

RIM(Blackberry) CEO: "buggy smartphone software is the new reality" - vaksel
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/26/rim-ceo-buggy-smartphone-software-is-the-new-reality/

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martythemaniak
It is, and it will be this way as long as consumers continue choose style and
appearance over functionality.

Put yourself in Jim B's shoes for a second - RIM comes from a heavy enterprise
background where things like stability and security were far more important
than features (and you can see this by looking at older blackberries that
always lagged in features like cameras, multimedia etc), but is trying to make
a big impact in the consumer space. You've got a device (Storm) that basically
has a beta firmware, but you know WILL sell quite well over the holidays? What
do you do?

Well, you do what your competitors (Android and iPhone) do and sacrifice a lot
to get to market sooner. The Android G1 is a pretty shitty piece of hardware
with an incomplete OS (just look at the features in the 'cupcake' branch) and
you can go back and look at the problems iPhone OS2.0 had this summer (regular
browser crashes, major lagginess, epic MobileMe launch etc).

So yeah, it is the new reality, but despite a few complaints here and there,
consumers won't really mind.

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mseebach
The current reality: CEOs trying to lower market expectations, rather than
meeting them, gets run-over by swift game-changing strategies.

Blink while Android and iPhone gets their acts together, and you're dead.

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iigs
Stability is a feature you can sell to me. I was a loyal BB user for several
years until two hardware failures and one software failure made me think about
just exactly how much stability I was actually getting for my ugly fonts and
crummy browsing experience.

I purchased a Nokia E71 (which my wife has taken and loves) to replace the
BBs, which is a step down on the stability scale but several steps up on the
feature scale. I guess that means their CEO is right, at least in my case.

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nihilocrat
In other sectors, buggy console games are the new reality.

Fallout 3 will randomly crash on the 360; do you remember that happening when
playing NES, Genesis, SNES, or even Playstation games?

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chaostheory
yeah it is a nice system: getting people to pay to become beta testers; though
being on the edge has its benefits looking at the success of things such as
'ifart'

