Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30932399

by GotAnyMegadeth • 12 years ago

17 7 12 years ago

bbc.co.uk

secfirstmd2• 12 years ago

For a minute I thought this article was from The Onion.

Ridiculous, talking about sour grapes. Basically asking Congress to distort the market in order to help fix the failings of his crappy companies lazyness and lack of innovation over the past few years.

nfoz2• 12 years ago

There is a lot of nonsense in this piece, and a lot of nonsense out of Blackberry.

But the one thing you can't criticize them for is "lack of innovation over the past few years". I have a Blackberry Passport and it is very innovative, it does stuff nothing else does and wows people when they see it. Of course it has its faults as well, and Blackberry is a lot more than one product.. but I would be more careful in my choice of criticism.

secfirstmd2• 12 years ago

Okay fair point, but for the average consumer BlackBerry "innovation" has been about 5 years too late. And that is coming from a former BlackBerry enthusiast like myself.

pen2l• 12 years ago

I have a Blackberry Passport and it is very innovative, it does stuff nothing else does and wows people when they see it.

Just curious, what are some of these "wow" things?

Someone1234• 12 years ago

That has absolutely nothing to do with net neutrality. Plus there are serious logistical and moral issues with forcing companies to produce apps for a certain product.

Let's take this statement:

Mr Chen said the same should apply to apps on smartphones, so companies would be legally obliged to make versions of their programs equally available for all handsets.

I have a Nokia from 2001 which supports Java "apps." These are terrible little programs developed on the old Java Mobile Framework, and have serious restrictions placed on what they can do, and run on a terrible little 128 x 128 pixels screen.

Is Mr. Chen suggesting that my Nokia get a copy of every single popular app produced for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone? And if not then where is the line. Why should Blackberry get an mandatory app but not some random grey market phone? Or some out of date handset produced five years ago?

To be honest Mr. Chen's comments are idiotic. They are just dumb. I fully support Net Neutrality, and additionally if for example Apple started requiring developers for iOS not to produced apps on other platforms (including Blackberry) I'd want to see that made illegal for being anti-competitive.

But right now Apple, Google, or Microsoft place no restrictions of app developers creating apps for third party platforms. So developers are free to produce apps on Blackberry, the only reason they likely don't is that Blackberry doesn't have enough users to justify the cost of doing so.

If Blackberry can make an anticompetitive argument, they should. However this is not it, not even ballpark.

codezero• 12 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8927539

Make coders develop Blackberry apps, says firm's boss

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