“Rachel Crosby speaks about her BlackBerry phone the way someone might speak of an embarrassing relative,” Nicole Perlroth reports for The New York Times. “‘I’m ashamed of it,’ said Ms. Crosby, a Los Angeles sales representative who said she had stopped pulling out her BlackBerry at cocktail parties and conferences. In meetings, she says she hides her BlackBerry beneath her iPad for fear clients will see it and judge her.”
“The BlackBerry was once proudly carried by the high-powered and the elite, but those who still hold one today say the device has become a magnet for mockery and derision from those with iPhones,” Perlroth reports. “Research in Motion may still be successful selling BlackBerrys in countries like India and Indonesia, but in the United States the company is clinging to less than 5 percent of the smartphone market — down from a dominating 50 percent just three years ago.”
“Among the latest signs of the loss of cachet: One of the first steps Marissa Mayer took as Yahoo’s newly appointed chief executive to remake the company’s stodgy image was to trade in employees’ BlackBerrys for iPhones… BlackBerrys may still linger in Washington, Wall Street and the legal profession, but in Silicon Valley they are as rare as a necktie,” Perlroth reports. “As the list shrinks of friends who once regularly communicated using BlackBerry’s private messaging service, called BBM, many a BlackBerry owner will not mince words about how they feel about their phone. ‘I want to take a bat to it,’ Ms. Crosby said, after waiting for her phone’s browser to load for the third minute, only to watch the battery die. ‘You can’t do anything with it. You’re supposed to, but it’s all a big lie.’ … ‘BlackBerry users are like Myspace users,’ sneers Craig Robert Smith, a Los Angeles musician. ‘They probably still chat on AOL Instant Messenger.'”
Perlroth reports, “After eight years with a BlackBerry, Nick Mindel, a 26-year-old investment analyst, said he just joined the wait list for the iPhone 5. When it arrives, he said, ‘I’m considering removing my BlackBerry battery, pouring in cement, and using the BlackBerry as an actual paperweight.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Well, there’s yet another lovely kiss of death for DCW.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Winston” for the heads up.]
Those that merely linger on their cash cows are doomed to lose them. Blackberry rested on it’s innovate forward haunches thanks to it’s sleeping CEO’s and now Canadian industry pays a price. A cautionary tale. NEVER get too comfortable. This goes for Apple too, much as I love them, I want them around a long time to come.
Black what ? Oh my great great aunte use to have one of those.
Didn’t they have to rub two sticks together to make it work?
There’s no medal for fourth place.
go for the pewter!
LOL
If only I had the emails of all those idiots I met at last years New Years eve party that insisted to me that the iPhone was not for real business. Why I asked? The answer was always because the blackberry did email much better. But no one could demonstrate exactly why.
To this day I still have no idea why or how the blackberry did ANYTHING better.
I think the following explains a lot….‘You can’t do anything with it. You’re supposed to, but it’s all a big lie.’
OhHHH, NOW I get it!.
Email on the iPhone/iPad/Mac is absolutely the best there is out there. I love the onscreen keyboard. I hate BlackBerry’s universal inbox where your SMS, BBM, mail and assorted crap goes into one folder. It’s confusing as hell. I like iOS mail’s clean interface where you only deal with mail and nothing else.
The only shortcoming is the inability to attach files due principally to the lack of a file system. I hope Apple addresses this in iOS7. But I get by with Dropbox and Documents to Go if I want to share file attachments.
Go to the file you want to send….say a PDF file in the iBooks App. Open it and click the FORWARD button in the top left. It gets attached to an email…..simple. You can do this with many other files from the application that includes the file you want to attach….iPhoto for example.
If you want to attach a multiple number of PDF’s that might be difficult…but I havent looked into that. 90% of the time you just want to attach one file. Don’t think it’s a good idea attaching many files on a mobile device anyway.
iOS6, tap and hold in message to get edit menu, tap to the right and you can insert photo or video right there.
As for other file types, I’m sure it’s coming. To start at the PDF and then compose message after is a real pain the ars because its not a ‘reply’ – so you have to try to remember the subject, get their email addy right if its not in your address book, etc etc. Not ideal.
Again……if you want to send a PDF to someone (not reply), go the PDF in question and press the button on the top left that looks like a “box with an arrow”. Simple. Type in the subject line. Type in the address. Type in the message.
SIMPLE. Not a pain in the arse, as you say.
“BlackBerrys in the United States is clinging to less than 5 percent of the smartphone market — down from a dominating 50 percent just three years ago.”
RIM is in hospice and it is only a matter or months. It will be sold off.
Too much hockey, not enough inventing.
I don’t see what the deal is?? I eat blackberries, great antioxidants, and taste great…
Guy goes to the grocery store and says, “My Blackberry is not working”.
“Oh. why is that?” says the Owner.
“I think its FROZEN”
I’d say that blackberries taste nice. Not quite “great”. But a solid contender in the berry arena.
That is what we’re talking about, right?
Reminds me of Frankenstein, everyone at first in awe and fearful, then a little while later some light and a little weakness is shown. Finally, the whole world piles on for vengeance especially at the very end.
The folks in this article are taking pitchforks to RIM. Some of it deservedly, some not.
Excellent article on the cover of the NY Times today. As the Times is still considered as “the paper of record”, this will further underscore the uncoolness of the old clunky device…
RIP…the smell of death is in the Canadian air..
The change from fall to winter will do that.
I can’t help but feel sad for their employees. Not sad enough to give up my iPhone, but I feel for them.
No industry is more volatile than tech where you can be great one year and circling the bowl the next. Even Apple knows this, which is why I like its chances of avoiding such a fate in the future.
BTW, got my iPhone 5 yesterday finally and love the hell out of it. How they packed that much power into that light, thin shell is remarkable even for an Apple fanboy like myself.
Imagine the last Blackberry user bragging to everyone: “I’ve got my own server!”
Actually the strongest argument I’ve heard.
When i see people on the london under ground using a blackberry phone and an apple ipod i wonder why dont they get an iphone, they know from the ipod that the apple iphone is the best way to go. Yeah, stupid countries like india blackberry will be popular cause the cheap skate indians like the free bbm. As for the wall street idiots, they like bbm too cause it keeps thier illicit dealing covered, blackberry played a major role in the financial meltdown, many of the bad deals were done on bbm. Also during the london riots bbm was the weapon of choice for rioters to coordinate, not face book or twitter came close to bbm in that. Glad that this crackberry is losing steam to iphone
What a fucking idiot you are! All those things could just as we’ll have been done on an iPhone. Stop typing before you seriously hurt yourself. MORON!
And it’s ” underground” not “under ground”.
who you calling Idiot u worthless Blackberry lover, BBM was easier and more secure to use for riots coordination, it is a fact, stop supporting a phone that is an embarassment to its owners. you cannot text so many people like u can with bbm.
using blackberry phones ‘ashamed’, Android phones ‘no shame’
I’d be ashamed to own an Apple Product. I’m part of the group that talks about Foxcon, criticize Apple’s business model, & finds hipster Apple fanboys to be pretentious as hell.
I don;t have much use for a phone, since I’m always in front of a computer. I’d be satisfied with a basic digital phone in a custom retro brickphone casing.