BlackBerry 10 Review: Good, But Too Late? 184
An anonymous reader writes "Ars has an extensive review of the newly-released BlackBerry 10 operating system. Since it's such a late entry into the market, the tech community has been eyeballing the new operating system with trepidation — would all that time go to waste with a poor offering, or would BlackBerry 10 be a reasonable alternative to iOS and Android? Well, it seems BlackBerry (the company formerly known as RIM) actually put the time to good use. The review finds most of the UI innovations to actually be.. innovative. "BlackBerry took a lot of time to see what the competition is doing, and then it worked to refine its operating system. It essentially had an excellent cheat sheet, filled with everything that has worked wonderfully and all the things that have bombed. That said, BlackBerry still has to mold its product for its two huge core audiences: the business-oriented multi-tasker and the developing smartphone markets. To that end, it has included all of the essential features and apps to appeal to both of those parties. The corporate user has his or her share of content to watch on the train ride to work, games and apps to help keep busy when not entrenched in a meeting, and the perfect Hub for messaging (not to mention the literal split between work and personal environments)." However, the review also notes that the system is not really designed to make people drop their Android or iOS devices, so uptake is going to be slow at best. The question for the platform's success (and the company's) is no longer 'Is it any good? but 'Is it too late?'"
There's also a review of the z10 smartphone itself.
Re:Regarding the 'too late' part of the equation (Score:4, Informative)
After all, nothing beats a monopoly!
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
can the Z10 run arbitrary software, written by anyone, and obtained by downloading a file directly from somebody's website, without having to get permission from anybody besides the owner of the phone?
Yes. Of course you could always do that with your BlackBerry unless it was connected to BES with a policy set against such a thing. With BB Balance in BES 10 that is no longer a problem since you can install your rogue app on your personal space.
Re:Regarding the 'too late' part of the equation (Score:3, Informative)
>> There is this company called Amazon - I guess you haven't heard of them...
Oh, you mean that company lost $274 million in Q3, had earnings collapse by 45% in Q4, and is anticipating a big loss in Q1 2013? Not sure that is a model to follow.
Amazon sold lots of Kindles because of the low price that's it. They're bleeding money on that venture hoping to make it up in content sales. That doesn't work for Blackberry.
Re:Regarding the 'too late' part of the equation (Score:5, Informative)
While you are learning about Amazon, you might want to check BB's stock price...
BBRY [yahoo.com] up 100% in 6 months. I think I missed your point?
So tell me about all the Nook vulnerabilities. (Score:5, Informative)
At the core, QNX and Android are based on kernels providing POSIX services. The kernel system calls/API do not translate into a strong phone or a weak phone.
The userland is wildly different between these devices. Android relies on the Dalvik JVM to translate a synthetic bytecode, while the QNX phone focus is Javascript among others.
In theory, either kernel could be used to run either userland. For the QNX phone, this is also practice, as it runs Android apps.
Android runs on Linux. Do we argue that Linux is inherently insecure?
There are lots of other kernels that provide POSIX. Building a phone out of the SCO Openserver kernel would not in itself make an insecure phone. Flaws in phone security flow from userland design, not the kernel.