinite Loop, the OS X Leopard Data Center — which is shaped into a perfect Yin/Yang of mechanical alignment in matching aluminum and black glass trim — running the iTunes authentications services was just totally flooded in raw Microsoftian harshness. Ever seen kernal panic? Imagine that gone nuclear. Total loss of mellow. Total. Apple IT will reportedly be in intensive yoga all week.

Funny how this all happened the minute Bill Gates left the building, though, isn’t it? If he and Ballmer weren’t waiting in line over night at the Apple Store in Seattle, it would be uber-suspicious. Sure, they could have used body doubles or something, but Ballmer completely lost it waiting for his shiny new iPhone 3G to get unbricked. Chairs and sweatstains flying like that are rather unmistakable…

RIM Stealing iPhone’s Thunder?

Why not, they’ve stolen everything else, right? What better way for RIM to hypejack some press coverage on iPhone 3G launch day than to carefully plant the seeds of a NERD FIGHT! Tell Crackberry.com that the iClonic new touchscreen Blackberry Thunder may actually work, then tell the Boy Genius Report the much more believable story that the Thunder is totally hosed, step back, and laugh your apps off. After all, this is the company whose CEO just recently said touchscreens were unusable. Why not prove it with an unusable touchscreen device? Especially when Apple’s new MobileMe service is bringing the heat!

(Though, in all fairness, Apple did start the latest round with some retaliation of their own, what with copying RIM’s NOC failures, first with random .Mac outages, and then with the complete clusterfail of the MobileMe transition…)

Palm: We Want to Lose 30% More This Quarter!

After recent financial losses widely attributed to the spectacularly poor business strategy of selling the Centro entry-level, candy-bar cool smartphone for LESS than it costs Palm to make it, it seems the pressure of the iPhone 3G has sent Colligan and Co. even further over the edge. Witness TreoCentral announcing that as of now, you can get a green-keyed Centro for only $70.

Why not -$70. Pay people to take them, that’s what Amazon did with Blackberry‘s after all. Should we expect this, what, next quarter at the latest?

And in No Other News

Unbelievable as it may sound, Nokia, Samsung, and Motorola, along with Google, announced the unprecedented–

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D’oh! Not again!

ChangeWave is back with trends in intended smartphone buying for June 2008. The good? The iPhone has soared from 29% to 56% from a low this time last year of 18%. The bad? Rim has tumbled from 29% to 23% from a high of 33% last July. The ugly? Palm has held steady at 3%, having free fallen from 24% way back in late 2006.

The iPhone dominated almost all rounds, causing an overall increase in planned smartphone purchases to 10%. Satisfaction levels were through the roof at 78% (way above RIM’s 54% and trouncing Palm’s 29%)

Blackberry held on to the title of reigning email monster, with a holding-steady 42% ownership of that space, but Apple is making inroads even there, up to 11%.

The KO? Of those planning to buy a smartphone fully 50% plan on getting an iPhone over the Blackberry and Palm.

We expect Big John to jump in and end the slaughter any minute…

Read Via

Sure, the iPhone 3G launch is tomorrow. Consider this an amuse bouche. Or the opposite of that, an annoy bouche. Whatever. Something salty to make Friday taste all the more sweet!

The subject of today’s battle royal? Nope, not iPhone vs. Blackberry. That’s old. This time it’s Blackberry vs. Blackberry, Blog vs. Blog, over the iClone to end all iClones: the touchscreen Blackberry Thunder!

Says our sister site Crackberry.com, 10th degree Blackberry belts and reigning world champions:

Touchscreen BlackBerry Thunder Keyboard To Utilize Haptic Technology… AMAZING Implementation! [...] Leave it to RIM to CRACK the touchscreen keyboard nut.

Says Boy Genius Report, craftiest of all mobile blogsphere Ninja:

The keyboard is incredibly annoying to type on, and the screen actually shows ripples even when pressed ever-so-lightly. [...] Most of the people who have handled it thinks it’s a joke.

Read on for round 2!

Of course, Crackberry.com ain’t going down without a NERD FIGHT:

Screen is glass. YEP, It’s Multi-touch!!! [... RIM has] apparently been caught flat-footed by the 3G iPhone and its native support for Exchange and the whole Apple ‘aura of goodness’, in the sense that they don’t have the Bold yet ready for comparisons and show’n'tell sessions, media comparisons, etc, so both as a platform-to-platform and device-to-device stakes RIM is feeling the heat from Apple’s iPhone wave, thus they’re putting serious effort into accelerating the Thunder.

But it’s a quick tag to Mike Lazaridis for the RIM CEOh-Snap 180 turn-around KO:

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.”

D’oh! Guess he had no idea about the Thunder at that point either…

Softball sarcasm aside, what’s my take?

Technology is hard. It took Apple a reported 2.5 years to get an iPhone ready to ship (and then, arguably, just barely with firmware that was soon updated), and that’s on top of its rumored prior iTablet development efforts. So, my guess is that the truth lies somewhere in between the hype and the hate: RIM’s working their apps off to get this thing tasty as soon as possible, but that soon won’t be that soon.

Either way, all us smartphone lovers benefit. RIM is making the Thunder precisely because the iPhone has put the pressure on, and if the Thunder is a home run, that pressure shifts to Apple to make something even more astounding for the iPhone v3.

Prior to the iPhone, the industry was complacent. Now its moving again. And that’s a good thing. (Even if it would be a better thing to see less iCloning and more differentiation and innovation from the other manufacturers, b’okay RIM?)

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

In this week’s edition: Nothing. Sorry. No time. We’re already lining up for the iPhone 3G. Dieter got here early, but the rest of us are way back, forced to climb over ever-growing mounds of junked Crackberries and WinMobs and about a million Centros — ouch! Heckuva tailgate going on, though. Ballmer keeps breaking out the Monkey Boy while Colligan and Lazaridis take turns timing their virtual keyboarding.

So yeah, sorry. Zip this week. Zilch. But it’s totally not our fault. We don’t even think the sister sites have been updated. (We’d ask Kevin and Jennifer but they’re off playing hacky-sack with Sergey and Larry.)

UPDATED: Okay, fine. The Commenterati have spoken. We’ll scour the interwebs. We’ll find something. You’ll get your fix. Anything to stop from harshening our pre-launch mellow!

Blackberry Kickstart Special TV Offer — While Supplies Last!

Attention Crackberrians! You’re not gonna pay $249 for the new RIM Kickstart Flipberry, are you? No! And you’re not gonna pay $149 either, are you? Nope! You’re not gonna pay $99 or $79 either. All you’re gonna pay is one easy payment of $49! But wait, there’s more! Act now and we’ll throw in near-weekly service outages, and the classic StarTac form factor, for FREE! Tell them Crazy Mike sent you, and we’ll even throw in a free Flowbee!

(Yeesh, when did entry level become throw away? We know Amazon was even paying people to take Blackberry‘s off their hands for a while, but crack open Palm’s books sometime, Mr. Canadian CEO of the Year, and see what selling stuff for less than it costs to make it does for the old bottom line, b’okay?)

Blackberry Done Copying iPhone, Starts Copying Windows 95

Yeah, so the Thunder will still iClone the iPhone, at least as much as the old-but-not-Palm-old Java “OS” is capable of, but RIM isn’t intent on just copying Apple, oh no. Their next target — Windows 95! Seems just like good old Win95 (which knowing MS was probably release in 1997, right?), one day in the distant future a Blackberry OS may — wait for it — try to avoid “nuked” or “bricked” units by allowing users to — wait for it again — boot into safe mode!

(We need to pause here to explain to iPhone users that those poor unfortunates with “smartphones” rather than mobile computers don’t have OS’s for realzies like OS X, just weird little management systems that are far less stable and are just as likely to turn on as they are to spontaneously cease functioning. Think Xbox 360).

Rather than a function key, the tic-tactile escape key will do the trick. Press it and you’re in safe mode. Kind of makes you wonder just how unsafe regular mode is if you have to escape it…?

In faker news, head BBOS developer Marty McFly tells us we can look back to a DOS-style CTRL-ALT-DELETE “feature” by 2020…

Windows Mobile Gets… Facebook!?

Confession: We’re not sure what the story is here. Windows Mobile finally gets an application even the Palm Centro’s already had? Or is it that Pocket IE is such a non-browser that WinMob requires an entire application (GUI created in MS Paint, really?) simply to load Facebook? Or is it that people with WinMob have just now discovered this neato new site called Facebook where — just maybe! — all the cool kids used to hang out?

Now it’s WMExperts Giving With the Paper Cuts and Lemon Juice

Not enough that last week Crackberry.com made fun of the disgusting money grab that passes for Rogers’ Canadian iPhone price plans, this week the diabolical editor of WMExperts just has to point out that the HTC Diamond Touch, is getting all-it-can-eat unlimited data from Bell for $30.

Well done, Rogers, you’ve succeeded where neither HTC nor Windows Mobile have before — you’ve actually made people consider getting a Diamond Pro. Enjoy whatever layer of Hell greedy telco’s get condemned to (we forget the exact number, same as the latest WinMob release number, right?)

Palm Hires Interface Designer!

How about that? We can’t believe we typed it either, but this is big news from Treocentral. Huge. Palm actually hiring someone to consciously improve their user experience is like… hmm… if Windows Mobile actually hired someone to consciously improve their user experience (taking notes there, “J“?)

Turns out they got someone ultra-hip, ultra conceptual too. Same guy who did Helio, which according to Google Image Search has an interface consisting solely of a white flame brand over blue field. We’re not kidding. That’s all there seems to be. Makes the Google homepage looks busy. But who knows how the kids smartphone these days.

What’ll he bring to Palm? Probably something just as innovative. We’re guessing no screen at all. Joke all you want, but it would be light years ahead of Palm’s vintage-yet-still-sadly-current anti-anti-aliased 8-bit circa 1990s groove.

And in No Other News

That’s it. We have to go. The Motorola boys are playing the “iPhone 3G is the only reason we have left to live” card, trying to cry their way up in line. Brian and Casey aren’t buying it, but Chad might let them in. Meanwhile, the Nokia and Samsung iClone teams have gotten bounced for trying to get early peaks inside. We feel for them, really. Rules are rules and all, but c’mon. If they don’t find out what Apple is releasing this year, what’ll they have to copy for next year?

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

In this week’s edition: Boldly late… and on strike, WinMob vs. Android, more Windows raves, and Real Ed vs. Fake Steve!

Blackberry Bold-ly Not Going Where the iPhone Will Have Already Gone Before

The 11th reason the Blackberry still doesn’t compare to the iPhone 3G? The iPhone 3G will be out on time.

Unlike Apple, who typically doesn’t pre-announce but sends CEO Steve “El” Jobso out on stage to BOOM! their tech when its good to pretty much G.O., in its panicked desperation to pip the iPhone 3G to the publicity post, RIM rushed to pre-announce their Bold before it was finished and, it seems, before they had a real idea of when it would be finished.

So, also unlike Apple’s Jobs who gave us an emphatic July 11th to circle in red on our calendars (and bank accounts!), RIM’s Lazaridis gave a nebulous date which, according to Crackberry.com, has just gotten “pushed” back:

August. Maybe 2008.

Rumor has it battery issues and overheating are to blame. Yikes. Either way, that’s a full month after serious futurists have already gotten themselves an iPhone. I guess diehard Crackberrians should just expect it when they ship it.

Take Your Push and Shove It, We Ain’t Emailing Here No More!

Yup, seems like members of the Writers Guild, among others, believe that both unfair and unequal treatment for their work on the internet and in DVD sales is matched only by having to use Blackberry’s as reasons to go on strike.

Crackberry.com says ABC (the American one, not the Australian one, we’re properly ethnocentric on this) backed down quickly in face of the Blackberry-out, and no scripts or fall season release schedules were harmed under the repetitive stress.

Crackberry Gives Papercut, Pours Lemon Juice On it

Yes. Thank you, Crackberry.com. Potential iPhone 3G customers in Canada are going to get Rogered by the local GSM monopoly — almost as badly as the RIMtards. The difference? Whereas the Blackberry is pretty much a business appliance typically subsidized by companies, the iPhone is a mobile computer platform typically paid dearly for by consumers themselves.

Way to drag us down with you, hosers.

WinMob vs. Android: Complexity Showdown!

WMExperts gives us a peak beneath the Android Kimono, and what a peak it is! Seems Google’s little mobile monster is poised to give Windows Mobile a run for its so-many-versions-developers-will-tear-their-neck-beards-out money. Way to go. May the least of the worst win the bottom of the most!

More Raves for Windows!

Typical Windows user feedback?

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues. [...] So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated. [...] Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time? [...] Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up. [...] What an absolute mess. [...] The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind.

Nope. THE Windows user feedback to rule them all, courtesy of Kaiser Bill Gates himself. Now, sure, this is technically about the desktop version of Windows 5.5 (aka XP), and not the similar-in-name-and-ill-conceived-GUI-only handset version, currently on 6.6.6 (or something), but the probative value far exceeds any potential prejudice (or the humor outweighs the difference, whatever).

Sadly, though much like typical user feedback, it had absolutely no effect on future development.

Keeping Palm Real Fake

Real Ed:

We are more confident than ever in our transformational effort. We’ve added extraordinary new talent, the Centro is a smash success, we have an incredibly competitive product pipeline, and are developing a world class software platform. I expect together, these efforts will deliver positive results in the coming years.

Fake Steve:

You turn your $500 Treo into a $100 Centro, sell each unit at a massive loss, and make it up on volume. How totally brilliant! Why didn’t we think of that? I mean here at Apple we’re still stuck in that old-economy mindset where you sell stuff for more than what it costs you to make it. Meanwhile Palm is getting inquiries from Chris Anderson of Wired who wants to do a big cover story on how “selling for less than cost” is the new future of business.

Real Ed:

I have never felt more enthusiastic about our product pipeline and our ability to get back on the right track.

Fake Steve:

If you really want to scare the crap out of yourselves, check out your company’s official earnings statement and scroll down to the balance sheet. Little item called “Total stockholders’ equity.” Look at where it is today versus a year ago. Teeny tiny drop from $1 billion last year to $100 million now.

Real Ed:

We are extremely confident that the enhanced functionality of this new platform and its accessibility to the developer community, combined with the game changing hardware we have designed for it will usher in a new era for Palm. This platform development effort is proceeding very well and we look forward to bringing these products to market.

Fake Steve:

Well, nothing to worry about, I’m sure. Ahem. Anyway, much love to all of you. We miss you. Not really. And if you’re thinking about maybe you’ll crawl back here when Palm goes under, um, don’t bother. Peace.

And in No Other News

Motorolo is pinning all their hopes for the future on the Alexander. That’s not a joke. The sentence, I mean. Motorola definitely is.

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

In this week’s edition: Blackberry iClone’s visual voice mail — but don’t make them angry! Windows Mobile 6.0 ready to crash already frozen Treo 800wx’s, and can Centro has future?

Apple Reinvents the Phone. RIM Regurgitates the iPhone.

RIM loves them the iPhone. They love it’s glossy black facade. They love its silvered bezel. They love its rounded rectangular slab-like form factor. They love its iTunes connectivity. And despite we-think-they-doth-protest-to-much comments to the contrary, boy do they love its touchscreen. They love it so much, they’ve done nothing but spend the last year iCloning it. They’re latest, according to Crackberry.com?

Visual Voice Mail.

Yup.

Way to go, Lazaridis. A year and a half later, and you’re finally copying something Steve Jobs showed off six months prior to the iPhone launch…

Good news for Crackberrians, though! At this rate, you’ll get a MobileSafari class browser by 2011!

You Won’t Like Crackberry Kevin When He’s Angry!

Okay, we totally take back that last story. It wasn’t us, and it certainly wasn’t RIM. In fact, it was probably those troublemakers over at AndroidCentral saying the iPhone was copying the Bold again. Totally. Just don’t get Crackberry Kevin angry. We don’t like him when he’s angry. We mean, did you see what he did to Rogers’ data rates when he got angry? We don’t have the healing factor to take that kind of pain!

We’ll just stick to making fun of WindowsMobile for the rest of this edition, okay?

Please?

Obsolete Hardware, Meet Outdated OS!

Speaking of making fun of Windows Mobile, looks like the Treo 800wx will finally be getting an upgrade to version 6.0. No, that’s not a typo. They’re actually taking the oldest WinMob Treo (actually, the “fixed” rev of the oldest WinMob Treo, but why split petrified hairs?), and cramming the previous (not current) version of Windows Mobile on it.

And they’re not even doing that yet, so some poor battered-consumer syndrome hax0rs have stepped in and actually made the monstrous little FrankenTreos themselves. Think getting XP up on your 486. Sorta.

WMExperts.com has the gory details. Or it could just be another spy shot of the 800w. Either way…

Centro: Can Has Future?

TreoCentral.com bravely asks: “Can Palm’s Centro Still Roll With The Big Dogs at AT&T?”

In a sentence: About well as Motorola has post-RAZR.

In a word: No.

But if they play the chihuahua card low and long enough, they might sneak by until their next handset can go… er… Nova.

And in No Other News…

Samsung announced, and Sprint spat up $100,000,000 to advertise, the Instinct to compete with the old iPhone about 5 minutes before Steve Jobs announced the new iPhone 3G, officially making the Instinct a year too late and a (next) generation too short (not to mention quite a bit too expensive when faced with a $199 price tag for the Real Thing). So, the big bosses at Samsung and Sprint bit the bullet and dropped their prices… But not enough to impress Uncle Walt, much less our own big boss, who summed up the whole thing thusly:

Honestly – is anybody out there seriously considering an Instinct over an iPhone? We’ll grant that there are some people who prefer to pick their carrier first, phone second — but still, is it possible to even pick up the clean end of a piece of …Instinct?

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

In this week’s edition: RIM Flips, Windows Mobile is why Ballmer should quit, and Palm’s Centro is a… hit?!

Kirk to Enterpise, the [Redacted] NOC is [Redacted] Down Again!

Crackberry.com continues their awesome trend of RIMsclusives, this week bringing us the pre-release (and bathroom-floor?) pics of the upcoming BlackBerry Flip… er… KickStart. Kudos to RIM marketing, the idea of kicking your new form factor to start it is both glee-worthy and certainly cathartic. The first live YouTubes of a boardroom full of business suits round-housing the flipugly little things through the plate glass and down to 100 story doom will earn our inaugural “favorite” badge.

RIM design should likewise be praised for boldly (oops, wrong model!) flippedly going where no one since 1960s sci-fi has gone before. Maybe the Aurora will sport it some phaser chic?

Blackberry Can Has Windows Live Candy?

Yes, that’s apparently NOT a typo. This really does pass for screencandy on the Blackberry.

If an iPhone app ever came out looking that 2001, it would only be because Ashton Kutcher had developed it and was filming the reaction from backstage…

The OS Update Heard Around the World!

As we’re all probably sick of hearing about now, a little OS update was announced this week. Flaunting a host of new features, the update will soon let everyone, everywhere, experience the next great revolution in smartphone… er… experience. Unfortunately, the announced OS update won’t be released right away. Nope, we’re all going to have to dig deep and wait just a little bit longer. But the relentless media coverage, the rumors, the anticipation, the fanboy frenzy… it will all be worth it soon.

Yup, in just a few short weeks, WMExperts.com says we’ll be getting Windows 6.6.6 for the Moto Q9h! Booyah!

Windows Mobile — Yup, THAT’s a Firing!

Seems Jim Lynch over at ExtremeTech loves him some Windows Mobile almost as much as pundit Paul Thurrott. How much is that? Enough to make it his #4 reason Microsoft CEO Steve “Internet Monkey-Boy Dance Phenom” Ballmer should be fired:

Windows Mobile has been a dismal failure for Microsoft that has only become more apparent with the launch and success of the iPhone. Microsoft blew a lot of money and time with Windows Mobile and never managed to come up with a good mobile operating system. Apple, on the other hand, managed to hit a home run the first time out by using Mac OS X in the iPhone. I remember owning a Compaq iPaq years ago and, at first, I loved it. But as time went on I stopped using it and finally just got rid of it. Looking back at it now, from the perspective of an iPhone owner, I see that the iPaq was a good product but it suffered from a poorly thought out and awfully implemented operating system. Microsoft never got it right and still hasn’t. As usual Microsoft is playing catch-up to Apple and we’ll no doubt see Microsoft blatantly copying Apple’s iPhone interface and features in a future release of Windows Mobile. For letting Windows Mobile continue to be a failed also-ran, Steve Ballmer should be fired.

No Dev in the Palm is Worth 2 Million Centros?

TreoCentral.com informs us that the “breakthrough hit” that is the Palm Centro is on track to sell 2 million units this year… of an OS Palm introduced only 6 years ago! And now they’ll be selling on shiny happy Verizon as well! Everyone is thrilled. Seriously. Stock is up 9%. Colligan and Rubenstein are high-fiving in the halls.

Sure, instead of 2 million with a 6 year old OS, Apple sold 6 million with an OS introduced barely a year ago, but think about how much work that must of been, all that innovation and stuff. Why break a sweat when you get sit on your apps for 6 years and still bump the stock, right?

And since by the sounds of it, the next generation Nova OS will basically be a web browser, it looks like Palm has finally found it’s winning strategy and is going for it! All engines in reverse, and straight ahead ’til yesterday!

And in No Other News…

Pop quiz, hotshot: You’re a once relevant mobile phone manufacturer who once struck gold with the then-innovative RAZR and has since done everything corporately possible to never again recapture the lightning in that bottle. Your boogeyman of the last few years has just switched his attention to the MicroHoo! debacle, and Apple has shown you can still shake up the space with a breakthrough device fresh out the gate.

What do you do, hotshot? What do you do?

If you’re Moto, you fire half your design team. That’s what!

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

In this week’s edition: Nothing. Seriously. It’s like there’s some event on Monday that’s blotted out the smartphone sun…

(Okay, fine, maybe there’s some small something or other we can dig up. Hit the read link…)

Breaking: TiPb Welcomes Messrs. Lazaridis, Ballmer, and Colligan!

More fake breaking news, as we’ve received no tips reporting that the head honchos over at RIM, Microsoft, and what’s left of Palm have done nothing all week but wire up fiber channels and practice hitting “refresh” in anticipation of our live meta blog coverage of the WWDC keynote on Monday.

When reached for non-comment, dead-pan funnyman Lazaridis said, “C’mon, I need to know what Apple’s new phone looks like this year so I can figure out what RIM’s will look like next year!”

Monkey-Boy dance phenom Ballmer didn’t chime in with, “We’ll be selling 3 friktillian smartphones with Windows Mobile Se7en on by 2012, and we’re going to need to know what else to copy beside Multi-touch!”

Colligan, however, when awoken from his 5 year stasis, never remained cool, “We have no interest in duplicating the iPhone. We’re about to release our 19th version of the Treo 600, and we’ve got 37 more where that came from!”.

Alrighty then…

ATTN: Crackberry.com, RE: Coming Back Around…

Confession: We make a little fun of RIM’s well-publicized and hugely embarrassing network outages (see, we did it again right there). But last week, when .Mac went down and we here at TiPb reported it pro-forma as the nothing little insignificant blip on an otherwise perfectly clear iPhone sky that it was, Crackberry.com wasted no time, and spared no level of glee, in NOC’ing it up, and twisting it into some big brouhaha.

Bulletin: A .Mac outage probably effects exactly 3 iPhone users. If that. We don’t like to publicize it, but even Dear Leader doesn’t really use the service (he’s using the new one already, which is why they needed some massive super secret upgrade you may be hearing about at a little developers conference you may have hear about, b’okay?) Anyway, .Mac going out is like the 300th ranked ISP in Bavaria going out — barely anyone noticed. They were all busy with setting up their new Exchange or MobileMe accounts for Monday.

Payback: However, you noticed, and we noticed you noticing, so we called up our “friends” in Waterloo and convinced the former Canadian Tire cashier whose hand’s on the giant red NOC-off lever that, since everyone on the planet will pretty much be iPhone-only this weekend, it would be the perfect time for a “scheduled” outage. Poor kid. We’re talking hook, line, and voice-cracking sinker…

We’re not sure what Crackberry addicts pop when the push is down (our guess — Solitaire on Win95), but enjoy the weekend!

Microsoft Out the Gates and High on Life

Or something! First up we have Microsoft (probably Ballmer), who according to WMExperts.com is sending letters (probably cut out of a soon-to-be-extinct magazine and stick-glued onto unsold Vista boxtops…) to their partners desperately reassuring them that Windows Mobile 6.6.6 (or 6.1, whatever the latest — and by that we mean most currently behind schedule — release is) will somehow still be relevant come Monday after El Jobso drops the iPhone 2.0 bomb.

Er… yeah… Not sure how to break this to you, but Windows Mobile 6.x wasn’t relevant after iPhone 1.0 back in January 2007. And instead of trying to get Windows Mobile Se7en up to iPhone 1.0 standards, you might want to think outside the little beige box and shoot for something innovative your own self?

And no, spreading rumors of a Blu-Ray Xbox 360 in some attempt to “steal Apple’s thunder” is not innovative. A giant, red-ringing, PowerPC, noisy, inelegant gaming machine, no matter how we loves us our Gears of War, suddenly getting the technology that beat the stuffing out of your own HD-DVD format years after Sony released it in the PS3 just doesn’t crossover the same news circles.

But here’s an idea: maybe call that friend of yours Bill. You remember him, the one you no longer need but may still use? (Leastways he could help keep you from blurting out your envy towards the iPhone’s admittedly top-tier browser experience…)

Government Tracking Treo Users

TreoCentral.com is claiming that the US government is tracking cellphone users. Since some of us aren’t in the US, or in Government, we have no way of knowing whether this is true or not, but since we grew up on everything from Orwell to the Matrix, we kinda just assumed it already.

What’s particularly disturbing, however, is that TreoCentral.com reporting this makes us think the US Government is tracking Treo users as well.

Why?

Is it for anthropology, like when the Discovery Channel finds some lost, never before contacted Amazonian tribe and wants to study their behavior? Is it that they think tax dollars are well spent analyzing a people untouched by mobile technology since 1999?

Dunno. But we sure hope Dr. Jones doesn’t get a shunning for his troubles.

And in No Other News

HTC finally got around to still not releasing their HTC Touch Diamond, which early reviews say just crackles on EDGE, given its lack of support for North American HSPA. Not a problem though, as it seems the OS is slow enough that you can barely notice…

Points for consistency, but you had to know slapping an extra layer of OS on top of WinMob and then chipping down the radio was putting the advertising spin before the handset, right?

There could be plenty of reasons why iPhone market share has slipped. For one, the shortages could be a big part of the puzzle here, people aren’t buying iPhones because there aren’t any iPhones to buy. Another reason could possibly be educated consumers who realize that the iPhone 3G is imminent thus delaying their purchase. Not to kick the iPhone when it’s down, but the price and carrier-locked nature of the iPhone could also play a role in its diminished market share.

Regardless, the iPhone is still driving smartphone interest and increasing the market’s sales and its competitors are posting lower market share than a year ago. My personal take? I want to see device-by-device sales numbers. The iPhone is a one man army against multiple fronts from RIM and Palm yet still manages to be more than competitive. Narrow down the numbers and specifying the models could paint an entirely different picture.

Or maybe not. iPhone 3G to the rescue? What do you think?

Read

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

In this week’s edition: Windows Se7en, Great Googley Android, India’s circling the RIM, the Treo 800w guest commentary, and no other news on Safari for Samsung…

Windows Se7en

Microsoft is still the only real game on the planet, especially when it comes to business, what with their whopping 90%+ share of the market. And as Bill Gates rides off into retirement, he can be justifiably proud at how close he came to his dream of a computer on every desktop and in every home. In that light, his swan song with longtime crony and internet “monkeyboy” dance phenom Steve Ballmer at the “D” All Things Digital was particularly poignant this year, especially given that they chose to use the event to showcase their next generation OS to the public for the very first time.

What groundbreaking new features did they show off? What killer new technology was highlighted? Was it WinFS, the revolutionary all-registry all-the-time file system they’ve been promising since the code-name “Cairo” vaporware of yore? Was it MinWin, the ultra-small, ultra-modular kernel that will return some long absent agility to the platform? Was it a complete revamp of the horrible mishmash that passes for an API stack, cleansing 8-bit fossils and 16-bit artifacts, providing something uniform for the 64-bit future? Was it a renewed focus on their core business users, streamlining bloat and minimizing eye candy in favor of virtualized compatibility and blazingly fast architectures moving forward?

Nah uh.

It was 10 finger multi-touch paint. 10 @#$%ing finger multi-touch paint! Are you kidding me?! From the team that brought us the big @$$ table, we get nothing of the future promised us for decades by Microsoft, nothing by way of making up for the titanic PR disaster that has been Vista, nothing that may convince consumers who are routing towards the Mac in ever increasing droves, and businesses who are stubbornly clinging to the terribly outdated XP or jurassic 2000, to hold out for a better tomorrow. No. We get 10 @#$%ing finger multi-touch paint and yet another in the endless string of failed Gatesian prognostications about interfaces, inks, and whatever else makes him think tablets have been a booming success for over a decade. (Word to Bill – the only thing even remotely resembling a tablet that’s even approached a modicum of cultural penetration is — wait for it — the iPhone, and it wasn’t made by Microsoft).

But what does Windows Se7en have to do with Smartphones, you may ask? (After all, WMExperts.com thought it barely worth a mock-mention). Unlike Apple, aren’t Microsoft’s mobile offerings similar only in that both have the word “Windows” grafted in front of them? Nope. They’re also similar in terms of the minds driving them, the vision of the future those minds have, and the experience those visions seek to bring to us, the end users.

And right now both Windows Se7en and WinMob Se7en are driven by minds so drunk off their collectives posteriors that their futuristic visions are entirely consumer by 10 @#$%ing finger multi-touch paint.

Great Google-y Moogley: Android Gets Slightly Less Vapory!

Microsoft loses money on search, which is pretty much just a way to glue eyeballs to pages so said eyeballs can be blinded by flashing neon “hit the bouncing monkey!” banners. By contrast, Google’s bouncing monkey banners net them somewhere near 8 kazillion dollars a year. Likewise, while Microsoft’s busy showing off a 2010 desktop OS that really, truly hopes to be competitive with Apple’s 2007 mobile OS, Google is readying an iClone that may just ship this year!

Confession: We thought the Google Android demo was right skippy. Caveat: We though the exact same thing when Steve Jobs did it at Macworld 2007.

Memo to Google: We know your CEO, Dr. Evil… er… Eric sits on the Apple board of directors. We’ve heard he recuses himself from iPhone discussions to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Here’s a thought: how about avoiding the reality of one as well?

Apple is all about the paradigm shift. The command-line in your home with the Apple II. The GUI on your desktop with the Mac. Multi-touch in your hand with the iPhone. It’s what Apple does. The gloss, the shine — the boom.

You need to embrace what Google does. All white screens with nothing but search boxes. That’s what Google does. Forget about the overcrowded iClone market and embrace that. That’s your niche. That’s your Zen.

Circling the RIM: India’s Never-Ending Ultimatum

Yeah, we thought this had been resolved too. Seems India’s still demanding and RIM is still claiming it has a headache. Or whatever. Crackberry.com somehow retains the energy and interest to cover it. We just can’t stop snickering over the fact that it’s the Network Operations Center (NOC), pusher of all pushers, single-point-of-snooping, that let’s India push RIM so hard to begin with.

Big brother FTW!

So You Think You Can Smartphone?

Okay, so we’ve been giving the Treo 600… er… 800w a bit of a hard time around here. Fair point. Certainly opinions must vary, and much like we had special guest quotes from Windows Super Siter Paul Thurrott a few posts back, in the spirit of equal time we turn this segment over to TreoCentral uber-editor Dieter Bohn. Go ahead, boss. Tell us all how great the 600 v3 is:

Look at it. It looks cheap. It looks cheap. I’m like secretly hoping that this isn’t the final casing. That they have a secret casing and this is just the stuff they’re sending out to the beta testers. [...] It doesn’t look professional. I mean recessed screens are so 2003. Whatever. Right? [...] The way it’s recessed looks chintzy. The soft buttons underneath the screen are just sort of randomly there. Nothing about it speaks like… It doesn’t speak like… to being solid or futuristic. [...] A business phone should project an aura of power. [...] This is just not good looking. I’ve been saying for a long time now that this is the year you’ve got to cut Palm a ton of slack, and I’ve been cutting Palm a ton of slack, but this looks like cr@p. [...] It does not look great. This needs to look great. They should have one great phone this year and this does not look great. This looks the opposite of great. [...] I tell you what, [when This Week in Smartphone Schadenfreude put up an image of the Treo 600 as the Treo 800w] I didn’t notice. Somebody had to point out the joke to me.

Score!

For those truly interested in the complete, uncensored, Treo 800w curbing, check out the podcast (spoiler: in the name of all things merciful and nostalgic, Mike pulls Dieter off and holds him at bay until the Smithsonian can show up and cart off the old girl’s mangled, circuit board-strewn corpse. NOT for the squeamish).

And in No Other News

Speaking of maulings, some Executard or PR flack over at Samsung, in a fit of drunkful-thinking, shot up a release stating the notly anticipated L870 S60 slider (honestly, do they pull these names off of pseudo-random password generators?) would have not just a WebKit browser, but the full on iPhone Mobile Safari king-of-all-mobile browsers. Absent, you know, an OS, UI, or the basic design and engineering skills to support it.

Riiiiiiigggghhhhhttttt…

No need for double-takes. You didn’t click the wrong link. Just breath, dig deeply, and stick with me for a moment. Yes, you really are still reading the iPhone blog.

For a 1.0 device, the iPhone knocked the ball — if not out of the park — soundly into the fence, and sent a complacent industry fumbling and flurrying to catch it. But no device, not even from Apple, could get everything perfect the first time at bat. Now, I’ve pretty much staked my turf here by playfully poking a little bit of fun at the competition but, truth be known, when they’re not wasting their time on iClones every platform and handset has some great — even killer — features to recommend it. In that spirit, here’s my top 5 list of what Apple should seriously consider stealing… er… learning from the competition if they want to hit a home run with 2.0 and beyond…

5. Blackberry’s Email Management

RIM is the undeniably #1 in smartphone market share, but they come in at #5 on my list for the simple reason that, while what they do well they do phenomenally well, as a platform I think that very maturity has led to little innovation, and hence little (and narrow) potential to mine for iPhone improvements.

That said, they are the email monster for a reason. With one major caveat, nobody does email bigger or better than Blackberry and while Twitter, IM, VoIP, video chat, and other technologies old and new battle it out for communication domination, email remains the mainstay of the mainstream, business and consumer alike, and in that regard Apple has something important to learn from Blackberry.

What Blackberry Does Right

Blackberry does email to the point where the two are almost synonymous. Push notwithstanding, when it comes to managing email, the Blackberry is a beast. It’s simply the best there is at what it does.

What Apple Could Do Better

RIM uses a centralized Network Operations Center (NOC) to handle all Blackberry messaging everywhere, providing true, near-instantaneous “push” to thousands and thousands of Crackberrians each and every moment. But here’s that major caveat: it’s a single point of failure. Outages, from carrier to regional to network-wide have increasingly plagued the service, as have privacy and security concerns.

With the upcoming 2.0 update, the iPhone will support the ActiveSync “push” technology Apple licensed from Microsoft. ActiveSync eschews the “one NOC to manage it all” and instead simulates “push” between local Exchange Server and mobile client — in this case, the iPhone. If someone else’s Exchange Server — even Microsoft’s in Redmond — goes down, it effects your iPhone service not one bit.

That just leaves the iPhone MobileMail app itself. Fairly easy to set up and use, it still remains a challenge to manage multiple accounts and messages. Better mass-mail handling, especially for important functions like delete, is imperative (and is rumored to be coming with 2.0 as well).

Beyond that, however, better organization is needed. A single, unified inbox, like the one on the desktop Mail.app would be a great first step, followed by the ability to hide selected, seldom-used IMAP folders to clear up some clutter.

Speaking of IMAP, since MobileMail can “see” IMAP folders for Calendar, Apple Mail To Do, etc. better integration with the iPhone Calendar and Notes application (and dare we dream — Task app?), seems natural given what’s been done in OS X 10.5 Leopard’s Mail.app.

And since the spammers seem intent on mail-bombing the internet back to the stone age, some client-side anti-spam filters would also be most welcome.

Taken together, these improvements would go a long way to making the iPhone king of the next email generation.

4. Palm’s Click Counting

We want powerful, we want beautiful, and — dangit! — we want drop dead easy to use. Great design is functional design, great user experience is intuitive, almost transparent experience. Apple nails this to a large degree. I’ve said it before, but my two-and-a-half year old godson can pretty much navigate his way around the iPhone, from pictures to camera to notes (his ABCs) to calculator (his 123s) which unbelievable ease and accomplishment. But there remain a few problem areas.

Palm OS, dinosaur that it is, has legendary ease of use. Rumor has it that early Palm developers, like co-founder Jeff Hawkins, literally counted each and every “click” it took for a user to accomplish a task, and did everything possible to optimize and minimize that number. It has failed miserably to keep up with the times, but in a few key ways (no pun intended!) it’s still timeless.

What Palm Does Right

Palm understands moving around a mobile device like nobody else. Almost every task can be accomplished with just a few touches, clicks, or key presses. Brian has already covered the ease of entering appointment/calendar data on in the constantly-saved model of the Palm OS, and I’d add past innovations like photo speed dialing (which seems a natural for the iPhone, and ironically was a Palm innovation for their first Windows Mobile device, and requires a 3rd party add on for Palm’s own OS!). TreoCentral.com no doubt has many more examples. Though perhaps not as practical on an all-touch device, even little things like typing to begin a contact search or call are all time-saving techniques mastered by the Zen of Palm, and a spirit the iPhone could easily learn.

What Apple Could do Better

In addition to being so old its joints creak and crack every time it turns around, the Palm OS lacks the power to deliver a modern user experience, and bizarrely lacks standardization even across its own device platform (besides the aforementioned lack of photo dialing on the Palm side, GSM and CDMA phones have sported different dialing apps, some modernized while others are left to languish in whatever layer of hell 1990 monochrome aliased bitmaps are condemned).

Adding photo dialing to the iPhone would be trivial. All the Quartz and Core Graphics/Animation services are there, just begging for an Apple take.

Likewise improved calendar entry: tapping on an empty slot should bring up a New Event editor the same way tapping on a filled one brings up a viewer. And data should be saved automatically unless specifically cancelled. The mobile world is both more prone to interruptions and less forgiving of them, after all.

The sideways flick currently used to move between photos, Weather app cities, and other information surfaces could be leveraged more widely as well to speed up functionality. Let me flick between album lists while a song is playing, or email folders from one account to the next.

Digging down into, and backing up out of stacked screens is so iPod Classic.

3. Windows Mobile/HTC Speeds, Feeds, and Divergent Needs

As any WMExpert would tell you, Windows Mobile — in Microsoft’s most favoritist model — is not a product but a platform. So, I’m adding in stalwart hardware manufacturer HTC to round out the reference. Before we get too deeply into that, however, it’s worth remembering that the Microsoft model makes for an almost diametrically opposed situation to Apple’s. At the time of this writing, there is only 1 iPhone model, from 1 manufacturer, on 1 US-based carrier. Last count, there were 3.2 gazillion Windows Mobile phones across a plethora of OS variations (standard, smartphone… er… purple?) and innumerable manufacturing SKU’s not only from HTC, but Palm, Motorola, and even Symbian co-founder Sony Ericsson, among others, which run on every carrier and it’s multitude of resellers.

But Apple’s end-to-end control of the device, while giving it an undeniable edge in stability and user experience, comes at the cost of variety and individual configurability.

Back in the dark days of tech support we used to joke that if you were in Mac support, every question had a simple “yes, here’s how…” or “no, sorry” answer, while if you were in Windows support, every question inevitably started with “maybe” and led to hours and hours of digging, tweaking, and testing. And in many ways, the same holds true with the iPhone today: One feature set and a limited range of settings. And in very narrow ways, that leaves room for Apple to learn something from Windows Mobile.

What Windows Mobile Does Right

Again, I’m including HTC in this equation, and from that standpoint, they deserve credit for upping the game with a VGA quality screen and a release schedule that allows them to continuously field the latest and greatest mobile processors.

On the Windows Mobile side proper, the beast is so infinitely tweak-able it might as well be a hobbyist kit. Dig deep enough, and you can find settings for how you’d like your settings, and settings for those settings as well.

What Apple Could Do Better

While my heart remains set on a Nano-esque 202dpi screen (the current iPhone is 160dpi) bringing 720p to the mobile world, I would realistically expect VGA’s 640×480 in the next revision. The iPhone, with the video-out cables, is already capable of pumping 640×480 to your TV, why not to the iPhone screen? And while a yearly, single product release cycle doesn’t give much room for proc bumps, going beefy from the start, and getting the new chips early like Apple does with their laptops and desktops, would keep up the cutting-edge tradition and reputation, and help see devices healthily though their annual life cycles. (This might even be something proprietary chips via the recent PA Semi purchase could help with…)

On the configuration side, while Windows Mobile has ‘em, they’ve also left them pretty much scattered every which where but under under a unified Settings area, which is precisely where the iPhone sorts them. However, though its certainly understandable that Apple is focusing on the casual user, surfacing some lower-level options a la Windows Mobile, organized and implemented with Apple’s fit and finish, would go a long way to appeasing power users who currently turn to jailbreaking in a desperate attempts to get closer to the metal. On the Mac side, there are 3rd party apps that create GUIs for otherwise Terminal-only settings, and while I’m not suggesting (though maybe pipe dreaming a little…) that Apple should provide an official way to get Terminal up on the iPhone, an Advanced button that allowed for more options and deeper tweaking would be a happy medium for many users.

(What, you thought I’d beat the dead horse of cut and paste?)

2. Nokia’s Mobile Video Creation

“I’m streaming live right now, come chat!” is pure Twitter bacon (like spam, but you opted in to it). Many tech pundits, who are also iPhone users, love the Web 2.1 ability to stream video from anywhere and everywhere, whether it’s Robert Scoble shoving a camera in front of economic powerhouses, or the infinitely better looking Cali Lewis demoing Wii fit for the good of the masses, or the first lady of Apple (and self-confessed Jobstalker) iJustine zooming down the highway, live streaming video, especially live streaming mobile video, is the latest IT thing.

Many (most?) of these bleeding edge technojournalists are also Apple fans and devoted iPhone users. So, the fact that they’re all using N95′s to stream their mobile videos shows that Apple could learn something from Nokia.

What Nokia Does Right

Say what you want about Nokia’s Soviet-military design aesthetic and their rather pathetic North American release schedules, they know how to throw a camera at a smart phone. The N95 sports a massive 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens and DVD(ish) caliber video capture. This compares to the rapidly obsoleting 2 megapixel cam on the iPhone, which also fails to enjoy any Apple-provided video capture (which means jailbreaking and loading unsupported third party apps are your only current option).

So, while Apple and the iPhone’s built-in iPod rules the roost when it comes to consuming mobile media, the N95 can’t be touched when it comes to creating that media on the go. This is why all those aforementioned iPhone toting blogerati, when they clog my Twitter feed with their live streaming announcements, are streaming live via the N95.

What Apple Could Do Better

There have been rumors of an upcoming iChat Mobile application, and even video conferencing, and that’s a start. Apple, however, stands alone in 360 degree spherical integration, and while they don’t have as massive a footprint in most of them the way Microsoft might, they at least have a toe in all of them, from hardware, to software, to services, from production, to processing, to deployment, to consumption. You can fire up Final Cut Pro on your iMac, create a movie, upload it to .Mac and sync a copy to your iPhone. Imagine that power harnessed around mobile media creation?

Right now, QIK and Nokia need each other to produce streaming video (while the N95′s battery lasts, that is). Imagine an iPhone with a decent camera and video capture that could stream live via, or send recorded clips to, .Mac gallery. And imagine if Apple took the much-needed step of enabling support for UstreamTV, stickam, Flickr, and YouTube.

Coupled with seamless integration with the Mac, iMovie 08, and higher end apps, and — BOOM — the king of mobile media consumption becomes the king of mobile media creation as well.

Everyone could be a life-caster.

1. Android’s Cloud and Location Based Services

I know. Android is still somewhere between vaporware and the eternal beta tag that hounds so many of Google’s initiatives. How could they be my #1? Here’s the thing: with a few notable exceptions (we’ll get to those in a paragraph or two), they’re batting nearly 1000 on all “cloud services” right now. And the cloud is the future.

What are cloud services? Most of us run applications locally on our computers. We buy software, install it, and use it to save files on our hard drive. Cloud services change that game entirely. They run applications on servers (often huge data centers) that we access via our browser (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox), or through a dedicated client (iTunes, Sidebar Objects, Dashboard Widgets, etc.). Instead of buying them, we get them for free, sponsored by advertising, or via paid subscription. And instead of saving files locally, we have the option of saving them on the same servers (and data centers) the services themselves run on. We may lose some potential privacy and control, but we gain the advantage of multiple backups scattered over many geographies to preserve our data. If you think this doesn’t sound too different than the old server-client model, or the Sun and Oracle predictions of the network being the computer, you’re right. Just on a far greater scale.

What are location-based services? According to Google, the next gold rush. It’s tying the cloud in to your current location, based on WiFi, and better yet — GPS coordinates.

Apple provides some of these services already, with .Mac mail, iDisk storage, .Mac galleries, Back-to-my-Mac, and Sync, and rumors indicate they may be amping it up with IMAP IDLE-style “push” email and PIM sync, and maybe even a complete revamp with the next release, but they still could learn a lot from Google.

What Google Does Right

Confession: I’m a .Mac subscriber. Yes, it’s buggy and overpriced, but Back-to-my-Mac and the Sync features alone were enough to lure me in. Nevertheless, Google owns this space. They’re predicted to earn more than Microsoft’s Windows + Office monopoly soon, and some say that’s only the beginning. Indeed, the entire raison-d’être for Android is to give away an OS in hopes of getting Google’s services onto more phones and thus, into more hands.

They want you to meet an old friend over one of their Open Social powered networks, use their email to contact the old friend, their search to find a great diner near the both of you, their calendar to schedule a lunch, their Docs suite to get some work done while you’re waiting, their Blogger to write up the event, and their Picasa gallery to store pictures of your reunion. (All with tasteful text and banner ads, tuned per your interests and location, served up along with your results and data)

What’s more, many of their cloud services allow for easy collaboration. You can share your calendar, work on your spreadsheet along with some colleagues logged in back at the office, and publish everything online for the world to see.

And the most important piece — indeed the missing link up until recently — Google Gears allows for offline persistence; you can keep using many of your cloud apps and cloud-stored data even when you don’t have a WiFi or cell connection. If you have to get on a plane to see your old friend, you can keep typing away, and when you land everything will sync back up.

What Apple Could Do Better

Where Google strikes out is integration. Their offerings are a disjointed and sometimes disoriented mishmash of homebrews and buyouts, with nowhere near the cohesive user experience or inter-offering leverage Apple could provide. Until recently, some services didn’t even work under a single login. There are also huge holes in their offerings, like Amazon S3- or Microsoft Skydrive-like storage (yes, you can rig up gDrive, but I’m talking official offerings here).

Apple already has some of these holes filled (iDisk), but are missing many more pieces themselves. There are suggestions Apple doesn’t “get” social networking (or doesn’t want to get it). But an easy to use blogging service built into .Mac and the iPhone would be an excellent start. And given Apple’s existing “Cult of Mac”, a social network tied into that admittedly snobbish demographic would be an easy sell as well. Tie it into the location-based services (opt-in, of course) and suddenly the cloud network takes on physicality as well. Instead of “Steve’s Twittering: Meet up at the Mothership after Keynote”, Steve can see how many of his friends and contacts are already at Keynote, and tying into search, calendar, IM, and other services could make for a very easy workflow to set up the meet.

This brings me back to the integration. The way Contacts flows into the Apple client for Google Maps gives a hint at how it should “just work”. The iPhone Maps app in general shows that Apple can make hybrid client/cloud software better than anyone on the planet. Imagine that leveraged across the device?

Get an email with a spreadsheet, and instead of just a preview, you could launch iWork Online, make your edits, and have them available to all team (or family — Apple’s consumer focus!) members instantly. Still working when you get on that plane? Newer versions of WebKit promise offline modes with database support for just such an eventuality, and WebKit is the foundation of the iPhone’s MobileSafari browser, and much of its data rendering in general).

And once the iPhone scales, and iPhone data starts to get aggregated and leveraged (with firm privacy and security policies!) for the benefit of other iPhone users, watch out. Today’s social networks and sharing proof-of-concepts will looks positively anemic.

Apple (or an Apple/Google alliance even?) could get an immediate edge going into the next great paradigm shift in computer technology.

Conclusion

So there you have them: better Blackberry-style email management, Treo-centric focus on click counting, Windows Mobile-ish configurability, Nokia inspired mobile video production, and Google Android beating cloud services are my top 5 things the iPhone could learn from the competition.

Is Apple already thinking along these lines? We’ll have to wait for WWDC — and likely Macworld 2009 — to know for sure. How about you? If Apple could take 5 things from the competition to improve YOUR iPhone, what would they be?

Not evil twin to theiPhoneBlog.com Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

BREAKING! RIM to Preemptively Release bbTablet!

We don’t break fake news here often, so when we do, you know it’s going to be big — and dare we say — bold. No, scratch that, BOLDER!

Keenly aware that Apple may be releasing the long-anticipated iTablet at WWDC this June, and fed up with being called on for blatantly copying the design of the iPhone, RIM has decided to strike first this time and rush out a tablet of their very own: the bbTablet, aka Blackberry 1200, aka BOLDER!

Crackberry.com probably has one on order from eBay as we speak, but it’s tiPb that’s scored the exclusive specs: ultra-wide 1920×320 “Lawrence of Arabia” screen, OSish 4.6, and full desktop size Qwerty keyboard! Take that, Apple!

Mike “Deadpan Funnyman” Lazaridis, when asked for fake comment, had this to say about what makes RIM’s device the “iTablet Killer”:

Full desktop Qwerty keyboards. I’m sorry, it really is. I’m totally not making this up. Totally. People don’t like screens. They really don’t. Makes them squint. And read. Totally. They’re getting tired of looking at their old tablets and they’re coming into the stores and they want to be able to do, like, Facebook and they want to be able to do, like, instant messaging and they want to be able to do, like, e-mail and they ask for those features thinking that they’re going to get another tablet, and I tell them they don’t need screens for those things, they need keyboards, big @$$ keyboards. Totally. They need the (BlackBerry) BOLDER because it’s the best devices for doing those kinds of activities. And so what is the defining factor? The keyboard. I mean, if the suits would let me, I’d ship without a screen at all. 100% keyboard. Totally.

RIM Bends Over (Backwards) for India

Sadly, and shamefully, this is news of the unfake kind. We’ve covered the seemingly endless RIM vs. India debacle before (where by debacle we mean “India says they want to spy on all Blackberry traffic” and “RIM says want fries with that?”) and now, according to Crackberry.com, it looks to finally be resolved. So what was the sticking point? Did India want a way to reassure citizens they were restricting their surveillance to dully processed, court-certified “people of interest”? Nope. Did RIM fight for the privacy of their user base? Not so much either. Seems all RIM wanted was some legal @$$ cover in case, you know, giving India the keys to their digital vault resulted in personal data being made public.

Jeez. Ya think?

So India now joins China and Singapore as countries RIM actively helps violate the privacy of their citizens? Nice! Unless you’re one of the citizens… But it isn’t like you’re not about to get a heckova better option soon anyway…

The Worst of All Worlds?

Corporate crony stuck with your company’s massive overspending on a RIM server and legacy dependence on Microsoft monopolyware? Desperate — willing to do anything! — for some small sip of ice water in big, buggy server hell?

Okay, just DON’T DO THIS!

Not since Sony Ericsson’s Flashenjavastein Monster has anything so hideous blighted the mobile world. (Note to Interwebs, why must you upload images we can never unexperience?)

If you want an iPhone, get an iPhone. If you want Vista, go tell Steve Ballmer you’re the one. In either case, when it comes to these “themes”, in the words of Casey and Dieter: EPIC NO!

Now GSM Can Has Outdated Treo’s 2!

Not so fast, AT&T and Sprint users! Been making fun of the Palm 800w inflicted on the CDMA world? Well, it’s karma time! TreoCentral.com and WMExperts.com have double-teamed-up to bring a little payback in the form of the newly leaked Treo 850! That’s right, 50 more Treo points wrapped up in the same 600-ish package, albeit with a sure-to-win-innovation-of-the-decade new feature: flush screen!

Hey Palm, 2003 called and they would kindly like their device back.

And in No Other News

It’s happening just like we said it would: Apple has set the bar so high, other manufacturers are now ducking under it. Witness Nokia. Now, if you live in North America like we do, you might think Nokia is just that great Norfinwedish furniture store — you know, where you pick up stuff on the cheap and then break a thumb and die cursing trying to put it together yourself? Well, apparently in the rest of the world they sell smartphones (we were just as surprised, honest). We might of known that, of course, if their US market share hadn’t free-fallen from 20% to 7% in the last two years (not coincidentally the time frame between the N95′s launch in Europe to the last neck-bearded blog post vaguely remembering it still hadn’t really seen the light of day in the US…)

The Bold. The Storm. The Thunder. One iClonic product after another. How does Blackberry do it? Mole in Apple guru Jonathan Ive‘s ultra-secure design studio? Unlikely. Telephoto lens from Waterloo? Impractical. So, what is the secret to all of RIM’s post-iPhone Blackberry’s looking (and soon-to-be-functioning?) so much like Apple’s little pocket universe-dent’er? According to RIM CEO, and noted internet deadpan funnyman, Mike Lazaridis, it’s a simple combination of technology right out of Apple’s (and this blog’s!) back yard:

[W]e have a time machine somewhere, or some kind of magic crystal ball or something.

Apple Time Machine + TiPB Crystal Ball = Blackberry Bold?

To be fair, Lazaridis’s full context was that the Blackberry Bold DIDN’T copy Apple, but had been independently designed 3.5 years ago by RIM, and any similarities (such as the glossy black facade and chrome trim) to Apple’s iPhone were purely coincidental.

Of course, Apple has a long history of design, including the use of just these types of form factors and materials, leading up to, including, and past the iPhone (hello, iMac!), whereas RIM has… none. Nada. Zip. Zilch. So while it’s possible the Bold just happened to be independently conceived of prior to the iPhone going public (yet released nearly a full year after…), how likely is it?

Frankly, with the way Lazaridis seems to lust after talk about it, the iPhone very well could be RIM’s “precious”. And given the nearly obsessive amount of (disjointed and reactionary) response RIM’s displayed post-iPhone, my guess is “not very.”

What do you think?

Read Via

Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

WinMob on ur Blackberryz

No, Crackberrians, no need to have an OS attack. Ballmer isn’t threatening to unleash his BSOD’d “platform” on the Javaware that passes to power your little e-mail monster (yet). Our bad. Maybe we should have titled this “WMExperts on the Blackberry Bold”, or maybe just “Hawt or Not?” instead?

Anyway, seems WMExperts.com had this to title about the first-to-market iClone job from RIM:

Alright, the BlackBerry 9000 is Hawt

Think of It as an iPhone With a Broken Touchscreen

Blackberryz in ur iTunez

Sadly, this title is accurate. First RIM announces a $150 million development fund for “all mobile platforms” (read “iPhone”, since pretty much every other platform has had development going for years now and should already be a huge success, right?). Then, flabbergast-ingly enough, RIM — incapable of, you know, actually engineering their own way to effortlessly sync media to the Blackberry even with $150 million to throw at it — has decided to use Apple’s. So far there are no reports of RIM actually licensing iTunes connectivity from Apple, like… say… Apple just licensed Exchange ActiveSync connectivity from Microsoft.

Oksy, so let’s get this straight. First, RIM says they’ll give to the iPhone whether Apple likes it — or needs it — or not, and now they’ll take. Fiendishly clever, Lazaridis. Or it would be if you were a 12 year old 133t Hax0r in your parents’ basement, and not the CEO of the (technically) dominant smartphone maker in the world.

Hey RIM, how’d you like it if Ballmer monkey-boy danced his way into your NOC?

Epic kludge.

State of the WinMob — A Microsoft Mulligan?

Microsoft pundit and Apple-baiter extraordinaire, Paul Thurrott gave an(other) impromptu State of Windows Mobile speech on last week’s Windows Weekly:

You know, Windows Mobile is horrible. [...] It’s horrible. Horrible. [...] Don’t even get me started, we don’t have time. I… I… Windows Mobile is a disaster. [...]

[Is Windows 6.1 better?] Better than what? Yeah, it’s better than 5. But so what? This thing has the latest, 6.1 or whatever, the phone I’m using now. God, what a… it’s terrible. It’s terrible. They should be ashamed of themselves. They’ve had this thing… I don’t.. God, it’s embarrassing.

And, you know, I stuck around and I had the motorola Q for along time which I stuck with because of the high speed network and the fact that I could tether it to my laptop and use it as a high speed modem for my laptop. That’s great. I miss that. I’m going to tell you, though, the Windows Mobile stuff.. geez… It’s like going back.. Oh, god, it makes Windows 95 look futuristic by comparison.

[Is it challenging getting an OS onto mobiles?] Okay, Apple did something pretty impressive.

[The iPhone doesn't have cut and paste.] I hear ya, I’m just saying, you know, from a usability standpoint — night and day. [...] This thing is a piece of crap. They should completely start over. It’s horrible. It’s a complete waste of time. They should just pretend this never happened. This is.. it’s… it is the mulligan. They should just start over. Nobody uses the thing anyway. It’s just ridiculous.

[Treo 700w, HTC, and people love Sprint handsets...] I wouldn’t say love. Remember what they love about these devices are the form factors. The keyboards and, you know… You’re not going to find too many people who… I… I shouldn’t say that because, of course… [...]

You know what, look, I hear from Apple guys obviously. At least that I get. I mean, I could have my arguments with these people but at least Apple makes high quality stuff so we can arg–we can nitpick over whatever we want.

If someone is actually going to come to me and explain that Windows Mobile is not, in fact, a piece of crap, I’m sorry, I don’t entertain lunacy. This… This thing is ridiculous.

No, it’s terrible. No, it’s not even like a debate, it’s terrible. There’s no — you know what I’m saying — we can debate things. We can’t debate this.

[...] It’s terrible.

There’s nothing there. And this from a man who likes the Zune…

Yowza.

Palm’s 800th Verse — Same as the First!

Okay, even we have to admit it: the upcoming 800w is the Palm device we always wanted…

Back in 2005 when it should have shipped.

It takes until now to get WiFi? Now? Really? And still not on Palm OS “Granite”, but on Windows Mobile 6.1, which even HTC is desperately trying to hide like a Remond-headed stepchild?

Treocentral.com has the first “spy” pics, but honestly, who can tell if that’s even an 800w and not a 680 or even a 600 with a clever case and antenna mod?

And word to the “shadowmite”, how about obscuring the serial number on the proto and, hey, your reflection on the screen, so, you know, Colligan doesn’t have the hounds unleashed next time he spots you sneaking into the antiquities wing of Palm HQ, b’okay?

Definitions of Nova

nova |ˈnōvə|
noun ( pl. -vae |-vē; -ˌvī| or -vas ) Astronomy
a star showing a sudden large increase in brightness and then slowly returning to its original state over a few months.

Do they pick these code names just so these columns write themselves? Seriously. Nothing says next generation, second coming, return to dominance like something that explodes, kills all life, only to end up an infinitely sucking mass of dark matter.

On the other hand, since it won’t ship until first half 2009 at the earliest — by which time iPhone 3.0 will be on its way, and maybe a new, non-iClony Blackberry revolution (we dare to dream!) as well — perhaps Colligan and Co. really are code name picking geniuses?

And In No Other News…

We already covered how Sprint is spending wasting $150 million advertising dollars just to make the brand new Samsung Instinct pale in copy-catastrophe next to the last gen iPhone, but in an effort to be more helpful than hurtful, here’s some advice:

Just spend the money giving the devices away to your few remaining customers. You’ll move far more units than if you try and sell them, and maybe even engender a few more months of gratitude usage.

Wow, being nice really is its own reward…

Ah, comedy, thy name is Lazaridis!

What, you may ask, makes the CEO of Blackberry manufacturer RIM so knee slapping-ly funny? Deadpan Setups (on April 27th) like this:

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.”

Followed by absolutely killer punch-lines (on May 13th):

The BlackBerry Thunder, as it is codenamed now, (all you “reporting” on it as the Storm are incorrect) will launch in Q3 of this year. It is a full touchscreen BlackBerry — no slide out keyboard

Please. Ouch. My ribs. I can’t take it…

Ahem… Okay. So, if RIM is now iCloning a touchscreen of their very own, is it really that Lazaridis and his friends can’t type on a touchscreen, or that they just can’t type?

(Would go a long way towards explaining those tic-tactiles, wouldn’t it?)

Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

[Note: Due to the dust settling from our mega-merger -- and our subsequent allergies -- we’re keeping it short this week. Just the low-lights.]

Crackberry Cracks the Net

Big week down Crackberry.com way as none other than Kevin himself plastered the interwebs — from Daring Fireball to Engadget to Gizmodo — with his exclusive videos, reviews, and… video reviews of one of the most hotly anticipated handsets of the year.

Or so we thought.

Nice try, Crackberry. While the elegant chrome bezel and glossy black facade almost had us fooled, the huge, honking tic-tactile keyboard kicked our aesthetic back to reality.

So what device did Crackberry.com break the interwebs (and likely Kevn’s paypal account) for? Confession: they lost us at keyboard, so — shrug — Treo 400?

Assault and Blackberry

Celebrity publicists, eager to meet the needs of the Paris Lohan’s of the world, often seem to karmically torture their torturous clients with whatever RIM product Amazon will pay them to take (while expensing it at full price, no doubt…)

But what about the poor celebrities that have to use the tiny screened, tiny keyboarded, media-challenged monsters? What are they supposed to do?

Turns out one got so angry she tried to destroy her hated handset by bashing it (repeatedly?) into a Brooklyn neighbor.

No jail time for the celeb, Crackberry.com tells us. The Blackberry? Authorities are reportedly seeking the recycle penalty.

Attack of the iClones

Our special Wait-a-Thon edition covering the HTC Touch Diamond, and posts on the Philips x800 and the Sprint Instinct $100 million ad campaign show that some carriers and manufacturers can, by throwing vast amounts of money down the pit, make a sixth generation Windows Mobile handset flounder and ultimately still fail to copy the inaugural iPhone. Point taken.

Now how about taking this point — and all that money, engineering skill, and software architecture experience — and making a great Windows Mobile handset that is, you know, like not totally ashamed to be Windows Mobile?

Windows Seat on the TyTn’ic

The good: WMExperts.com lets it be known that HTC will finally fix the crippled video drivers that have been plaguing TyTn II owners since the dawn of time (or, at least, since the dawn of them buying the disastrous device).

The bad: They probably won’t be fixing it for any version anyone is likely to own, including the AT&T Tilt.

The ugly: HTC won’t be fixing the crippled drivers pandemic to any of their other devices either.

Nope, they’re too busy claiming the shoddy performance of their grafted-on TouchFLO interface on the Diamond iClone will be fixed in a future update. Credibility much?

Super-Size Your Centro!

With over a million Centro’s served, Palm finally asks the next logical question: want fries with that?

Yup, TreoCentral.com says official Centro branded accessories are on the way. Or more of them. Or just a mediocre cradle and audio adapter. Or something. But at least now every bargain-basement, ancestral-generation would-be smartphone neophyte can get the combo.

Look, More Palm News!

We can’t believe it either, but we actually have two (2!) minor Palm items this week. And speaking of minor Palm items, it looks like both the 800w and 850v (or 500z or whoknowswhat?) will see the cold, cruel light of day some time this year (and not, as many thought, flux-capacitor-like back in 2001 where their design seems frozen…)

And In No Other News

In apparent retaliation for the iPhone, and the sense of childlike wonder it is now threatening to restore around the world, those Norfindwedish fiends at Nokia are now retaliating by bringing more of their hyper-powered, Soviet designed handsets to North America, including the N95, a handset so costly it made Steve Balmer briefly consider picking up a relatively inexpensive iPhone…

What’s next, the similarly military sounding E66 and E71? (Or were those old Epson dot-matrix designations…?)

Death by utilitarianism. Fiends.

Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

Official: RIM’s Finally Flipped!

What, you thought we’d go straight to the outage double-header? Come on. While we certainly agree there’s no better time to hit a mobile than when it’s (service is) down, even we have some small modicum of mercy. (And by mercy we mean it happens so often it’s not really considered news anymore…)

So we’re switching gears, just as Crackberry.com tells us RIM has flipped out. Good news, RIM has taken a short break from trying to iClone the Apple iPhone. Bad news, they’ve decided to clone the Moto RAZR instead… StarTac much?

Seriously though, we applaud diversity and innovation, and can’t wait to see Blackberry’s next exciting form factor. The brick? The suitcase? The rotary-dial booth? Sarcastic minds want to know!

Storm Warnings

Remember that short iCloning break we mentioned earlier? Neither does Blackberry, apparently. Not content with merely copying the iPhones silver bezel and rounded slab factor, Crackberry.com tells us they’ve now got their sites set on the touch-screen too.

Known as the Storm — or not — RIM affectionately refers to it as the Apple Killer because, as we all know, being able to murder fruit falls right below HTML email on the feature list. Box, consider yourself checked!

No specs or date or anything but desperate promissory vapor yet, though. When exactly did RIM become Microsoft?

Speaking of Microsoft and iClones…

As Redmond gets the Mobile OS X 1.0 competitive WinZuneMob 7.0 ready for beta sometime around two-thousand-and-never, hardware partner HTC is picking up the iClone slack with not one but two little “Inspired by Apple in Cupertino” numbers.

First up, running version 6.6.6 (or 6.1, it’s so hard to keep track!), is the Sony Ericsson branded XPeria (proudly sporting a VISTAperia Capable sticker, no doubt). WMExperts.com expects it to ship mid-September, and in typical Windows fashion it will try to compete with the similarly expected iPhone 2.0 by throwing in every feature they can think of, including a slide-out kitchen sink.

Second up is the Diamond Touch or Touch Pro or Out of Touch or whatever millionth derivative of the Touch trademark they’re overcompensating with next. Similar specs (though smaller screen — c’mon HTC, we know if you try really hard you can iClone Mini your way into a postage-stamp 720p!) hampered by the same OS.

Looks like it might just be rocking a “squircle” control there, doesn’t it? Could this be the fabled Zune Phone? We’re one Monday morning Monkey Boy dance away from knowing for sure…

Microsoft Kills the Digital Stars

Does MSN Music play on WinVistaZuneMob devices? We don’t really know, since we don’t really know anyone who uses MSN Music… or WinVistaZuneMob. But if they did, and you do, they won’t for much longer.

Proving once again how Digital Rights Management (DRM) is all about enhancing consumer enjoyment (TM, RIAA), Microsoft has announced it will soon be enhancing the amount of time consumers will enjoy no longer listening to their MSN purchased music.

As of August 2008, turns out MSN Music will be turning off, meaning no more authorizations. Sure, you can keep on using any machine you already authorized, provided you never, ever, change it or its OS. (No worries there, though, hey Vista sales numbers?)

Hmm, maybe this is why Microsoft tossed the “PlaysForSure” name last December. After all, can’t call it “PlaysForSure” if it doesn’t anymore, right? So what did they rebrand the new, non-working name to? Oh, right… “Certified for Windows Vista”…

All Access Pass

Typical bonanza week for Palm news…

So, anyway, Dieter Bohn (the man who totes more smart phones than the FCC) caught up with Access, formerly Palm Source, formerly Palm, the makers of Palm OS Garnet, (which has literally shipped on every Treo since the stone age), Palm OS Cobalt, (which has literally never shipped), and now the Access Linux Platform (which is only taking slightly longer to develop than Longhorn at this point).

His conclusion? Things are going better than he previously thought. (Of course, any long time listener of the Treo Central Treo Cast knows how low a bar that was to crawl over…)

And In No Other News…

Remember last week:

Our Norfinwedish friends over at Nokia may have convinced Sony BMG to join Universal Music in offering the “unlimited” Comes-With-Music-And-Hefty-Price-Bump market-fart. Maybe. It’s been delayed until mid-2008, probably to get the DRM working extra-poorly. At least that’s all Engadget can Google-translate for now. No doubt they’re preoccupied getting a post ready for when the service goes bye-bye, the DRM locks down, and everyone’s stuck with “unlimited” Can’t-Be-Authorized-Again-Silence…

Sounds even better after the MSN Music debacle, doesn’t it?

[Ed: We're bringing back the Wait-a-Thon and making it regular again. Sorry we dropped it off there for awhile, folks. With all those 3G and iPhone 2.0 rumors flying about these past couple of weeks, it almost felt like the release was already here. In the meantime, comment on any post tagged "Wait-a-Thon" for your chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card!]

This is not a response to Crackberry.com‘s excellent article, Top 10 Reasons Why the iPhone Is NO BlackBerry. Quite frankly, the iPhone doesn’t need a response; it’s the rest of industry that’s so desperately trying to find one to the iPhone.

I don’t know about you, but it’s getting more than a little tiring hearing everyone compare themselves to — and constantly try to rip-off — the iPhone. I can’t surf a website or cruise the main without some claw-handed Crackberry addict, neck-bearded Palm artifact, or frazzle-haired WinMob frustrati glaring and frothing with barely-contained envy at the perfectly balanced, seamlessly integrated, lustfully convergent iPhone held ever-so casually in my grip.

They know the iPhone is beyond cool. Sure, they cling to their once innovative, formerly revolutionary (at least in the case of Palm and RIM) devices, the ones overwhelming nostalgia or massive business infrastructure investment won’t let them slam to the ground and stomp into the call-dropping, web-mangling, constantly crashing oblivion they so richly deserve.

So the comparisons to the iPhone just won’t stop, despite the fact that the iPhone is pretty much incomparable. Don’t believe me? I’ve got ten reasons to back me up. And these aren’t minor feature gripes or personal peccadilloes. In proper Apple fashion, these are just 10 simple little words…

10. Communication

It’s right there in the name: iPhone. Steve Jobs said it himself at Macworld 2007: the killer smartphone app is voice. How ironic, then, that so many other smartphones so often kill voice.

Making and receiving calls without my phone freezing or crashing, as my previous device did almost daily, is huge. Unprecedented simplicity in everything from easily finding my way back if I navigate away from the phone app, to elegantly handling call holding, muting, and multiple output sources like Blue Tooth, to effortlessly setting up conference calls is huger still. I can’t remember how often I got lost, couldn’t get calls off my headset, or accidentally hung up on people with the confusing hackjobs that passed for interfaces on my previous smartphones.

The iPhone also introduced desktop-class HTML email rendering and “just the internet”, AJaX powered, standards compliant web browsing, along with interface innovations for SMS, .MAC gallery transfer for photos, and the ability to email YouTube videos, photos, and web links at the tap of a virtual button.

(The browsing is so good, ironically, everyone from Amazon to Facebook to popular blogging plugin makers are providing iPhone-optimized web pages now, lumping every other device into the substandard “mobile” experience or the abortive hell that is WAP).

While some may grumble that this or that power-user feature, or device-specific protocol is missing, Apple has proven they can deliver updates faster and better than anyone in the industry (going from version 1 to 1.1.4, with 2.0 immanent, in less than a year and adding significant capability in the process).

For the user, the interface is the app, and for Apple, their interfaces are remarkably back-end independent. So, if the iPhone needs to improve SMS, or add IM or MMS for now until the differences between desktop and handset protocols evaporate, well Apple’s already got patents pending for that as well.

In the mean time, as most of the iPhone commercials show, having music or video or web pages fade away when your phone rings only to fade right back when your done — that’s truly killer.

Listen up, communication-centric users, especially those who want the internet in their pocket, are all over the iPhone.

9. Media

The iPod is the king of all mobile media, with an over 70% share of the US market. People love them their iPods and Steve Jobs has repeatedly said the iPhone is the best iPod Apple has ever made.

Just look at the stats: up to 16GB of flash storage, a 3.5”, 160dpi wide screen display, and seamless integration with the #1 music and leading downloadable media store in the US, iTunes.

Apple can also extend iPhone media in ways their competitors can only dream. From high-end Final Cut Pro for Hollywood scale video production, to (Mac) desktop Garage Band podcast and ringtone creation, to Apple TV syncing and streaming the same iTunes content to your big screen TV, Apple literally can create, manage, and deploy iPhone media from end-to-end. They can do it easily, and what’s really scary (for the competition) is that this is something the iPhone merely inherited. (Imagine what they might just be preparing for the future…)

No one else, not desktop monopolists, old media stalwarts, or upstart email monsters, even come close.

For media-centric users who don’t want to fill their pockets with a second device just for voice and data, the iPhone’s barrier of entry is zero.

8. Gaming

Though not to anywhere near the extent of media, Apple has been integrating gaming into the iPod — and into iTunes — for years now, and with the SDK Roadmap event, they’re getting serious about putting it on the iPhone as well.

EA’s Spore and Sega’s Super Monkey Ball (among others, including Apple’s homegrown Touch Fighter) were given the spotlight, taking full advantage of the iPhone’s unique video and audio power, accelerometer, and multi-touch controls. Sega even said they’d so underestimate the iPhone’s potential they had to fly in another developer just to crank up the graphics. Wow.

No other smartphone, even today, can boast the 1 year old iPhone’s raw feature set (chips + sensors + inputs + display). As for gaming handhelds, the Sony PSP can’t fully match it (though their dedicated chipsets and vast software library clearly give them a huge advantage… for now). Only the Nintendo DS, which sports touch and mic, is competitive (massive understatement given they’re the sales leader in mobile gaming).

But here’s the thing: while other smartphone are playing copycat and catchup with 1.0, the iPhone is poised to go to 2.0, and while dedicated gaming kits have undeniable advantages, they can’t make cell phone calls, can’t play iTunes media, and can’t do a host of other things the iPhone delivered on day one.

For anyone who wants to game and doesn’t want to carry around a second, dedicated box to go with their media-savvy phone, June will score for the iPhone as well.

7. Business

Make no mistake, the aforementioned iPhone SDK event didn’t only reach out to gamers, it offered a firm handshake to business as well. Exchange ActiveSync (not to be confused with the confusingly named desktop Windows ActiveSync), 802.1x, Cisco VPN, remote wipe, Enterprise “App Stores”, and a host of other features were released as part of the iPhone 2.0 beta.

What’s more, unlike RIM’s technology, which uses a single Network Operations Center (NOC) to handle all Blackberry data transactions — making the service infamously prone to failures and terrifyingly susceptible to security compromises, state-sponsored and otherwise, ActiveSync offers a direct connection between enterprise server and user client. No Chinese or Singaporean RIM-supplied proxy snoopers, no Indian data disconnections. With ActiveSync, each individual business’ server would have to be individually compromised or blocked, a vastly more difficult task.

For Microsoft users worried about a “premiere” experience, having an Apple client may just redefine their concept of “premiere”. And for open-source advocates, Apple’s been their from the beginning, with full support for standards like IMAP, and community-friendly initiatives like CalDAV.

Bottom line, the iPhone is in a unique position to appeal to almost all business-centric users who don’t want to lug around an second or third device just to watch a movie or play a game on the flight home, or call their loved ones when they land.

6. Convergence

Communication, media, gaming, and business. In one or two of these areas, other devices currently have an edge. That is, if you’re happy with the idea of carrying around a feature phone, iPod Touch, Nintendo DS, and Blackberry all strapped to your utility belt (I’ve been there and it wasn’t pretty!).

Convergence, however, doesn’t begin or end with just the iPhone. As we touched on before, Apple is the first, and so far only company to truly deploy spherical integration across their product line.

Apple designs its own hardware (iPhone handset), engineers its own operating system (OS X) and software (built in apps like MobileSafari Touch and the Google Maps client), creates its own accessories (docks, media cables, headsets, etc.), offers its own ecosystem (from Macs to the Apple TV, from iLife to Leopard Server), sells them all in their own retail Apple Stores (which bested Tiffanies last year in earnings per square foot), handles their own carrier activation via iTunes, provides value-added services (iPhoto books), runs its own cloud services (.Mac) and ties into other cloud service providers (Google search, Yahoo! weather), offers the #1 music marketplace in the US (iTunes), which also provides TV, movies, and a staggering amount of free audio and video podcasts, iTunes University, and other free content, and is about to be joined by the App Store, which may just do for 3rd party App sales what iTunes did for music.

Verizon commercials like to show a virtual network of technicians following its users around everywhere they go. Just imagine that commercial with Apple’s 360 degrees of integration backing up every iPhone user.

When it comes to convergence, nothing else matches the current iPhone’s capabilities, never mind its next-generation potential. Anyone looking for the “one device to rule them all” will find it all elegantly wrapped up in only one package: the iPhone.

5. Development

Okay, numbers 8 and 7 — and thus 6 — are still in beta. Fair enough. But what’s driving that beta is an SDK the likes of which has never been seen before in the mobile space.

Sure, some platforms use Sun’s “Compile once… er… often.. run anywhere” Java language/interpreter, or Microsoft’s Windows-in-name only kit, and others delve deep to the metal on Palm’s sold and bought-back and locked-in-stasis OS.

Apple, much as they miraculously managed to cram a UNIX-based OS, BSD networking, Open GL, and other desktop class systems into the iPhone, also delivered a remarkably mature, surprisingly polished SDK based entirely on their existing Mac Objective C and Cocoa (dubbed Cocoa Touch for the iPhone) architectures.

Far from the afterthought or hurried response partisan pundits paint it, thanks to Steve Jobs’ legacy from NeXTStep, its frameworks, and its processor independence (it’s run on PowerPC, x86, and now Arm), Mac developers instantly gained the ability to dive right into the system, while those familiar with other flavors of C quickly ramped up thanks to powerful tools like X-Code and Interface Builder.

(It was stated repeatedly during the SDK event that demoes were produced in just two weeks, mostly by developers who’d never touched Objective C before in their lives. Amazing.)

A desktop-class OS with desktop-class development tools leads to something no other smartphone maker has ever been able to deliver to consumers before: desktop class mobile Apps.

Even a cursory look at who’s announced development plans for the iPhone reveals an impressive list of real companies making real apps… maybe even Microsoft and RIM.

Combine all this with a serious attitude towards security, ensuring the platform doesn’t become unstable or an easy target for malware, along with an unprecedented delivery system in App Store — which will put every App in front of every iPhone user, including free Apps for free, and numbers 8, 7, and 6 might actually underestimate the iPhone’s ultimate appeal.

Basically, anyone who wants to run anything on the next great platform wants an iPhone.

4. Design

While software may sell systems, when electronics became mainstream consumers began to shop not only with their brains but with their senses and their tastes.

And if there’s one thing Apple has plenty of, it’s taste.

From the translucent berry-colored iMac and clamshell iBook that re-ignited Apple’s consumer push, to the iconic brushed-aluminum, rounded-rectangular slab that all but makes the computer disappear inside the ultra-thin current iMac, MacBook Air, and iPhone, Apple (or more specifically, the team led by perennial design award winner, Jonathan Ive) seems to hold the magic formula to modern, drool-inducing, industrial design.

Indeed, Apple has not only shaped this electronic generation, it’s shaped the design path of many of it’s copiers… er… competitors as well.

Let’s face it, for a long time garish gray or neon paint over chintzy plastic bodies that looked at though they were assembled from old lego parts with build quality straight out of the Soviet salvage committee were all consumers had to choose from. And, as the saying goes, while consumers don’t always notice good design, they sure do notice it’s absence. Apple knows this, just like they know for good design to be great, it has to be functional.

See, it’s not that Apple “just works”, it’s that Apple designs things, from first transistor to final trim, to “just work.”

Why else, at this very moment, would Jonathan Ive be jetting between NASA and Shenzhen finalizing some futuristic, light and yet durable stealth-like composite that will form the outer shell of the next most lusted-after consumer electronic device — the iPhone 3G?

So that when consumers see, touch, and use it, it’ll be just like the first iPhone — what they want.

3. Usability

I have a two-and-half-year old godson who, first time he picked up the iPhone, figured out how to navigate in and between photos, effortlessly type his ABCs and 123s on the soft keyboard, play with his numbers on the calculator, tap to show and hide video controls, use the camera, flick through the weather, and transition between them all with the solitary hard button on the device face. And not only that, he enjoyed it so much he wants to do it again and again (and again!) every time I see him. (If Apple would just add dial-by-photo, I swear he could call me on his own already).

Give him any other smartphone and you know what he could figure out? How to use it as a building block or a projectile (and with my luck, the latter). A quick search of YouTube will show he’s not the only infant interfacing with the iPhone either.

We’ve seen a lot of iClone skins and sku’s, attempts to duplicate the most superficial aspects of the iPhone, but what few competitors understand is that its not the gradients and transparencies, not the special effects and animation that make the iPhone’s software revolutionary — it’s the user experience.

Sure, I could lecture on about how animation hides transition, allows for error recovery, lends analog comfort, taps into intuitive understanding, and makes use of precious space in truly Tog-worthy fashion, but what’s the point?

Apple has made the smartphone so elegant and easy that a two-and-half year old not only can use, but really wants to. And they’ve done the same thing for adult consumers.

2. Brand

The little forbidden fruit with a bite out of it ranks up there with Superman’s S and the Golden McArches as one of the most recognized brands in the world.

Apple brought the first consumer computers to market with the Apple II, the first consumer GUI machines to market with the Mac, the first consumer MP3 (AAC if you want to get technical) players to market with the iPod, the first consumer music download service to market with iTunes. And in so doing, they’ve earned a reputation for cutting-edge, consumer-driven innovation.

Sure, Blackberries have their addicts, but the cult of apple is legendary and, as outlined before, far wider reaching than just the smartphone space. You can’t buy that kind of brand projection, trust, or loyalty (just ask Microsoft).

When Apple negotiates innovative features like Visual Voice-Mail, pressures carryings to lower data rates, gets Starbucks and AT&T to stop gouging and start giving away free WiFi at their hotspots, their brand is leveraged to benefit consumers.

When Apple Care or the Apple Store swaps out a 8GB iPhone with one dead pixel for a 16GB replacement, or instantly commands a managerial intervention for any unsatisfied email response, their brand is being protected to consumer advantage.

Other smartphone makers, who worry less about their lesser brands often abandon you the moment your credit card clears, or dump you to outsourced OEM ping-pong at the first sign of trouble. Is it any wonder the iPhone continually tops user satisfaction surveys?

1. Leadership

Apple is far from the sales leader in the smartphone space, yet they’ve instantly become the de facto market leader. When every other company is racing to copy Apple’s hardware and interface, and all competitive product releases are tripping over each other to proclaim themselves the iPhone (or Apple) Killer, they can’t be doing anything else but following.

Palm almost patented Zen with their original Treo, but then they got comfortable and stayed there, with the original Treo, long after the world — and technology — moved on. Blackberry made mobile email so addictive it’s likened to a drug (and for the record, please don’t drop and drive), but buried their head so far up their email they seemingly forgot about everything else. And Microsoft… well, if Zen has an opposite, it’s Windows Mobile, an OS whose power is matched only by its legacy handicaps and user impenetrability.

So now Palm is raiding Apple talent. RIM either wants to be the iPhone or just on it. And even die-hard Windows Mobile pundits have given up on Microsoft’s ability to deliver on even their most realistic of vaporwares.

That leaves Apple, alone atop innovation mountain. And luckily, that’s just where one Steven P. Jobs likes to meditate.

It’s impossible to discuss Apple’s leadership without discussing its leader. If any one factor encompasses Apple’s (and the iPhone’s) current success, it’s the CEO. Perfectly melding unsurpassed customer savvy with unequalled industry prescience, his singular focus and uncanny aesthetic have not only brought Apple back from the brink, but made it the greatest second act in tech history.

It’s largely due to Steve Jobs that no one else has, or can come close to the iPhone. Who else besides Jobs or Apple could sit on something like the iPhone for close to 3 years without so much as a peak or a peep. Who else could ditch the floppy one generation (iMac) and the optical disk the next (MacBook Air)?

Every great artist (like Johnny Ive’s design team) needs a patron and every benevolent dictatorship (like Apple Inc.) needs its guiding mind. As long as Apple has Steve Jobs, the competition can try to copy iPhone 1.0 all they want. Jobs is already putting the final, tiny touches on 2.0 and has his sites firmly set on 3.0 and 4.0. And that’s fine because Apple — as it proved when it killed the iPod Mini and replaced it with the Nano — is really the only one who can compete with Apple anyway.

Jobs has always said Apple makes the devices they themselves want to use. Well, they make the devices an ever increasing amount of consumers want to use as well.

Conclusion

So, there they are. The top ten reasons that every other smartphone maker on the planet keeps comparing themselves to the incomparable iPhone. Come WWDC in June, the official SDK release, and — dare we guess? — iPhone 3G debut, it’s only going to get worse (and harder!)

What do you think?

[Ed- Digg link...]

Rumors recently swirled about a super-secret RIM development project affectionately dubbed AK (for Apple Killer) that would help Blackberry not only retain market share in face of the iPhone juggernaut, but regain mind share which has wholly become the property of Apple as of late:

..two independent developers writing software for coming R.I.M. devices say that a touch-screen BlackBerry is in the works, and that R.I.M. engineers privately refer to it as the A.K. — for “Apple Killer.”

Would it be another iClone like the 9000? Would it be the fabled touchscreen Blackberry?

Turns out RIM’s Apple Killer might just be… er… the iPhone?

Apple Insider highlights a new “confidential” job posting way up Waterloo way:

“As part of a newly-created team, you’ll influence the development and design of BlackBerry software. This is a very confidential brand new team and a senior position within RIM so I can’t provide too many details. I guess you can figure out what it might be about though.”

While the position itself calls for Objective C, Cocoa, UI, AJaX, BT, and USB experience, and some have speculated that it could be a serious attempt by RIM to bring some 1st party, Mac native sync capabilities to the email monster, the more interesting rumor-mongers are rumor-mongering RIM apps for the iPhone SDK: Blackberry Connect anyone?

Personally, I don’t see RIM losing the one advantage they have, Crackberry addictive “push” email by giving the keys of the kingdom to Apple (though they have made Blackberry Connect for other platforms). Besides, they’re already copying the design and flirting with the touchy-feely interface, so why go developer now? Then again, Canadians are a polite people, so who knows?

What do you think?

Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

Outages Online

CrackBerry.com’s near-constant updates on Blackberry outages not enough for you? Need the latest, greatest, up-to-date-est news on RIM’s downtime in near real-time? Well, apparently so does the guy behind DataOutages.com. (Yes, we realize the domain name doesn’t explicitly convey that the site tracks RIM/Blackberry outages, but it’s with extra special schadenfreude we point out there really isn’t any other kind, b’okay?)

Amazon Pays People to Order Blackberries

We knew the mindset was shifting to Apple, the cool kids were all Cupertino-bound, the status simple was no longer cheap-plastic black but aircraft-grade aluminum, but — wow…

According to Crackberry.com, Amazon was actually paying people to take Blackberries off their hands last week. You read right. $75 big reasons to stick yourself with a tiny screen, tic-tactile keyboard, and all the outages you can eat.

Yeah, still too expensive for us as well…

India or Indiana?

No update on the great Indian crackberry crackdown this week, but in related news American GSM RIM-bounds have discovered their MyCingular.BlackBerry.net email is now being blocked — nay, permanently disabled — as well. Crackberry.com claims it’s some pre-announced corporate branding transition thingy-thangy. Sure. C’mon. Like they couldn’t try to come up with an even somewhat believable cover story?

Someone steals the White House Blackberry recycling box the very same week and we’re supposed to just accept it’s a coincidence? (Good thing they’d already switched to iPhones. Yeesh…)

Balmer: Can Has Moto Q for $99?

Yes you can, and I’ll cede the soap-box for a moment so John Gruber can tell you how that works out:

Motorola’s quarterly results: 27.4 million phones sold and $7.45 billion in revenue. But the bottom line? A $194 million loss. What matters is profit; market share and revenue only matter insofar as they lead to making money. Motorola sold 16 times more phones than Apple for at least 8 times more revenue — but is there a person on the planet who would trade Apple’s phone business for Motorola’s?

Epic failure there, Steve. No achievement points for you. What? You’ve got the RROD anyway?

Karma.

Hit up WMExperts.com for the grisly details…

Palm Dumping Unlocked 750s?

Massive markdowns on the ancient handset, at least according to TreoCentral.com. Will that help? Probably not. They need to take a page from RIM’s book and start paying people to order them? $1000 a pop sound about right?

Treo Tips and Sightings

Brian has branched out his excellent Tips column to TreoCentral, with a handy, dandy gem for contact lookups. By accident, however, he seems to have included screenshots from the 1999 vintage Palm V PDA’s app instead of the latest, greatest Treo 2008 version. The 2-bit, non anti-aliased interface is a dead give a–

What? Those are screenshots of the latest, greatest Treo?

Gulp! Moving on…

Seems Jennifer found Treo’s showing up all over TV. At first I thought that, what with the writer’s strike and all, the networks were so desperate to fill slots they used stuff from the History Channel. Turns out they were new episodes. For something called “Ugly Betty”.

Harsh.

And in No Other News

Our Norfinwedish friends over at Nokia may have convinced Sony BMG to join Universal Music in offering the “unlimited” Comes-With-Music-And-Hefty-Price-Bump market-fart. Maybe. It’s been delayed until mid-2008, probably to get the DRM working extra-poorly. At least that’s all Engadget can Google-translate for now. No doubt they’re preoccupied getting a post ready for when the service goes bye-bye, the DRM locks down, and everyone’s stuck with “unlimited” Can’t-Be-Authorized-Again-Silence…

Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

Blackberry Out of Outages?

Given CrackBerry.com’s near-constant updates on RIM’s outages, unscheduled, scheduled, re-scheduled, and beyond, I thought there would be no way RIM could top themselves again. Boy, was I wrong. This week marked the first time in a long time (long time being the history of this series, ‘natch) that RIM was complete out of outages!

Talk about poor supply-chain management. Sure, they’ve had infrastructure and service failures before, but a failure failure?

Brain trust in Waterloo: get on it!

India to RIM: Push This!

Those hoping RIM would conceded to India’s desire to invade the privacy and security of every user in the nation — by, for example, setting up proxy servers the way they have in China and Singapore, or just giving Indian security agencies the keys to encryption-city — tough luck!

Crackberry.com tells us Sriprakash Jaiswal, the Minister of State for Home Affairs, has gone and forced carriers to block any and all Blackberry to Blackberry messaging.

India and RIM will meet again soon, but the carriers aren’t wasting any time in fighting back themselves. Expected this week: new advertising campaigns, boasting the first Blackberries in the world with equally good email and media handling!

Microsoft: Gotta Get You Some! (Taste, That Is!)

While WMExperts.com was all over the WinMob news this week (doubtless yet another iterative handset or 3rd party patch for missing OS functionality), I really couldn’t follow it after exposure to Microsoft “leaked” “internal” “moral-booster” video for the troops. Blind and deaf, yet unmercifully not amnesia-tic, I’m left to wonder why they insist on releasing things the world can never un-experience?

(Poor Paul Thurrott was so traumatized he blamed the interwebs for not getting the “joke”, not realizing there are levels of joke, and failing at a joke this spectacular becomes an even bigger joke — laughing at it, not with it, b’okay Paul?)

Treo 800w — Beta!

You’re Palm. You revolutionized the handset industry only to fall so far behind you can no longer see the competition. You’ve saddled yourself with a monstrous OS almost as dated as your design specs. And due to chronic mismanagement you have no hope of releasing your own product or updated OS in the foreseeable future. What do you do?

Drop the beta bomb.

That’s right. Treocentral.com brings us word that Palm is looking for a few good beta testers. Beta, of course, implies unfinished, unfinished demands forgiveness, forgiveness leads to understanding when the inevitable shortcomings and delays follow.

So the company that should have innovated us an iPhone-class device 5 years ago may manage to release a single, dated device this year. In beta.

Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rubenstein!

And in No Other News…

Zip. Zippo. Ziltch. You’d have better odds getting Motorola’s software and hardware divisions working together. Seriously. It’s getting to the point where you just want to give Samsung a gesture alright…

Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

NOC Back to RIM’s Regularly Unscheduled Outages

Having finally mastered outages both unscheduled and scheduled, CrackBerry.com tell us RIM once again led the industry in outage innovation with the new, improved, cluster-buster outage. Your carrier, your area, your email? Dunno. Not when, not where. It was, however, limited to AT&T. And Verizon. And, yeah, T-Mobile. East coast only. Plus west coast. Oh, and in between too. We’re mostly sure about that. Mostly.

Compete with that, ActiveSync!

(Ha Ha! Indeed…)

RIM to India: Please… be Gentle.

Lest we forget that RIM’s Network Operations Center (NOC) isn’t just about communal service failures so regular they must be on a high-fiber diet, CrackBerry.com reminds us about their other advantage: convenient one-stop security and privacy violation spots.

Obliging to a degree that makes even Jerry Yang do a spit-take, RIM already maintains proxy-servers in Singapore and China designed to allow those governments to spy… er… surveil all data traffic in their respective dictatorships… er… countries. Now they may go so far as to provide the government of India the translation code(s) needed to decrypt the actual messages sent from Blackberries themselves(!?).

Important sacrifice necessary in the war against whatever amorphous threat-du-decade allows governments to trample individual privacy, or overt act of an evil empire in-the-growing? Well, the telcos support it, so easy call…

In Ur WinMob Runningz Android

Windows Mobile not making your current smartphone buggy and unstable enough for you? Google to the rescue, says WM Experts!

Simply take your old, outdated, Windows 6.0 or 6.1 phone and install the destined-to-be-in-perpetual-beta, Android OS on it, and bingo! (Or is it BSOD?) Twice the OS with half the resources and still nothing in the way of user experience!

Word on the street is that this is only step one. Soon you’ll be able to run Access Linux Platform on top of Android. And with ALP’s killer Garnet emulation mode, that’s a quad-OS sammitch writing so far from the metal you’ll never be disturbed by anything even remotely resembling a phone call again. (But you will be able to run all 300 8-bit 160×160 apps you bought for your Treo back in 1832!)

Lab tests show performance isn’t great, however. Only twice as fast as current milestone builds of VistaMob 7.

NOC-Down, Drab-Out

A special bonus WMExperts podcast this week, with special guest CrackBerry Kevin, brings us a techno-a-techno “push” email punch-out, as Blackberry’s Notorious NOC takes on Microsoft’s MSCMDM (aka Miskumdum, which, apparently, Superman must somehow trick Steve Balmer into saying backwards in order to banish the Monkey Boy back to his home dimension).

Elegantly available, ironically enough, via iTunes.

Treo 755p Sprint’ing Towards the Finished Line?

Treocentral.com reports that Sprint has stopped selling the latest — 2006 vintage — top-of-the-line Palm OS Treo 755p. Or not. Apparently the sales numbers really don’t indicate either way.

And in No Other News

First it was Blackberry, then it was Samsung, now Nokia has sent in an iClone of their very own.

Seriously.

How do you say “shameless” in Norfinwedish?

Gotcha. “Tube”.

Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

RIM/Blackberry Outage Huge Success

After several weeks of failure, CrackBerry.com reports that RIM finally succeeded in taking down their network, as scheduled. Unlike previous outages, reportedly the result of failed upgrade attempts, this one required the pulling down of an overly large Looney-Toons-esque lever marked with a big, red “OFF” and stymied Waterloo based engineers for weeks.

Proving it’s easier to succeed with failure than fail with success, once RIM restored their “push” to the legions of addicts, one CrackBerry.com commenter reported the service seemed slower.

Great. Last week they copied the iPhone design, now their copying the Microsoft upgrade model.

In Ur Fridge. Can has Push?

On April 1st, CrackBerry.com informed us that RIM, doubtless under heavy iPhone ActiveSync pressure in the board-room, was making the next logical move to expand both their product base and their waist lines: BlackBelly Kitchen Appliances.

According to the CTIA release, each fridge will come complete with enterprise-class “push” water and ice dispensers, and teeny, tiny little tic-tactile keyboards on the handles. No desktop-class browsers, however, are currently planned.

Staff who were on-scene overheard a RIM employee mumble: “@#$%ing Steve Jobs comes out with a multi-touch fridge and think we’ll care? We’ll just stop-and-run straight to the bathroom… Already got the SureType flusher working in the lab…”

Microsoft Releases Windows Mobile 6.6.6

Unlike the previous item, this one has April Fool’s written all over it. Sorry, WMExperts.com, but we’re not biting. Just how stupid do you think we are, really? There’s no way Microsoft wasted the 6 months between Macworld 2007 and the iPhone release, and the almost 9 months that have followed, on this most incremental update of the beast.

Nice try, especially the Paint.exe’d up screen shots (mad skills there, Bohn!) and pitch-perfect spoof of a classically lame Microsoft presentation. If you’d thrown in a Steve Balmer “Mobile Developers!” dance, it might (might) have been a tad more believable.

As it is, even a die-hard Windows fan-pundit would probably react to this with:

Microsoft is failing badly here

Better luck next April Fool’s!

Sony WinMob Reaches Xperia-tion Date

Take one Sony Ericsson phone and… throw it away. Then, In a touching vote of confidence to the industrial design force who crafted you everything from the PlayStation line to the Rolly, get HTC to build you a new kit. Finally, in a show of good faith to your longtime Symbian alliance partners, ditch your time-tested, world-dominating OS and shoehorn Windows Mobile 6.6.6 onto the device. And what do you have? The beginning of a Palm-esque downward spiral. (Can you downward spiral from the bottom? We don’t know. We’re mathlexic, remember?)

WMExperts.com brings us bitter-sweet first impressions on the last rights, in all their banana-slide-out gory glory.

Apparently the device is aimed squarely at North Americans. For a Japanese/Norfinwedish company, that’s a pretty overt act of aggression. The minute RIM releases their international-only Symbian-powered Blackberry, it’s payback time, fellas!

In Palm News

Treocentral tells us Mexico got a blue Palm Centro.

Yup.

Moving on…

And in No Other News

We blew the Norfinwedish meme already, so no N-Gage jokes from us this week (luckily Nokia supplied their own!). If anything else happened, like say if an Asian powerhouse took a page from RIM’s playbook and proudly announced their entry into the iClone market we’re blissfully unaware.

For reals.

[Jobs help us, we're making this an official Wait-a-Thon post! Leave a comment here for you chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card! In the meantime, congrats to last week's winner, Dyvim!]

Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

RIM/Blackberry Outages Outage

Last week Crackberry.com let slip that RIM had gone so far as to begin scheduling their own network outages. Not merely content to follow trends, however, RIM has now one-upped themselves again and, apparently, scheduled an outage for their outage!

You heard right! The once on off is off again! No word yet on when exactly the outage will be rescheduled, though smart money is on a date to be surprised by later!

Waterloo, Start Your Photocopiers!

Two years ago at WWDC we thought we’d poke a little bit of fun at the folks in… Oops, sorry, wrong copycats. This time it’s the fine folks at RIM who’ve toiled away for hours to ensure that no Blackberry owner will ever again mistake their device for a Palm. How? By making their latest model a form-factored photocopy of the iPhone! Glossy black frontage? Check. Rounded chrome edge? Double check. 3.5″ gorgeous media wide-screen? D’oh! ‘Fraid not. You still get a tic-tactile hard keyboard to burn 90% of your useful face-matter!

Sincerest flattery aside, nothing says market-leader like dressing up in last year’s competitive dress…

WinMob Treo 800 to Rock… 6.0?!

What’s better than outdated hardware running the latest version of Window’s outdated mobile operating system, 6.1? You guessed it, patched-up hardware running the already obsoleted version of Windows, 6.0! WMExperts.com is kind enough to report Sprint’s July roadmap, touting the Stockholm-syndrome supporting release in all it’s antiquated glory.

But don’t give up all hope, there’s still VistaMob 7.0 on the horizon, and given Microsoft’s current schedule, the 2007-era OS should hit beta by 2011, RTM by 2015, and be almost usable by SP1 in 2017, just in time to magically pair with the much-delayed Surface! (Warning, link contains harsh language).

Palm Reports Lack of Financial Results

Speaking of Palm, er… is anyone still speaking of Palm? Ed Colligan, we guess, who according to TreoCentral.com, busted out a shiny pink Centro worth of financial woes this week. Sales up but revenue down? Jaysus, that’ll harshen Bono’s elevated partnership’s mellow right quick now, won’t it?

But with Rubenstein, Bell, and Fox freshly pilfered from high-margin Apple, that’s a trend that will hopefully level out around 2010 when Palm’s 2005 OS, Nova, and astounding new form factors (can you say “clam shell!), finally ship!

And in No Other News

Yeah, we still can’t speak Norfinwedish (Nokian?) and we’re still not paying any attention to other smart phones, if there are any (we’re not even sure). Heck, an entire major mobile manufacturer could be ripping itself in half right this very minute and we wouldn’t have a clue. Seriously.

Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, this Week in Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

RIM/Blackberry Likes Outages So Much They Start Scheduling Them!

CrackBerry.com brings word that RIM once again gave some tough-love to Blackberry addicts in the form of a NOC outage on March 22 from 2AM to 6AM EDT. Sorry, no email for the after-after party, Lin-Lo! But it’s not just the Hollywood scandalrati who’ll suffer. 2AM EDT translates into late night on the west coast, early morning in Europe, and midday in Asia. Giving a nation of Jet Lee’s the DTs? We’d start running now, Lazaridis!

WinMob Treo 800 Delayed Until… Er… Hello?… Little Help?

According to WMExperts.com, the two long suffering mobile platforms that suffer longer together, Windows Mobile and Treos, will not see the new high-end model drop until sometime later this year. Why? Who knows, but we can offer some hypotheticals:

1. This baby will be rocking the new OS, which is still running just a tiny bit behind schedule as Microsoft wants to make sure users enjoy VistaMob every bit as much as its big desktop brother.
2. It was shown at a Gatesnote, and as such is contractually forbidden to hit the market for at least another year. (Hi, Surface!)
3. Bono now owns the place and spent enough time in Cupertino to inject himself into every little feature discussion. “Jaysus, needs more red now, dunnit?”

And in No Other News

Yeah, sorry, nobody much covers other smart phones in these parts. Nokia probably did something in Scandinavia but we can’t read Norfinwedish so who knows? It’s not like they’re being sued by a thousand year old lady or are — yet again — beating, stomping, hammering, pummeling, and slapping around the dead horse that is N-Gage, right?

This. Is. iPhone JEOPARDY!

Welcome everyone to the smartphone space where competing CEO’s answer in nothing resembling the form of a question. Lucky for us, however, they’re quick on the buzzer and their bold, bodacious pontifications, more often than not, come right back to bite them on their assets.

“Why We’re Not Worried about the iPhone” for 100

Previously on iPhone Jeopardy, smartphone innovator and Folio-smasher, Ed Colligan of Palm/Treo fame jumped on the iPhone launch:

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

Strongly put. Let’s go to the judges…

“Initial iPhone buyers were 10 times more likely than other new phone buyers to have previously owned a Treo.”

Ouch! The correct answer seems to have been “Who are the Mac guys who walked in with a far more than a descent phone and dug into my lunch?” Better luck with Nova!

Daily Double-Talk

Next up was famed Microsoft CEO, monopolist, and internet dance phenom, Steve Balmer who went for the steal:

“You can get a Motorola Q for $99. [...] [Apple] will have the most expensive phone, by far, in the marketplace.”

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”

Really? Survey says!

The struggling American electronics company Motorola is considering breaking itself up through a sale or flotation of its poorly performing mobile phones business.

NPD’s figures make Apple’s Sept. quarter iPhone sales look even more stellar. Apple sold 1.12 million iPhones last quarter, representing 27% of NPD’s U.S. smartphone market and 3% of the overall Q3 cellphone market.

D’oh! The correct answer looks to have been, “Who was hardly the most expensive and grabbed even more mindshare than their impressive first-year market share (not to mention dominating customer satisfaction reports) while companies I mentioned prepared to flee the space?” No bonus points for lack of bold ActiveSync licensing predictions. Come back next time with WinMob 7, b’okay?

Final Jeopardy!

Now we have current smartphone market leader RIM’s business “pusher”, and outage-plugger extraordinaire Mike Lazaridis taking “Post SDK Over-Reactions” for a thousand:

“Talk — all I’m [hearing] is talk about [the iPhone's chances in Enterprise]. I think it’s important that we put this thing in perspective.” [...] “Apple’s design-centric approach [will] ultimately limit its appeal by sacrificing needed enterprise functionality. I think over-focus on one blinds you to the value of the other.” [...] “Apple’s approach produced devices that inevitably sacrificed advanced features for aesthetics.”

Final answer? Okay, pens down and no peeking!

Well, what do you think? Will RIM’s success just keep on multiplying, or did the Blackberry Boss just gamble it all away?

Find out next time on iPhone Jeopardy!

When Steve Jobs took the stage at the iPhone SDK Roadmap event, it was with business eyes fixed squarely on market leader RIM’s Blackberry device:

“Why aren’t CIOs really worried about security? Every email message sent to or from a RIM device goes through a NOC up in Canada. Now, that provides a single point of failure, but it also provides a very interesting security situation. Where someone working up at that NOC could potentially be having a look at your email. Nobody seems to be focused on that. We certainly are.”

And so is the Indian government it seems! Engadget sums up the current situation, which seems like it couldn’t have been scripted better for Apple if El Jobso himself held the knife… er… pen:

Apparently the Indian government is demanding that RIM either allow it to snoop on its encrypted email service (or worse, drop down to 40-bit encryption), or shut down the entire Indian Blackberry network at the end of the month. That’ll cut off an estimated 400,000 subscribers…

Unlike RIM’s three-tiered true “push” model that routes everything through the NOC, Apple has licensed Microsoft’s competing pseudo-”push” technology, ActiveSync, which relays mail directly between Exchange servers and the iPhone. This would mean that, rather than simply going after a single manufacturer like RIM to snoop on every user’s email, a government would have to go after every single Exchange server in every single business in the country — a potentially much more complicated and difficult process.

Is this a tempest in a teapot, or should Indian Crackberry addicts be worried? Would government “spying” on email lead you away from a Blackberry and towards an iPhone or even (merciful Buddha) a WinMob device? (Treo bone for completeness).

UPDATE (via Engadget):

Today the Indian government ruled out banning the BlackBerry service. Instead, the government will continue working with the Telecom Commission on security matters

We already told you that Apple threw a brick-stuffed glove down on RIM’s foot with their Enterprise plans during the iPhone Software Roadmap event. So it’s only natural that it would be the topic du-jour for the next CrackBerry.com Podcast (iTunes link).

They invited yours-truly on to talk about the SDK and Apple’s enterprise plans and it’s a pretty comprehensive chat. Fun too — even though I led us down a couple of somewhat unnecessary forays into Windows Mobile (hey, I still use and love that too).

Anyhow, if you’re jonesing to hear what BlackBerry fans are thinking about the iPhone, it’s definitely worth a listen. Also worth noting: if you’re wanting to get all the Smartphone Experts podcasts (TreoCentral, CrackBerry.com, WMExperts, and Phone different) in a single feed, we have that up on iTunes now as well.

Podcast Episode 003 – RIM's New Enterprise Challenge | CrackBerry.com

During the iPhone SDK Roadmap event today, Apple strolled up to RIM, slipped out a glove, dropped a brick into it, and slapped out one “boom” of a challenge.

Blackberry is an email monster, no doubt about it. Intoxicating “push” delivery and back-end IT administration have made it the darling of the enterprise world. But it isn’t without problems: due to the centralized server-model RIM utilizes (where all mail is collected by RIM prior to being pushed out to end-users), there’s a single point of failure for all Blackberry users everywhere (as seen in two recent, service-wide outages) — and a single point of exploit as well (where an attack on RIM’s server could compromise the privacy and security of the entire user base).

Read on for more!

Apple is eager to exploit this weakness — so eager, in fact, they went right into the belly of the beast itself: they licensed Microsoft ActiveSync to provide direct Exchange support for iPhone.

Come the iPhone (and iPod Touch) 2.0 firmware update targeted for a late June release, every user will be able to enjoy instant “push” access to a wide gamut of Exchange services, including:

• Push email. Write a message, it appears instantly (web congestion notwithstanding) on another Exchange user’s client.
• Calendar integration. Add an event and, “boom”, it’s in Exchange.
• Push contacts. Create or update a contact and everyone sharing gets the update right away.
• Global address list. You get your company’s contacts, updated live all the time.
• Enterprise level security. Including Cisco IPsec VPN, authentication and certificates, 802.1x, policies, configuration tools, and remote device wipes.

Still not convinced Apple has slid up to RIM’s lunch, fork in hand? Phil Schiller, VP of Marketing, displayed a nice slide showing iPhone’s simple Exchange connection (iPhone – Exchange) compared to RIM’s more complex model (Blackberry – NOC – Message Server – Exchange).

“Microsoft has come up with a much more advanced architecture, where the iPhone can work directly with the Exchange server in a more reliable and affordable way.” (Engadget)

ZING!

“You should ask [RIM if Apple is sending them a message]… we’re not sending them a message, we’re sending customers and developers a message that we’re trying to serve their needs.” (Engadget)

POW!

“Why aren’t CIOs really worried about security? Every email message sent to or from a RIM device goes through a NOC up in Canada. Now, that provides a single point of failure, but it also provides a very interesting security situation. Where someone working up at that NOC could potentially be having a look at your email. Nobody seems to be focused on that. We certainly are.”

BOOM!

Bringing up Nike and Disney, while a little nepotistic given the relationships, as well as pointing to academic institution Stanford, put some real-world business deployment on the table. Apple sure does seem serious.

So, should RIM worry? Will legions of CrackBerry addicts give up their hardware keyboards and defect, en-masse, to Apple’s Mobile Platform? Or are they immune to the famed Reality Distortion Field, and laughing even now at Apple’s eye-candy attempts to woo IT? Is Gruber right, “This doesn’t make the iPhone a BlackBerry killer, but the iPhone can do more BlackBerry-ish things than the BlackBerry can do iPhone-ish things.” What do you think?