Re: BlackBerry's fall from popularity [telecom]

> > I'm no longer following fashion: is Salmon going to be this year's
> > color again? Have hemlines gone up, or down? Are immature children
> > still buying electronic devices based on what the local
> > thought-leader says is "in" this week?
>
> This is your opinion, but the reality is that mobile communications
> has trends just like everything else. At one time Nokia was _it_ as
> far as mobile equipment manufacturers. That's not so any longer
> because of lots of factors including not changing their focus fast
> enough. BlackBerry was the darling as far as smartphones go, but
> through many factors didn't act fast enough to change where they > needed to.

My opinion is that consumers are buying mobile computing devices based on peer pressure and the harangues of TV pitchmen, instead of rational evaluations of their needs, budgets, and expectations for what those devices should do. Buyers have been, and continue to be, relying on style, rumor, trivia, and brand names instead of bothering to find out which product and service will best suit their needs.

"Yeah", you might say, "what else is new? You have to sell the sizzle, not the steak" - and I agree that marketing will always be the deciding factor during a consumers' choice of entertainment media and associated devices.

However, and this is the nub of my reservations about smart phones and other mobile computing devices, any gadget which supposedly makes its user more productive, more intelligent, or more wise must be evaluated in terms of the impact it has on the environment of its users _and_ its non-users. For every "benefit" a "smartphone" user claims, there is an associated (often intangible) cost, and it is these costs that weigh most heavily, to my mind, against the often-overrated advantages of the devices and the services that go with them.

We can all agree, I hope, that telephones are useful devices. As someone who owned and used an IMTS mobile telephone long before cellular phones were available, I can attest to the utility of mobile phones for those who have more obligations than time.

In the case of telephones, I hope we can all agree that a "500" set is just as useful as a "2554" Touchtone instrument, and that a Motorola "brick" cellphone is just about as transportatble as an iphone in practical terms. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and bet that everyone agrees that any cellphone which works is just about as useful as any other. While I can argue that cellphones have taken away the last "quiet time" available to us, namely the transit times during which we used to be alone behind a wheel or strolling down a sidewalk, I'll conceed that enough people find them usefull that they are, on balance, a "net gain" in our lives.

However, I do not feel the smae way about smartphones and other mobile computers. Let's face it: smartphones are not toys. They are also not cheap, not magic, and not harmless "personal" appliances that affect only their users. Frankly, when I think of their costs, I don't see their benefits adding up: the tiny screens, tinier keyboards (or lack thereof) and miniscule data rates are all symptoms of a solution that creates its own problem.

Being constantly connected has hurt us, in ways both subtle and gross, and I'm convinced that most of the consumers who crave the "benefits" of smartphones actually seek the mind-numbing overload of constant emails, continuous "tweet" mesages, and "always on" web access - because it spares them the uncertainty of knowing that they can't let everyone else run their lives. I think they want to be less like their parents - without the expectation that adults should use critical thought and experience to evaluate their options instead of engaging in knee-jerk responses, the knowledge that speed is the enemy of sagacity, and the common sense necessary to tell the world, now and then, that it needs to shut up.

That is, of course, my opinion.

No, I don't think we can. I can't use the 500 to deal with my office voicemail. I can't use the 500 set to deal with my bank. I can't do lots of things with it. It's simply not suitable for use in the modern world. Being able to deal with my office voice mail from somewhere other than the office means I can spend time doing other things than going to the offfice. I suppose I could try to talk my employer into hiring a bunch of people to answer phones, writing down messages with a fountain pen, and reading them back to me when I call in, but they're not insane, so they're not going to.

You can scream, wail, rend your clothes, and coat yourself in ashes all you like, but it won't change the fact that the world has moved on, and you haven't.

Blackberries are just as expensive as other smartphones, and far less capable.

You're missing the point, but I'll grant you that dtmf is a usable for things that dp isn't. I meant to compare a "2500" desktop-type Touchtone phone to a Princess or Trimline Touchtone instrument, but I couldn't remember their model numbers and I settled on the "500" as a good example of the ultimate basic landline phone.

Be that as it may, I think you're picking nits and getting sidetracked. Therefore, I'll pick one myself, and point out that many "modern" dtmf senders are made with integrated circuits that generate a precise 100 ms tone burst which doesn't work correctly on some older IVR systems. At least in the case of dtmf-capable landline instruments, ISTM that the world has moved to "cheaper" and "less useful", but not "more reliable", so in a way you bolster my argument.

Bill, who didn't even have to rend his clothes to write this.

See

I love my Blackberry. It is no longer on a plan so I use it connected to an Android that functions as its wifi access point. I still prefer it for sending email and google navigation doesn't compare to the realtime traffic updates of the blackberry traffic app. I bought it on ebay for $60.