Hey guys, I got a playbook for xmas. But it won't let me log into the UBB using it's default browser. I tried dl'ing chrome but that didn't work.

Any ideas guys?

Mark? You there?

Nevermind, figured it out.

But seeing as we have your attention about bb's..how do you think the bb 10 will be?

In all honesty I think it's going to be good, but it should have been out a year out. RIM is taking there sweet time with their releases which I think will be the death of the BB

Or a plan to get shareholders to sell and the ones still invested, a better bargain before they boom..?

BlackBerry is already dead. Sure, the 10 will spike some sales, but it won't have any long term positive gains.

Android ftw

I agree. I dont understand how anyone can still use a blackberry. I know some people say because of the key board/pad but even thats gone with the bb10. And lets not forget the lame apps...

Edit: BTW the Galaxy S4 suppose to get release sometime in the near future. Should be interesting to see what happens.

This isn't valid anymore, QNX allows BBs to install android applications.

Yeah right, That sounds good for them.

To be honest. I've seen more of BB10 than most of you...

Its pretty fracking awesome. But the comments above prove what they have to overcome. It won't be easy, but I can assure you it will be new and different and amazing.

Launch party is January 30th and I'll be there enjoying the news!

Please keep in mind that BlackBerry still has 80 million subscribers. With a very high percentage of existing users planning to upgrade. They're not going anywhere.

But I guess We'll have to prove it to you rather than tell you. But you'll be impressed. Maybe not enough to bring you back right away, but you'll be intrigued.

Everyone I've shown my dev alpha to has been impressed.

The days of the hourglass and lack of apps are gone.

I will never own a blackberry, again, ever. And I can't even count on one hand anyone I know who won't say the same, what does that tell u?

Although I agree with Marc, Rob couldn't be closer to the truth if he tried, it's pretty much gauranteed if someone has had a blackberry and then gone to ios or android, that they are not going to go back. Maybe a few android people might go back because of similarities and android apps, but mainly to support a Canadian company.

QNX definitely seems like they are ahead of the curve, but BB is unfortunately behind.

BBs biggest problem will be winning people back that have switched to Androids or iPhones. It will be interesting to see what happens.

That said, I love my Droid.

That's like buying a neon and dropping a turbo motor in there. What's the point? Why wouldn't you just get the real thing?

Most people I knew, kept their BB longer than others because of BBM and the 'feeling' of typing on a keyboard. I have a 3rd party keyboard on my S3 and it makes typing even easier than a blackberry as it automatically predicts the next word and fixes typos. Its usually almpst perfect at both.

With that, you can also make your phone pulsate on keystroke, giving you the 'feeling' of pressing something. That helped me get used to a touch screen when I switched from my BB Bold.

Yeeee forsure love the words to choose on my noteII and it even gets use to your style of talking and remembers sentences u previously wrote and pops up word for word dont even need to hit a letter. Way better then my old iphone which had the shittiest auto correct. Although made some pretty funny msgs lol

Well again,
The problem here is what you think a BlackBerry is...

It is not the device you had once upon a time. And if nothing else, I strongly suggest when you're in the market for a new phone that you at least take a look at the new BlackBerry phones being release next month.

If you could take an iphone, android and BlackBerry and use all the best of them all... You just might end up with a BlackBerry 10 device.

#endsalespitch

Mark, do you work for RIM? or are you just a super big fan?

Curious, because I've never heard someone talk to positively about BB's in a long time lol.

LOL Mike.

No I don't work for RIM. I am, however a member of a group of fans called the BlackBerry Elite, which works in conjunction with RIM. We help the social media team indirectly.

the new RIM is different. They know what went wrong and what they have to do to fix it. I can assure you they will impress.

I do also have a website www.allaboutmybb.com

I switched from BB to an iphone not too long ago. Like mentioned, I think the biggest issue for BB10 will just be, to get people to switch back to BB, that have already made the switch to iOS or Android. I watched a bunch of video's on BB10 operation & it looks great, think someone new to the market would have a hard time choosing between it & iOS/Android.

Sounds like they'll have both full touch screen & touch screen with buttons for those that can do without them, which could be a plus. I held on to my BB because I always hated tying with a touch screen when I tried someone elses phone. In less then a week (probably like 3 days) I was typing as fast if not faster with the iphone.

Currently I'd never make the switch back but if Rim ever releases BB10, who knows what I will do in the future. They'll definitevly have an uphill battle (sure it would have been better if they got BB10 released a long time ago) but as Mark said, world wide, Rim is still a big player.

I know some people are getting tired of Apple as each new iphone doesn't seem much different then the one before, so BB10 may make some people jump ship. Then again, Hondas been doing that with Civic for years & it seems to work for them

and even Honda fucked up the 2012 civic, after 8 months of production, they had to over haul the interior plastics to not "feel so cheap".

they're still selling tons.

I think that if Basilly and Lardo weren't so busy wasting their time on Trying to buy hockey teams and picking out millions of dollars of trees to put on their front lawns and paid more attention to their company and products RIM and Waterloo would still be very prosperous.

The one thing I am not sure about is who's fault was it that the operation systems took so long, RIM or QNX?

I think the original release was planned for early this year, which probably would have helped them a lot more!

Well thus far, I've really enjoyed using my playbook. It's very handy, minus the ability to plug in usb2.0 and be able to transfer files a little easier using memory sticks.

Mark, what app do you use to play media, or music specifically? I remember seeing you show it on youtube but don't recall it's name.

Any one interested in going to the release party here is the link:
http://www.blackberryexperienceforum.com/index/changeevent
February 4th is Toronto

Just got back from an info session put on by RIM and have a few things to say.

First off, there is hope. Plain and simple, they did many things right. However, a lot of questions were met with 'no' when asked about common stuff from droid or iOS. Daren has it right though when he talks about somebody brand new to the market has three solid choices. Unfortunately, that market was huge 2-3 years ago, not so much now (at least in certain countries, world wide, it is still wide open).

Customization of the OS was the biggest downer. Things that it does are always 'on' no matter how much it may annoy you, you can't turn it off. But, this is software fixable.

The demo of the release device was very smooth. Perfectly on par with the big two.

The best innovation of the device though is the 'Hub'. For managing multiple email accounts and various social media and its integration into the OS was done extremely well.

Canada will be the first up for sales of the new devices after the global launch (global launch is just the formal announcement, spec details, etc... when they will go on sale). Expect to be able to buy devices in early Feb. The all touchscreen is the only device available at launch. The physical keyboard device is 'soon', maybe a month or two behind the initial launch.

All playbooks are updatable to BlackBerry 10.

If you are in IT, BES 10, especially in Q2, is looking like a monster of a program! If it goes smoothly, there is some pretty damn powerful stuff you can do.

I really wish they had more public consultation before releasing the device. Every time RIM said 'no' you could feel the room just sink. It was simple things that could be programmed very easily, but this close to launch, there is no way to implement it for launch. My unfortunate opinion is early adopters are going to be behind and suffer. With that being said though, the potential is definitely there, but as everybody has said about RIM as of late, they just took too long and aren't releasing a product that is way ahead of the competition. Many regards they are at par, but with this much time, they should have released something that was at least somewhat ahead of the curve.

This excites me! I will probably put it on the girlfriends tablet as soon as it is available.

Nice write up Andrew

It will be interesting to see what happens to their stock after their launch. And the months to follow.

Get in now before it goes up? Hmmmmm

+1 here too. Also looking forward to this. It will be my "test drive" to the possibility of the BB10 phone.

Yeah I watched the launch of the bb10 and being a devoted IOS kid I had to say I wasnt impressed with it for a all new SOS sort of deal. They are bragging up features that are just stuff that was on IOS4 god knows ANdroid had some of those features even earlier. I wish for BB to be fruitful but I have to say that I think the death nail is in place and ready to be struck lets see if the nail bends or if it goes right in.
I almost bought a playbook just cause for 150 bucks how can ya go wrong...

Mike what do you have now? I don't think I would give up my android as I like to stay with the current version of android, which Samsung allows. I will stop there, who knows there may be a possibility that I get blown of the water and convinced. Honestly if I thought the blackberry was even with the samsung I would probably jump to blackberry as I would love to support a local company.

I thought about this a month or two back, when their stock was trading in the $7.xx range. It's currently in the $14.xx-15.xx range, but I chickened out & didn't buy

I am watching the demo from Jam Americas, if anyone has watched it, this white guy is brutal. He seems so amazed that you can use one hand to type everything and do everything.

I will say that blackberry flow is cool and having certain things for work and certain things for personal is cool. I will say that I hope they have it setup so that everything that is work is through VPN and then personal is through non vpn connection. If not it's not as amazing as the same could be achieved through skins.

Damn, saw it too late. Im in the waiting list.

As I understood it from today, when a BlackBerry 10 device is registered with BES 10, it is split into two partitions (use the same physical volume, but is secured vs each other) - Personal and Work. Personal, at launch, IT has no control over. Work is able to be locked as you would currently with BES. If it is a BYOD environment and it is an employee's phone, you can still set it up attached to BES and if they leave, you can wipe the Work partition leaving the Personal 100% intact. At launch, it won't work vice versa, if you wipe the Personal, it wipes the Work too. Neat thing is it tracks everything the Work side has done, photos, downloads, etc... and wipes it all. Q2 will have an update to allow hardware control via BES and to setup a phone purely on BES - Work partition only (for company issued devices for example).

So short answer, yes, it is setup as Work partition is attached to the BES and Personal is not. The only place there is a somewhat crossover is 'Hub'. It displays stuff from both partitions on the one screen.

Thanks Andrew, I am interested to see what Q2 brings.

Mostly just changes to BES, probably quality of life updates for the OS, but BES is the only planned overhaul. Integration of all current options, mobile fusion and BES, into one server to do it all. Sadly it sounds like they are not going to have a free option any more for smaller businesses, BES express is being discontinued the same time BES 10 gets its upgrade.

I wrote a scathing message about Apple guys telling RIM they're going under. I believe it was Microsoft people telling Apple that 12 years ago, so they feel it's their dues

I have talked about my device with a few people, and they're awed. I turned it on, ran it 5:30 am to 11:10 pm, getting medium traffic, and it was sitting at 25% battery life. I didn't have to stop to charge it. The Hub is awesome. BBM has always been amazing. The feel is fantastic. And it may never hold number one in consumer devices, but you're right. 80 million people loved BB so much, they sat with BB7 when it was miles behind iOS and Android.

So I like to imagine what will happen when RIM is running the same race, but with all the little advantages that BB users love.

IMO the only reason why BB is where it is was not doing their back ground checks before launching new products, they lost their way through trying to keep up with the spool that is the Mobile electronics industry. Too many products in a row that were launched prematurely. They used to be bullet proof they used to have amazing atributes but the problem is that other companies surpassed that while they were spinning their wheels trying to launch another handful of new products.
I love BB I used to be so happy with their devices they were the "phone to have" I think if they go back to basics and do what they did best again they will be a monster like they used to be. Apple & Blackberry have their own neiche markets if they focus on their portion of it build solid devices and not rush to try to have the newest latest greatest what ever and just produce solid current and relevant devices with just a few models they will come back to life. I wish them all the best their a Canadian company to be proud of I hope they come back to life and retake their market share

I wouldn't quite go far as to say as love, but the phone served its purpose and didn't warrant buying out the rest of the hardware subsidy to switch.

I know for our company, buying out ~50 phones, some that just entered into a 3yr contract, for minor benefits is not worth it - that is the only reason why we are still BlackBerry. At the presentation two days ago, there was a guy with the same problem with 500 phones.

But, that is the past, and looking forward, things look great. My only two items as a wish list is: larger device and stylus. A BB "Galaxy Note 2" - with otterbox, would find its way into everybody hands here, but the two BB10 devices imminent are unfortunately not an upgrade for our guys being more productive.

Anyone install the new operating system update on their playbook?