BlackBerry Outage Spreads To North America 272
iONiUM writes "With increasing pressure on RIM to catch up to the new phones, and the upcoming release of the iPhone 4S, could this three day outage of BlackBerry's service be a nail in the coffin? From the article 'The service disruptions are the worst since an outage swept north America two years ago, and come as Apple prepares to put on sale its already sold-out iPhone 4S on Friday.'"
This is the same outage as was reported Monday. RIM has released a few details on what's happened: a failed software upgrade brought the system down, and, after repairing the first issue, the backlog of traffic overwhelmed their network infrastructure taking things down a second time.
Oblig. (Score:5, Funny)
What did one Blackberry owner say to the other?
Nothing!
Moment of Silence (Score:2)
This is RIM's way of paying tribute to the late Steve Jobs. They are holding a 3 day moment of silence in his honor.
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The one that explained it seems to be the only one needing an explanation.
Ghost in the machine (Score:2, Funny)
Clearly, there is a ghost in the machine. And his name is Steve.
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Canadian Technology! (Score:2)
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You planning on fixing the problem, eh?
Re:Canadian Technology! (Score:4, Funny)
"The power of the force has stopped you, you hosers."
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Relax. What exactly are they saying that's so bad about Canada? Nothing really, nothing specific, just that it's "Canadian technology". It's not like Canada has some kind of reputation for crap technology (in fact, I can't really think of any terrible negative reputation Canada has for anything, except for clubbing baby seals to death, but compared to other countries like America, that's a pretty short list).
If you want to see much more mean-spirited comments (which are completely justified IMO, and prob
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Just a completely biased observation (because I'm Canadian)... I don't see (or perhaps notice) commenters saying racist remarks against other countries.
I must've missed the memo... since when is Canadian a "race"?
Also - how could you participate on Slashdot and miss the constant anti-American ranting? Or is that different because it's America?
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the French have tried to tackle that issue too, but, oh, well, we surrendered.
Re:Canadian Technology! (Score:5, Insightful)
Its acceptable and funny to make fun of Canadians, because it makes no sense. You've got a pretty decent economy, health care system, education system, great beer, doughnuts, ect. Its an ironic insult, that is really an insult at one's own nationality. Plus, everyone knows that the best comedians are Canadian, and they've given us a lot of material to work with.
So you'll just have to live with being praised with humour, or you'll have to move to the states.
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Nice try at trolling, but real Canadians don't get offended so easily.
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Just as good as the Nortel Technology that companies just paid billions for!
RIM job (Score:2, Insightful)
You'd think they would have highly paid people to foresee these kind of problems and have a contingency plan for to prevent a massive outage? Nah, they cost too much.
The end? (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously though, this couldn't have come at a worse time. Like the summary says, the iPhone 4S is just about to be released, and I imagine a lot of angry Blackberry owners are going to run out and buy one.
Personally though, I'd advice them to think twice and to get an Android phone since I don't think the iPhone reception issues have really been addressed and they'd just be going from one device with reception but no internet access to a device that sports the exact opposite.
iPhone reception issues have been addressed (Score:5, Informative)
A) the antenna design is a slightly altered on that was introduced with the Verizon iPhone. The antenna design is actually very good, you get much better reception with the larger external antenna - the only downside was the gap you could touch to potentially drop a call (if reception was weak), which has been moved to where you can't hit it accidentally. It's also not like you cannot affect signal strength similarly with almost any phone, search for "HTC death grip" and see what I mean. Your meaty hand does a great job of reducing signal strength when you wrap it around any phone tightly.
B) You can opt for Verizon or Sprint for voice service, which have better call quality - but slower data feeds. With the 4s at least you can still roam in GSM countries even if you have Verizon, which is nice. That stopped me from leaving AT&T before.
The annoying thing though, is that you cannot buy an unlocked iPhone to use with anything but a GSM carrier. I was hoping to buy an unlocked hone and try Sprint for a while... so be aware if you wanted to get an unlocked phone for international travel you'll be using AT&T.
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Specifically, they've now got two cellular antennas, which allows them to swap to whatever one gets the clearest signal. If you're holding it in your hand, you're covering one antenna (which runs around the base of the phone) but not the other (which runs across the top).
I'll note with some irony that one of Apple's "death grip" comparison videos showed them death-gripping a Droid handset which itself had two antennas. Apple was apparently unaware of this because produced an eyebrow-raisingly implausible de
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That doesn't have anything to do with phone. Sprint and Verizon just won't activate a CDMA-unlocked phone on their networks. It has to be one of their phones for them to activate it. No technical reason for it, just vendor-enforced lock-in. (I use Sprint BTW.)
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In all that ranting, you didn't even touch upon why you hate Samsung so much... maybe its common knowledge among Android users (though I don't think so, most seem to really like the Galaxy S from what I hear), but I have no idea what issues you had w/ your Galaxy...
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If you don't want malware, be mindful what apps you install, and flash the thing with Cyanogenmod, so that you can change permissions.
For all the hullabaloo about security problems on Android, it's still a very small number of apps, and probably no worse than in the computing world.
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Really? What was the name of the "malware"? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Malware gets into the iPhone app store, too, despite Apple reviewing stuff.
What "malware" was that?
Applications cannot look at other application data or alter the system. So just what is that "malware" supposed to do? What was the application?
Damn you RIM (Score:2)
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Fortunately this will never happen to the iPhone (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, it's a good thing to mention that the iPhone 4S is sold out and coming out this week. Because as we all know, iOS 5 doesn't move almost every single existing feature that iOS has onto the iCloud, where similar outages can now affect Apple users.
Nope. Definitely worth mentioning the iPhone 4S, because it totally competes with the Blackberry when it comes to enterprise services and security.
Oh, wait, everything I've said so far is wrong. Oops.
Seriously, what does the iPhone have to do with a Blackberry o
Re:Fortunately this will never happen to the iPhon (Score:4, Interesting)
Ehh, apparently you missed a memo or five. iPhones and Android phones have both been able to integrate into corporate networks for quite a while. I have full e-mail, calendaring, and contact sync from the corporate exchange server on my iPhone. We're talking a Fortune 100 multinational here, not "dude the e-mail server guy totally hooked me up with e-mail on my iPhone!" On top of that I can use the VPN server to direct connect to the corporate network and manage my systems from the wifi in the mall if there's an emergency. Maybe a Blackberry can do that too, I don't know, but there's nothing I need to do remotely that I can't do from my phone. I also happen to know for a fact that this is all true for Android too (the guy I replaced uses a Droid something or other and he had the same setup I do). The days when Blackberry could just say "yeah, but we have all the business clients" are long over. They need to compete on features, because business no longer goes to them by default.
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Surely you don't expect people to listen to facts about the iPhone around here do you?
They're too busy being smug and hip by blaming the users of Apple products of being smug and hip.
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iPhones and Android phones have both been able to integrate into corporate networks for quite a while.
iPhones and Android phones have both been able to *UNSECURELY* integrate into corporate networks for quite a while.
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iPhones and Android phones have both been able to integrate into corporate networks for quite a while.
iPhones and Android phones have both been able to *UNSECURELY* integrate into corporate networks for quite a while.
Hey, I'll play.
iPhones and Android phones have both been able to integrate into corporate networks *RUNNING EXCHANGE* for quite a while.
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iPhones and Android phones have both been able to integrate into corporate networks *RUNNING EXCHANGE* for quite a while
Sure it can, just not as well as a BB. As Microsoft states: iOS 4 ActiveSync issue reflects Apple's priorities. "They don't have a vested interest in the load on an Exchange server ... The iPhone is not meant to be an enterprise device
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To be fair, iOS 5 supports certificates, and the email client has always had SSL (certainly the MTA side wasn't secure, but what else is new?)
Android supports this as well with some third-party somethingerother.
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But it just doesn't do it seamlessly. Besides the much lower batterylife on IOS devices with activesynch push, it doesn't seem to be reliable: http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1868 [apple.com]
Re:Fortunately this will never happen to the iPhon (Score:4, Informative)
This.
Yes, you can use EAS or IMAP/CalDAV/CardDAV to get an iOS, Android or WM/WP device to work, but none of them are anywhere near as secure or manageable as BES. For the consumer or light business user, yes, EAS is fine, and geeks can suffer with IMAP+DAV and it's limitations, but as you increase either the number of users or the security and manageability requirements, they don't scale. Anyone who says otherwise has never actually used BES and has no idea what it does.
That said, as soon as someone duplicates what BES can do on iOS, Android and/or WP, BlackBerry is dead to the enterprise. It'll be Symbian all over again, and RIM will be left selling featurephones to teenagers, third-worlders, and third-world teenagers.
There's some question as to whether or not RIM can even port what BES can do to their next-generation devices. The absence of BES manageability hurt the PlayBook's chances in the enterprise more than anything else about it, and the PlayBook runs that same platform. I get the impression that the infrastructure is old, creaky and not all that well understood by RIM's own people.
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Yes but your not having to use expensive middleware and are not tied to Microsoft products for services. Also, your mail client is able to use IDL in IMAP for "push email". So it totally doesn't count as "integrating into the existing IT infrastructure".
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It doesn't move "almost every single existing feature" onto iCloud. Literally every single iCloud feature is optional. Here's the breakdown:
* Option to do backups to iCloud server.
* Apps have access to a Dropbox-style storage space for syncing info across devices.
* Rebranding Apple's webmail, contacts, and calendar services to iCloud.
* Option to redownload previously purchased iTunes content on the device.
So if iCloud goes down:
* Have to do backups locally
* Angry Birds saves don't sync any more
* Can't check
iCloud is focused on DEVICE storage first (Score:2, Redundant)
Because as we all know, iOS 5 doesn't move almost every single existing feature that iOS has onto the iCloud
What you do't know is what that means. iCloud is there as a serve to help sync data between devices. You could lose iCloud for 50% of the day and probably not notice, since all of your cloud based data would be eventually synchronized.
Many of the iOS5 features added don't use iCloud at all.
Definitely worth mentioning the iPhone 4S, because it totally competes with the Blackberry when it comes to ent
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This is the big difference between iCloud and other cloud servcies. iCloud is primarily a synchronization platform, there's some remote storage but it's meant to always backs local assets, much more like Dropbox than Google Apps. A pure cloud solution would just let you read everything off the remote, but doesn't necessarily make it easy or friendly to maintain local mirrors.
If the servers go down, you lose the ability to sync, but you don't lose what you have.
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Seriously, what does the iPhone have to do with a Blackberry outage? No one using a Blackberry is going to switch to the iPhone, because the iPhone doesn't fill the same niche in any way. If you want a phone that can play Angry Birds, get an iPhone.
Except that they are, and in droves.
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Seriously, what does the iPhone have to do with a Blackberry outage?
Akward timing, like the summary said.
RIM are wussing out... (Score:4, Interesting)
In the UK, on both outages, RIM has let the mobile networks take full blame for all of the issues - they haven't issued a statement, or let the networks know what to tell customers, with network call centers as much in the dark as the callers themselves.
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They have issued several statements. I'm not going to do your work for you, here's a BBC News search. They're quoted on several occasions.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=blackberry [bbc.co.uk]
Just Switched (Score:2)
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+1 Dodge
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How's the Bionic working for you? Was eying the Thunderbolt and the Bionic recently..
Oops no rollback ? (Score:4, Interesting)
No B infrastructure?
No testing?
Bet the business made lots of money though.
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my bad (Score:3)
I'll try to do software updates at less important times next time.
Double Standard (Score:2)
Re:Double Standard (Score:4, Interesting)
Not exactly. Blackberry operates a parallel e-mail system, meaning the typical user has corporate e-mail service via Exchange, with BES connecting Exchange to the world of Blackberry e-mail. An earthquake is a natural event that is addressed in disaster recovery planning. The earth shook, things broke, we get it. When BB has an outage (for whatever reason), people start to wonder why we need the redundant layer of BB service in the first place. Corporate e-mail (e.g. Exchange) is viewed as a necessity, while BES is optional. It is certainly possible to get a smart phone to process e-mail without BES.
I guess it all boils down to how reliable your core e-mail service is. In the companies where I have experience with Exchange coexisting with BES, BES was a nuisance but it almost always worked. We had a lot of downtime with Exchange, so for the most part we appreciated having our Blackberrys work when Exchange didn't. Better admins or a better e-mail server might have made us reconsider the value of BES, since it was an additional point of failure. But in our case it helped more than it hurt.
RIM = Run Away In Motion? (Score:2)
Well, the outage seems to be in motion . . .
BlackBerry Outage Spreads To North America
The Voice of the Future (Score:2)
On the first day of the European outage, I was leaving my office and a student got on at the second floor. She was texting on her phone and I asked her about that, since it was a Blackberry and, as she commented still working in the US. Her reply was illuminating.
"Yes, but they're on the way out."
If you can't catch 'em young, you're toast.
No love here. (Score:2)
Rim made a living off disabling IDL in IMAP and selling it as a middleware product, suing the shit out of people doing the same thing, and gouging customers that use SMS. I don't wish they go out of business. I wish they go out of business and rot in hell.
Could've been worse (Score:2)
Thank goodness RIM's been losing market share - this could've affected a lot more people!
Seriously, though - using a centralized server does have its selling points, especially to corporations. Unfortunately Blackberry users are currently experiencing the negative aspect of that design decision.
Nothing has improved on the new models... (Score:2, Flamebait)
The web browser is a massive improvement, luckily, but I still find myself frustrated by it. Clicking on simple links doesn't work half the time, and I now fondly look back to my browsing experience on my iPhone 3G, a now 3 year old phone, and how it never f
Battery Problems Anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Verizon cannot install FiOS without blackberry (Score:2)
I just had my Verizon FiOS installed today and normally the technician activated the modem using a blackberry. But today he had to call-in and wait about an hour on hold for them to activate the modem remotely. People are comparing Blackberries to iPhones, but Apple iPhones aren't relying on a dedicated network and I don't think there are many businesses that rely on them.
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Not quite sure why you bring up the need of a dedicated network as a plus. Since it's just layered on top of the existing cellular/WiFi c
the crackberry effect turns against them (Score:3)
About two years ago our company had a ... let's say ... rapid shift in IT personnel. The reason for this is not important to the story. Among the personnel we lost were the three admins who knew how the corporate blackberry server worked.
Three days, three hours, and 26 minutes later, the BB server went down hard and stayed down for a week and a half, while unqualified replacements struggled (not very hard, in my opinion) to restore service. (For the first four days they insisted nothing was wrong, and had all of us cycle through endless repetitions of restoring to factory defaults, reentering corporate account info, and other makework.)
Now, it's not for nothing that it's called a crackberry. Blackberry users (of which I was one) rapidly get addicted to the instantaneous gratification that is well implemented push email, and this is what Blackberry classically has done best. It's what they're known for. And when it fails, well, can you say "wholesale panic"??
Personally, I had an Android corporate phone talking to the Exchange server before the BB server went back online. I don't have push email, it's not as nice, but two factors forced the change: (1) I did not know when, if ever, the Blackberry enterprise server would be back online, and (2) I had no confidence in the new IT folks' ability to keep it up. My confidence was shaken. Blackberry as a platform had taken a huge credibility hit.
Now imagine that, only worldwide. They're dead. The very addiction Blackberry has encouraged over the years is now working against them.
Too bad, they make some nice phones. If our BB server had not had its troubles, I might still be carrying one.
Now the only question is, will they migrate to Android, or iPhone?
Like a lot of things, it depends on what you use it for. The non-technical will migrate to iPhone because they don't have to fiddle with it and iPhone has similar "mindshare", similar recognition amongst fellow executives, as Blackberry. The more technical minded, who have gotten used to replaceable battery and storage and regularly use "mass storage mode", don't really have a choice these days other than Android. Windows 7? It is to laugh.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
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BB server is a lot of overhead when you consider it requires an Exchange server that can just as easily deliver mail to smart phones directly. If we are going to assign IT server responsibilities to a smaller number of less qualified people, things like BB server need to go away and things like Exchange need to be outsourced to cloud vendors.
Re:Nothing to see here, we're fine (Score:5, Insightful)
And nothing of value was lost.
Also, BB owners shoulda thought of that before buying a phone with a centralized web proxy and messaging!
Re:Nothing to see here, we're fine (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, BB owners shoulda thought of that before buying a phone with a centralized web proxy and messaging!
And Apple / Android owners should have thought about the ability of the government/whoever to eavesdrop on their phone / text messaging before they bought their devices. I choose personal security over an outage every two years any day.
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I fail to see your point. On the contrary, I would believe devices going through the RIM network much easier to spy on.
Re:Nothing to see here, we're fine (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.security-technologynews.com/news/uae-bans-blackberry-services.html
http://darkwap.mobi/technology-stuff/Blackberry-Ban-in-India
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No its not, you are ignorant of the reasons for the ban.
They threaten to ban it because the data center holding the messages is not in their country so they can't just take the messages. Its sitting here, in America (or maybe Europe or Asia depending on where you are geographically). The government in those countries can get at your messages.
America on the other hand CAN get to those messages because the servers are in our country. Guess what, we can also get at the messages of Indian blackberry users to
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SMS costs money, and everyone I know has a blackberry, so blackberry messenger was one of the main reasons for buying the phone. I never imagined that they could be so incompetent as to lose mail and IM services for 3 days.
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The only reason BBM doesn't cost money is because RIM has deals with the carriers.
BBM is more network-intensive than SMS. A BBM message has to send a few HTTPS packets back and forth, always leaving the network to go to RIM's hosting, while an SMS either piggybacks on control channel packets (using zero extra data, as zeroes would normally be sent in it's place) or sends a more compact, unencrypted lower-level packet with the text in it, depending on the network type.
Yeah the extent of this outage is pretty
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Blackberry only has good roaming costs because they've made deals with all the carriers. Not for any technical reason.
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Roaming costs are only expensive because of the carriers, not for any technical reason.
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Good point...
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RIM themselves don't seem to understand what's wrong: the linked article in the Guardian indicates it's a failed database upgrade, but the news earlier was reporting that RIM were blaming a core switch failure.
Anonymous was threatening to "take down the financial companies" on Monday or something like that. Nobody uses RIM except for megacorps which more or less equals the big financial companies.
Sooooo maybe Anonymous did it. Would certainly fit in well with the nothing but spin B S thats been reported so far. You'd think Anon would have taken credit... Maybe they've learned not to do that.
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And yet, millions of people disagree with you and have bought these phones. One person's "working better" is another person's junk.
The fact that the pre-orders are sold out means that there are people with different opinions than you. They may also like a different flavor of ice cream or drink a different soda than you. How shocking.
There is no universally right answer, it's a subjective decision.
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Seems to be an ok metric to use when pointing out that Android is "beating iPhone" due to marketshare figures.
What's good for the goose...
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Pointing out the merits of heard mentality will only get you so far.
As are you by dismissing the success of both the iPhone and Windows 95 as products of herd mentality.
No silly, they bought them because of something they heard mentally.
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You don't know what 'begging the question' means. Whats your point?
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There is no universally right answer, it's a subjective decision.
Yes, and his decision was to chuck his iPhone and get a Blackberry. What is your point? That people have different opinions? That's what keeps Slashdot running, things like arkane not liking his iPhone, and having the effrontery to say so.
I'd flag your post as redundant, it is, but I'd rather comment.
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Who cares about that outage, Id buy a blackberry before a stupid iPhone anytime, you know, something working better without paying extra money for a ugly design.
Mr. Lazaridis,
You really should be working on that outage rather than posting here.
Regards,
grub
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Who cares about that outage, Id buy a blackberry before a stupid iPhone anytime, you know, something working better without paying extra money for a ugly design.
Yet this comment is posted on an article about Blackberries being down for 3 days. Irony is so ironic.
Re:First post! (Score:4, Insightful)
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If the Blackberry is "working better" than the iPhone right now, then what the hell does the iPhone do? Go in and close your email accounts and then burst into flames?
You have an iPhone confused with a MacBook [google.com]
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You really do hope one day to post at +2, don't you?
--
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
LOL! Some people just won't stoop that low!
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Hahaha! Oops. :)
Re:I would sell the stock (Score:5, Funny)
they pull a major fat rabbit out of their ass
Blackberry has some weird apps for their phones...
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I have one word for you ACTIVESYNC.
It is supported on Exchange, Zimbra and damn near every other mail server that matters. It is supported by every reasonably modern smartphone.
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And it'll probably be supported by RIM's next generation platform because they seem terminally unable to port classic BlackBerry messaging to the PlayBook.
Heck, weren't leaked screenshots of the PlayBook 2.0 update showing ActiveSync settings?
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We still have people down. Not sure how many, as I don't deal with phones and many people have switched off BB here already; but I've seen a trickle of people going into the IT guy's office to ask about it.
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Ahhh No.
It has a much faster dual core CPU, a new radio that supports both GSM and CDMA and a new higher resolution camera, and a new antenna. The only things that didn't change is the screen which a lot of people still think is the best screen on the market, the sensors and frankly I do not know what else they could have added their, and the case.
It is very close to a new phone but it is without a shadow of a doubt a much improved version of the 4.
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It's been remarkable to see a bunch of otherwise-super-technical slashdotters fall back on criticizing a cellphone's case design. For some reason I thought this was part of the "shiny" "iBling" aspect of a product I was supposed to ignore.
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That, and the only apple dork I talk to wasn't interested in it.
After reading LWATCDR's comment though, I'd like to point out I was wrong.
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Blackberry has some years left. At the moment, the only people who can put the final nail in RIM's coffin are RIM.
And an extended outage is not trying very hard to do that how?