RIM Gives Up After Losing Initial Battle Over BBX Trademark 90
First time accepted submitter Mastadex writes "RIM's brand new BlackBerry mobile OS, due in early 2012, was expected to be called BBX. But due to a recent court ruling against it, RIM has dropped BBX and opted simply for 'BlackBerry 10.' Software company Basis International said a U.S. federal court in Albuquerque has granted a temporary restraining order against RIM, barring it from using Basis's BBX trademark. The court decision bars RIM from using the trademark at its Asian DevCon conference on Wednesday and Thursday in Singapore."
Well... (Score:1)
OH NOES (Score:2, Insightful)
Now they'll have to name their minor revision of an OS that nobody cares about slightly differently!
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MS would be smart to buy RIM, but they'd probably do something dumb with it (like switching the OS to godawful WP7) rather than just making the Blackberry network more reliable (as in not completely centralized!) and continuing to sell bland, admin-friendly corporate messaging appliances.
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The blackberries network is almost the only alternative to Microsoft's Activesync so I would imagine getting it out of the way would be a big win for them.
What do you mean? (Score:2)
It seems to me that these are pretty much features that are pretty common on mobile devices these days... Android and iOS sync pretty well with Google calendars/mail etc... and iOS syncs pretty well with exchange... and
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rather than just making the Blackberry network more reliable (as in not completely centralized!)
That's too funny! RIM has better up-time than most service providers. Hell, RIM has better up-time than the electricity in your house. Of the three outages they've had in the last ten years, the longest was the most recent. Even then, most of their users were completely unaffected. Of those affected, most only experienced slow-downs. Hell, most affected users experienced problems for less than a day.
Oh, and RIM didn't lose a single message. Everything was delivered.
Contrast that with Apple, which has
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I guess geeks don't like any downtime they haven't caused themselves.
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True. They should have called it Research In Motion Blackberry OS for Mobile Phones and Tablets version 10.
Re:OH NOES (Score:5, Insightful)
I urge you to look around and remember how many Blackberries are still being used everywhere. You may not like them, you may have never used one, and your experience may be limited to these sensationalized news articles, but enough people still use Blackberries that it is actually important.
I carry two phones, one company Blackberry and my personal Samsung Galaxy S2. Before I got my GalaxyS2, I carried a personal Blackberry. They are good phones and their software is solid. Not many other smartphones can go weeks without having to be rebooted, especially with the battery life they pull.
Re:OH NOES (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh I know, tons of companies and even a few misguided people use Blackberries. But nobody cares about the OS. It's a boring appliance for messaging and some basic browsing. Upgrades add just a few features, usually bringing the BlackberryOS' capabilities in line with what cheapo phones had 5 years ago (and thus the good battery life). It's the most boring part of the boring tool that is the boring Blackberry.
The Blackberry is the fleet van of the mobile device world. Nobody raves about the Ford Econoline and most would not like one for a personal vehicle. Same with Blackberries.
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YMMV, especially in Top Gear http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQJKQjXpGQA [youtube.com]
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The Blackberry is the fleet van of the mobile device world. Nobody raves about the Ford Econoline and most would not like one for a personal vehicle. Same with Blackberries.
Maybe it's more like the Light Utility Vehicle of the mobile device world... Nobody raves about the Light Utility Vehicle but the US Military buys thousands of them.
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even a few misguided people use Blackberries.
Please, oh please, tell me why I am misguided. I'd love to hear your reason. A Blackberry is a phone. A phone is a tool. You choose a tool that does the job you need it to do. iPhones don't always make the cut, or any other phone for that matter. I am personally offended now.
Now, regarding the rest of your post: Yes, and like I said, they just plain work. A lot of people will trade fancy flashlights built in to their phones for stability. I personally would rather have a 100% working phone than fla
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I'll admit, if you buy a Blackberry because you just wanted a simple phone to call/text and maybe occasionally surf, and the BB turned out to be a better deal financially than a cheapo Nokia for some reason (or because you want the thumb keyboard), that makes sense. But in that case I should probably get off your lawn :-P
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Or you want reliable email and communications, you know. iPhone and Android suck at ensuring your email and/or text messages get out. Blackberries just don't give up. Email, too. Many times my Android phone has tried to send an email just to finally send it out the next day. My Blackberries have never not been persistent. If signal goes out, they pick up as soon as they can.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Android phone, but the Blackberry holds a place in this world. I would love to have a company issu
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iPhone and Android suck at ensuring your email and/or text messages get out.
[citation needed]. I have never - not once in 3+ years - ever experienced a delayed email sent from an iOS device. I'm not ever sure under what circumstances that'd be possible.
Re:OH NOES (Score:4, Insightful)
The plural of anecdote is not data.
Thank you for agreeing with me that mkosmo has no data to support his ridiculous claims that Androids and iPhones aren't good at sending mail.
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Re:OH NOES (Score:5, Interesting)
I look around all the time, I take a commuter train into work every morning, the phones have gone from Blackberries to almost 100% iPhones in the last 4 years.
In the office we have supported BB and Activesync for just as long... in the Windows Mobile days we had a handful of WM users and hundreds of BBs, now we offer a corp BB or opt out and user Activesync program... We now have fewer than 100 BBs and hundreds of attached Activesync devices almost all iPhones and a few Android.
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Now they'll have to name their minor revision of an OS that nobody cares about slightly differently!
Wow. It's like you've gone out of your way to be as uninformed as possible.
BB10 is a radical departure from the old BBOS -- hell, it's a completely different operating system!
RIM acquired QNX some time ago and have been getting it ready for the next generation of smartphones. QNX, as you probably already know, is a rock-solid RTOS. It runs nuclear reactors FFS!
Put simply, QNX (BB10) is the most advanced and capable mobile OS in the world. It is in no way "a minor revision" of their old OS.
As for "no one c
There work here is done (Score:5, Funny)
Until this case came up a while back, I didn't have the slightest idea that they were releasing a new OS.
I'd say it has been a resounding success!
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Unless you follow RIM closely, you'd probably never know. Most people don't care!
I'd say that a release a year is about right for what they're doing, and I foresee it being the same.
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Feels a bit weird cheering for the OS yet hoping the house collapses while everyone else seems to be the other way around; loving the company but eh'ing the OS change
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Screw RIM. I only know about it because I've been following QNX. Frankly, I'd love to see RIM go under, get taken over, and QNX ending up in the hands of someone who'll reopen the source and let me legally continue my projects I was working on before RIM got their mitts on it. :)
A more likely scenario if RIM should go under is that QNX is sold to Microsoft who will then lock it safely away.
Be careful what you wish for.
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Hope this fixes some of their problems (Score:3, Interesting)
I sure as hell am not going to use iOS or Android. What is left besides Blackberry? Windows Mobile? Not a chance.
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May I ask what is wrong with Android?
And Windows Phone 7 is ok, the biggest problem is that their restrictions devs, specifically with network access and restrictions that prevent apps on the same phone from sharing data with each other (i.e. no way to share files on the FS, 127.0.0.1 network access isn't really possible, so you have to have a remote web-file/data sharing service that your phone uploads the data to, from one app, and downloads it from there, in the other app).
Errr... yeah, the OS is ok, bu
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'Sup bonch.
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Dealing with a big corp is not the issue, otherwise I wouldn't use RIM phones. Dealing with Google is the problem.
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DIY w/arduinos?
(maybe 1/4 serious. the DIY part, that is.)
the public phone network is closed for radio systems of your own making; but its not hard to get 'online' with wifi. its not at all the same level of coverage, but that sure seems to be shifting fast, over time.
personally, I'd like to see cell networks used less and less (directly) and peer based wifi more and more. yes, uplinks still need public networks but not every single mobile person has to be an *endpoint* on a public network. that's the c
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See http://www.republicwireless.com/ [republicwireless.com]
Insert here (Score:5, Funny)
I sure as hell am not going to use W or X. What is left besides Y? Z? Not a chance.
Brilliant system! It works great on all sorts of things!
Windows, OSX, Ubutnu, BeOS
Ketchup, Mustard, Mayonnaise, Guacamole
Engadget, Mashable, Slashdot, PCWorld
Versioning for fun and profit ? (Score:5, Informative)
I was at the keynote for the devcon in Singapore today. I was surprised to note that the OS version seemed to jump from the up-and-coming 7.1 to 10 next year. Then while queuing up for the free playbook, we had to sign a "license agreement" for the 2.0 beta OS loaded on some of the devices.
On a sidenote the keynote and all other opening prezzies were delivered using a Macbook pro which had the back covered to obscure the apple logo. I would have liked it better, seeing how much they were loving the HTML 5 on stage, if they'd actually eaten their own dogfood and delivered an awesome HTML5 prezzie using the Playbook+HDMI
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Maybe they're using octal.
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I was surprised to note that the OS version seemed to jump from the up-and-coming 7.1 to 10 next year
Well, Apple switched to '10' when they went UNIX. Perhaps RIM is just pedantically imitating their successful competition. Oh, right, now I see it: BBX = Black Berry X. So, not just '10', but 'X'.
Then while queuing up for the free playbook, we had to sign a "license agreement" for the 2.0 beta OS loaded on some of the devices.
OK, really imitating.
On a sidenote the keynote and all other opening prezzies we
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Oh, right, now I see it: BBX = Black Berry X. So, not just '10', but 'X'.
Dude, X is 10. Roman numerals. OSX is OS10, as they were at Mac OS9 previously. Acrobat Reader X was also 10, as the previous version was 9.
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Dude, X is 10. Roman numerals. OSX is OS10, as they were at Mac OS9 previously. Acrobat Reader X was also 10, as the previous version was 9.
Obviously, but you don't agree that using the Roman Numeral was an unusual stylistic decision that was subsequently mimicked by Adobe, Microsoft, and RIM?
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Not really. The previous MacOS was 9.x (9.2.2 I think). 10.x logically follows from that. Though now they're not even calling it by version anymore, just cat names. (Snow Leopard is 10.6, Lion is 10.7, but the offic
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So Mac OS X (pronounced "ten") is following a logical progression of version numbers. At least, until that point.
Right, Apple made a style decision, but RIM is just engaging in mimicry.
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They probably could have given a proper powerpoint presentation in addition to that with a Playbook, given that it has a full office suite on it. They really need to embrace this platform more and not let the bitter tech world scare them.
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On a sidenote the keynote and all other opening prezzies were delivered using a Macbook pro which had the back covered to obscure the apple logo.
That's pretty damn lame. It's not like they're Dell or Sony, actual PC-type hardware makers that would feel the need to hide a competitor's hardware.
Should have called it BBQ (Score:4, Funny)
BBQ = BlackBerry QNX
QNX (cue-nix) is the OS they are putting on the BlackBerry.
It would stick in people's mind like BBQ sauce to your shirt.
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BBQ would have just made them more of a laughing stock,"Hey did you try Black Berry's new OS BBQ? No? Well I hear it's 'well-done!'"
Can you imagine?
Neutrino (Score:2)
BB Neutrino - slightly faster than light if you believe some Italians. Yes, that's a Canadian style marketing campaign.
It just goes to prove... (Score:1)
...Apple's penis is bigger. When they want to steal an existing name, they either buy it or intimidate your ass with lawyers until you cave. Blackberry is such a wimp in comparison.
RIM (Score:1)
A case study in how to be just incompetent enough that you don't end up like Nokia, yet don't make any progress either.
Re:RIM gives up (Score:4, Insightful)
I stopped reading after the first three words. Just like they should have given up three years ago.
Just remember -- they were saying the same thing about Apple 15 years ago.
Things can turn quickly.
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GM doesn't close shop just because Toyota sells more cars.
That's a huge favor... (Score:2)
hands up ... (Score:2)
...everyone who was forced to program in BBX's Business Basic when they were fresh out of school....
To be honest, when I heard that RIM was using 'BBX' as the name of its new OS, I immediately thought of Basis's BBX.
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I'd say that the $8,825,000,000 in gross profit last year is what keeps them in business. In case you couldn't understand all those zeros, that's $8.825 BILLION.
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Haven't you heard? Trillions are the new Billions.
Minor yet major issue (Score:2)
Changing the name of your OS after trademark infringement is a minor issue, Failinc to check if your chosen name is available is rather troubling as this is routine for large, well-run corporations.
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I seriously doubt the the decision makers were unaware of Basis's BBx claim. It's much more likely that RIM thought that their industries were different enough that their use wouldn't constitute infringement.