By SteveJack
Engadget Mobile has some shots of the much-ballyhooed RIM Blackberry 9000 “in the wild.”
Uh oh, RIM shareholders. If this is all RIM’s got, you guys and gals might want to quickly add “former” ahead of that suddenly scary “RIM shareholders” business. It’s now painfully obvious that RIM has learned nothing in the past 15 or so months since Apple unveiled the iPhone.
RIM clearly seems to have tried to copy Apple’s iPhone exterior look, but beyond that derivative bit of attempted tomfoolery, the anachronistic physical buttons remain, taking up tons of space whether or not they’re in use. Also remaining is the small screen, mashed into the upper half of the device in order to make room for those tiny, slippery-looking plastic buttons festooned all over the bottom half of the device.
The software’s UI has been prettied or messed up (depending on your taste), but it has none of the multi-touch goodness of Apple’s iPhone. It’s the same old, same old in an iPhone-inspired wrapper. And that should fail to inspire much confidence in RIM.
You can judge the distance behind and overall cluelessness of iPhone’s future roadkill by the amount they copy the iPhone’s exterior. See: LG, HTC, and now RIM, among many others. This ceaseless quest to dress up antiques in Apple veneer is pathetic and sad (e.g. Windows Vista).
If even I, iPhone Owner From Day One, expected a bit more from RIM, and I did, then those who expected RIM’s BlackBerry 9000 to be the company’s answer to Apple’s iPhone are in for a shocking and disheartening disappointment.
RIM, like Microsoft’s Windows, will continue to run on fumes for awhile, but if they fail to fuel up (innovate) they will eventually stop rolling. And RIM has but a fraction of Microsoft’s entrenchment.
What do I predict for RIM? In the immortal words of James “Clubber” Lang: “Pain.”
See Engadget Mobile’s gallery of BlackBerry 9000 photos here.
RIM BlackBerry 9000 User Interface:
Direct link via YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee-DepnxJW4
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Nick” for the heads up.]
SteveJack is a long-time Macintosh user, web designer, multimedia producer and a regular contributor to the MacDailyNews Opinion section.
Comical. This guy just doesn’t get it. Stick to Apple commentary and forget about stock predictions. RIM shareholders will not feel pain, but pleasure. The market is TOO BIG and growing TOO QUICKLY for just one company to succeed. iPhone will kill it, no doubt, but so will RIM. This just isn’t simply a binary result, one or the other. Both can grow massively as the smartphone adoption curve kicks in over the next few years. April 2nd will be the first indication when RIM reports earnings. I wonder if MDN will carry the following headline: “Beleaguered RIM posts over 100% revenue and earnings growth.” Flame away…
One word: Pathetic…
Crazylegs,
It’s next April, not this April, that RIM and their shareholders need to be worried about.
iPhone SDK, Exchange support, iPhone 2.0 software, 3G next-gen iPhone – all coming starting in June.
SteveJack is right, as usual.
The full keyboard is to “iPhone-killers” what the FM tuner was to “iPod-killers”.
——RM
@crazylegs
I am afraid you are in for a rude awakening soon enough. After Palm and Motorola, Nokia and RIM will be the next blood on Apple’s iPhone touch screen.
WHO ARE YOU REALLY, STEVEJACK?!?!?!
ChrissyOne,
That’s a good question. Who do you think SteveJack is?
It looks like it is running Leopard. Whacky!
Crazylegs,
Thanks for an intelligent comment. Once in a while, it’s nice to read one.
Interesting that the endgadget reveiw was much more positive than Steve Jack’s. I think Rim’s cutomers and shareholders will remain very pleased (Currently, I own Apple stock, not Rim’s).
I think RIM is probably the second best mobile outfit out there at the moment. Moto is spinning off, Nokia is uninspiring, everyone else is enslaved to Windows Mobile, which is never going anywhere. RIM is at least making an attempt at getting their act together, but they have the inertia of a huge installed base and more than a little hubris, though that is starting to wear off.
Now what might be interesting is if Apple licenses the iPhone OS and its multi-touch patents. It’s pretty clear that no one can come up with a good touch interface, even thought they’ve have well over a year to copy Apple’s. Remember what a Bad Idea it was for Apple to announce 6 months before release? The Competition Will Catch Up! they said.
This is all ya got?
Color me Not Terribly Impressed.
Who do you think SteveJack is?
Steve Jobs.
@ Fred Mertz
I have no idea. Funny how we’ve all been posting on this site for years and we don’t know anything about the authors. I think the rough correlation between the rise of MDN and the complete disappearance of Jack Miller from AtAT was interesting.
Looks like an iPhone + keyboard. A missing keyboard is one of the things that irks some people about the iPhone.
ChrissyOne,
I liked your idea from last November:
I think it’s a gestalt entity, created by crossing DNA from Steve Jobs and Jack Miller in a lab deep in the mountains of Buenos Aries. This “SteveJack” is nothing more than a grey, throbbing brain, resting in a pan of warm honey, attached with electrodes to a bank of X-Serves and plugged in to the world wide web. He may even have WiFi. From there, “SteveJack” plots the worldwide gangster computer-god living-death slavery takeover of the world’s Windows user’s identities and credit history, controlling their minds and making them buy iPods and computers with shiny screens. What an evil genius!!!
…or he might just be one guy who works at Kinney Shoes. Hard to say which.
Still makes me laugh!
Name,
Quantify “some.”
@Name,
That “some” sum isn’t nearly enough to benefit RIM.
@ Fred Mertz
Every time a shoe salesman eyeballs me…
…I wonder.
ChrissyOne,
LOL!
My iPhone isn’t missing a keyboard. It pops up exactly when I need it, as if by magic.
I don’t know if I really want to see pictures of a rim leaking blackberrys…..
Its all in the operating system, plain and simple. Fools who are happy with RIM’s appliance can be happier knowing that when they walk fast, people will think they have an iPhone.
@ TT
eeeeeeeeeeew.
“Fools who are happy with RIM’s appliance…”
{shudder} That sentence just can’t go anywhere good after that.
RIM is utterly screwed. They are trying to whistle their way past the graveyard, but the iPhone will destroy them.
The iPhone is like the Alien incubus in RIM’s belly. Dinner time is coming and the iPhone is about to burst out. Bon Appétit.
It’s a sad-looking thing. The consensus is correct – this is a company that has run out of ideas.