Playbook OS 2.0 Released 90
Alt-kun writes "On February 21st, The Blackberry Playbook finally received its long-promised overhaul. Called Playbook OS 2.0, this major upgrade provides native email and calendaring apps, limited support for Android applications (the developer has to repackage the app for the Playbook), and a bunch of other features. There are some fairly positive initial reviews, although one can no doubt expect a lot of too-little-too-late naysaying from various quarters as well. The Globe and Mail article also contains this somewhat interesting note: '...until RIM began deep discounting ... the device languished way behind rivals such as the iPad in terms of market share. One recent report by Toronto-based Solutions Research Group, however, pegs RIM's share of the tablet market at around 15 per cent, a big jump after discounting over the holiday buying season.'"
ZDNet has some screenshots of the new features, and El Reg has a piece on an interesting bit of the new software.
market share (Score:5, Informative)
One recent report by Toronto-based Solutions Research Group, however, pegs RIM's share of the tablet market at around 15 per cent, a big jump after discounting over the holiday buying season.
That's 15 per cent of the Canadian tablet market. One would figure they're doing much worse outside Canada.
Re:Good app recommendations? (Score:5, Informative)
As far as free games go, PewPew is a quite attractive vector graphic shoot-em-up that's a great stress relief at the end of the day. Celestial Slingshot is another free game that's quite addictive if you don't mind accidentally launching dozens of ships into the sun.
Release of the Zinio reader is imminient, and I'm sure we'll see a flock of Android apps in the AppWorld in coming months. Ignore the wisecracks from the iPadistas - the Playbook is good value for $200.
Re:I hate subjects (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I remember actually going to the developer days before the Playbook was launched, and applying for my free Playbook, and the whole tech presentation was about how it worked as an extension to your phone and why that was good for business.
The engineers seemed to know what they were making, and what their priorities were. The CEOs and their marketing department on the other hand were living in some strange parallel universe... I note that the CEOs have gone, and they are shopping around for a new Marketing director. I'm not surprised.
Re:I hate subjects (Score:3, Informative)
From what I've read, the use of QNX necessitates an entirely new version (ground up rewrite) of BES server software to be written. So an enterprise will need one BES server for QNX devices and a legacy server for the legacy models. They haven't released a new version of BES yet, so they relented and used active sync on the device. They made a choice not to release the PB with email so they could build a new BES Server. Now the people who bought one could easily have had one with active sync, a year ago but that challenged their sunk costs business model. When companies atart finding reasons not to ship a tablet with email because it conflicts with their interests then they deserve to fail. The RIM backend passthru model of servers it outdated and expensive and will not scale well as people use more bandwidth.
Re:Good app recommendations? (Score:5, Informative)
Spent mod points so have to post as AC, check out "GeeReader" if you use Google Reader for RSS, "Remote Desktop" if you want to RDP to your desktop using native MSTSC TCP 3389 with no additional software clients, there is "Telnet/SSH" which is basically PutTY compiled for Playbook OS, "ProInsights" is a very nice eye candy for your LinkedIn account (not very functional, but very cool to show off), "Book Reader" lets you open any ebook, including Kindle... for games - just look at the top rated tab in the new App World. Ok, I think that's it.
Re:I don't believe this for a second (Score:4, Informative)