“I am truly shocked that so many people are being duped by BlackBerry’s recent announcement of their tablet, the PlayBook. I have read endless comments from people who are saying they can’t wait to get this tablet computer. Well, I think I have some bad news for you folks. There is no evidence that the PlayBook exist as advertised. Why do I say this? I will make it brief…”
Just because some blogger says it, it becomes OS news?
Not because “some blogger says it”. More like – because some blogger has a valid point on the issue, that is worth reading.
His point is that RIM uses CG graphics in their ads, not an actual working unit. Well…boo-hoo? It’s pretty common nowadays. They might just be finalizing the actual hardware and didn’t have one at hand, and decided it’s easier to just do it in CG for the time being?
It’s not illegal, nor does it mean such a device doesn’t exist.
OTOH, it’s true that a commercial means nothing nowadays. Courier’s commercials were really appealing, too…
No, but it doesn’t show any level of trust.
Apple: iPad. Here it is, it works, try it yourself, shipping this month.
That is a whole world apart from the trickery RIM is pulling here.
We might complain about the RDF, but Apple seriously know how to not bullcrap us with releases. They will keep it totally secret and then ship the actual real, working product preferably the day they announce it.
Your memory deceives you. It took more than two months for it to ship.
Companies announce products ahead of launch ALL THE TIME you know, ESPECIALLY when it involes an ENTIRELY NEW operating system with a BRAND NEW development environment. You know, like how it took 6 months for the original iPhone to ship. Did you complain then? The white iPhone 4?
The usual hypocrisy of the Apple fanboys.
Edited 2010-09-30 13:33 UTC
The usual hypocrisy of the QNX fanboys.
But in all seriousness I would also like to see real working devices being demoed rather than CG. It’s like looking at a floor model of a device at a store and in place if the actual screen is a sticker with some cheesy graphic on it…that doesn’t help sell products, it makes people question whether the real thing will be worth a crap.
Hey, don’t call me an Apple fanboy. My point was that at most times Apple tries to ship things on the day. If it doesn’t, you can bet that Steve Jobs was screaming down the hallways because manufacturing blundered or couldn’t get the job done (white iPhone 4). You know that Steve plans everything to ship the day it’s announced and the only reason it doesn’t is because some third party let them down.
Basically, Steve’s whole attitude to releases is the polar opposite of most other companies who can’t keep their traps shut and mouth off about that which they can’t actually deliver. *cough*Vista*cough*
Push notifications would like a talk with you
Now good example. That was probably pure isolated naïvete on Apple’s part. In working so hard to shape the iPhone into what *they* wanted, they were completely unprepared for the sheer vastness of applications that the real world wanted to write (and thus also the submission guidelines being so disastrous)
*cough*first generation of ipods*cough
Oh and those junky first gen ipods do not work with the latest version of itunes. Supporting even a simple mp3 player for 5 years seems to go against Apple policy. I guess the flip side is that most failed long ago.
It’s been longer than 5 years, just coming up on 9 actually. And most heavily used consumer electronics (get carried in purses, back packs, pockets) don’t last more than a couple of years before they’re broken.
I actually trained for and ran a Marathon with my 1st gen iPhone. It took several dives (plenty of knarly dents in it) with me on runs, and it kept on ticking. I eventually broke it by stepping on it while it was in my pants on the floor.
I was referring to the minis and nanos. But the early classics were junky as well and a lot of those classics were sold well after newer models had been released.
Let’s not forget they had to replace the first gen nano in Japan because of overheating issues.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/11/apple-offers-first-generation-ip…
The early ipods all had below average build quality, that really isn’t debatable. Apple ipods are fine now but Sony MP3 players have always been better in their early models.
Can’t you put Rockbox on those things now?
Put that on it and use it like a mass storage device.
http://www.rockbox.org/
Now that you have been linked to by Daring fireball, you are
The iPad and iPhone did take a few months to release to the general public however apple did two things differently.
The iPhone demonstration was live on the stage when they previewed it, it wasn’t a set up, as you can see through the blackberry video the unit he had on stage was a very early prototype and not a fully working unit unlike the iPhone.
The iPad also wasn’t released the same day it was announced however it was available to attendees to try out at the event and not placed in an untouchable plastic box.
I think the bloggers point is really not to get overly excited as the IT industry has been here many times before, where a product is announced only for it to fizzle into nothing year / half a year later. Windows Slate, Courier for examples from Microsoft.
Don’t get me wrong, im interested in the launch of the PlayBook, i love the idea that the QNX OS is finding it’s way into public life and not simply as the OS for nuclear power plants and cars. I own and love using an iPad, i find it a really good replacement for a traveling laptop for the tasks i need to complete, and although it’s starting to feel a rather worn out phrase it doesn’t make it any less true to say that Competition is good, the more the merrier. During the 80’s the computing industry was rife with new ideas, new hardware, new OS’s, new software, the late 90’s and early 2000’s where as beige in innovation as the pc’s sat on peoples desks.
I think the bloggers overall remark is valid, lets not get too over excited, lets see what is actually released because even if it’s half as good as RIM has said it is, it’s gonna be a winning product.
Oh for Chrissakes Thom, Apple announced it in January, said it would ship in April, and guess what? It shipped in April. When exactly is the Playbook shipping? Oh yeah, no one knows. All we get from you are the typical Apple hater crap, masked with the “and I’m actually an Apple user, so don’t think I’m an Apple hater” BS.
That’s the case all the time. Apple never does “concepts”, also. They just release working devices, and never show experimental products. That’s the way they work, and showing concepts (to gauge interest, to show off, to attract investors and shareholders) is the way other companies work.
Sorry to disturb your fanboyness, but do some googling.
Copland? Pink? Taligent?
Jeez.
You didn’t notice? It was all during the time Jobs wasn’t in charge! (And thus, Apple wasn’t Apple.) It’s really the exception that proves the rule, literaly.
Edited 2010-09-30 21:45 UTC
Copland was released as a beta to developers and shown at an expo…. It DID exist!
At least check your examples before posting and complaining other people dont google!
FYI.
November 1995
First beta, or test, version of Copland released to developers.
http://news.cnet.com/Macs-new-OS-Seven-years-in-the-making/2009-104…
I have a copy somewhere.
But are you actually reading what the upstream poster is saying? Jobs WAS NOT at Apple in 1995. He was still at Next/Pixar. He didn’t return to Apple till *late* 1996. He didn’t become the full CEO until some time after that – what 1997/1998? It wasn’t till 1998 that he went about with a hatchet, killing products like Newton.
I never said Copland didn’t exist. The point was “working and not experimental”. As in something that is NOT Beta, something that you could use in a PRODUCTION environment. IBM also released Workplace OS under Taligent, but I wouldn’t call it a working, non-experimental product.
White. iPhone.
Manu. Facturing.
You’re missing the comparison. Apple didn’t fake the white iPhone with CG and an empty shell. It existed, but they couldn’t get the manufacturing to scale at the last minute.
RIM are trying to pass off a product that doesn’t exist as the done deal. The iPhone however was being built, boxed, and sent to distribution centres as Steve was talking.
There’s a vast chasm between being able to build a prototype and having a product that can be unboxed, installed, and used by customers. Vast.
Doesn’t exist? Based on what evidence? RIM is a publicly traded company – they can’t just announce a major product that doesn’t exist without repercussions from the financial authorities. If they say it exists – it exists. The original iPhone was only demonstrated by Jobs – it took them six months to get it to market. Sure, it was demoed – but that doesn’t say anything. For all we knew, it was a simple Flash (lol) demo.
NO. Journalists were able to see the actual device and a few even got to touch it, where they saw some of the apps were unfinished but that it WAS an actual, working device.
We’ve seen nothing here to indicate that the Playbook actually WORKS or that there is a version of QNX that currently functions on that device as implied.
Yeah, but did they actually say the device work turn out like in the commercial or is this another sad sad Big Mac experience.
Until someone posts actual footage or at least a review from Engadget or Gizmodo or something i’ll take the trailer with plenty of Ketchup (but no pickles damit!).
Thanks bro
I thought the same thing as soon as my RSS reader started spilling articles about this supposedly great device, that nobody seemed to had physicaly seen.
I’m not saying it doesn’t exist nor anything, but so much hype for a piece of possibly vaporware feels just… wrong. How many games had *amazing* commercial videos, whereas actual gameplay turned out to be shitty as hell? Well, big news for you people: this *can* turn out to be exactly the same.
PS: I’m not an apple fan, and I’d like to see this device come true as amazing as it looks in the commercial.
I think this guy is just shorting the stock. When a company worth 25 billion $ says they will launch a new product, I would tend to believe them more then I believe the author of this post who most likely has some personal interest in publishing such a post.
Not very confidence inspiring to have no device, all fake images, and then specs that seem to defy engineering reality.
With that processor and capability, at 400g device, the battery life must be terrible. The iPad weighs 2/3 more mostly due to battery weight. So unless RIM has come up with a new magical battery type, it is either going to way heavier than advertised, or have terrible battery life. Nothing comes for free.
The device will exist in some form, I can guarantee it won’t be as good as it appears though.
Edited 2010-09-30 14:55 UTC
iOS != QNX. iOS != Symbian, for that matter, as far as battery life is concerned.
No, but a screen is a screen. A power-hungry processor is a power-hungry processor. QNX doesn’t magically reduce the power requirements for either.
Especially if they plan to run Flash Player on top of it
Power hungry? When the A9 runs at 1.6ghz it uses an average tdp of 2 watts.
http://liliputing.com/2010/09/nufront-introduces-2ghz-arm-cortex-a9…
It also has 1080p video decoding built into the die.
We don’t know how efficient their software stack will be but given that QNX is streamlined for embedded use I’m going to bet on pretty damn efficient.
What ??? Oo
Either this is fake (like when you use inductances to make the electricity counter measure a smaller wattage), or I want to know what makes such a 30 times smaller power consumption possible…
No it isn’t fake, just look at how well the A9 browses at only 500mhz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4W6lVQl3QA
Here is another video of it in action
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2KSCPOhQ7w
The ARM crowd has overrated some of their cpus before but……..not this time. This really is a bad ass chip.
What I was questioning was not the actual performance of the chip but the way power consumption is measured. Like if they measure 2W with the processor running at maximum frequency BUT with caches and graphics acceleration turned off, or something like that.
Then again, if that wattage is measured fairly, I just say… Wow… Put in a laptop, this thing would more or less make CPU power consumption a non-issue, with only screen, graphics, and storage remaining as power-sucker.
Adding up an OLED screen, hybrid graphics, and a good SSD, you could well make a current laptop last 3-4x as much on the same battery for common usage patterns…
Edited 2010-10-01 06:12 UTC
2 watts on QNX will be 2 watts on Linux will be 2 watts on Symbian, all will drain the battery the same.
And as for how efficient the software stack is, it’s the higher level stuff (efficiency of the graphic layer which is separate from the lower-level stuff) that matters.
A lot of the new Android phones out there won’t last a full day on a charge, not because of Android OS, but because the components draw lots of power.
Oh I didn’t know that all kernels drain power equally. Linus Torvalds must be a real a dumbass for wasting his time with the tickless kernel.
True, but the operating system can go very far in determining battery life. My Android phone, the Motorola Cliq, has a friggin’ huge battery but barely makes it through a day of light browsing once or twice an hour, and a couple of phone calls and texts. Why? It has a low power, efficient processor, and an energy efficient screen so those aren’t the culprits. The cell and WiFi radios are no different than any other Motorola smartphone when it comes to power draw, so it’s not them either.
No, I’ll tell you why: Because it’s running the older, less efficient version 1.5 of the OS, and the MotoBlur UI that runs on top of the OS is constantly polling data, even when you set the phone in “Battery Saver” mode. This device is a clear case of the software, not the hardware, running the battery down. I’m looking forward to the 2.1 update mostly for the gain in battery life.
That’s the power management functionality aspects of the operating environment, which are higher level functions, not scheduling, I/O ops, or microkernel versus monolithic, etc.
Actually, proper scheduling can make devices more power-efficient.
As an example, usual round robin algorithms run software whenever it can run, keeping the processor busy and energy-hungry as long as one task is active and it’s not put in a sleep state.
A power-efficient scheduling algorithm could swap out some tasks under certain conditions, so that the processor can be put to rest more often. E.g. pausing a game when it’s put in the background in order to read some mail won’t hurt its functionality the tiniest bit, and CPU use during the time spent reading the mail will drop from 100% (game running in the background) to a few % (scrolling text from time to time).
Defining which tasks are swapped out can be the role of a high-level API, but as you see the ability to swap a task out and stop scheduling it must first be provided at a low level.
Even if it doesn’t exist and RIM is just testing the waters, now they could see how much people would want such a device. Even if it’d be just vaporware as of now, they could see that creating it would be a good step. Anyway, a blogger is just a blogger even if (s)he has good points. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
It exists. That’s all I can say. It exists the same way as the iPad and the Tab existed months before it’s announcement. This is no different.
How do we know? He didn’t interact with it, it could be a screen shot on the screen for all we know. If it did exist, why didn’t he show it off? Even in limited mockup form?
Did you ever see the win98 usb demo? That’s why.
All ye of little faith
Edited 2010-09-30 17:26 UTC
A little hint: You may believe him after using the OSNews search.
It’s entirely different. We are not months from the announcement. The announcement already happened.
It exists, except they can’t show it being used. Okay. Loose definition of exists, then.
It is the end of the third quarter. They probably preannounced to pump their stock price a bit. Frankly, I’d be surprised that they would have a fully-working device like this in so short a time after their QNX acquisition.
I wish them success, if for no other reason than to get QUX a little more visibility. And I hope that RIM avoids their tendency to sell their devices on its “enterprise-y” capabilities while downplaying those devices’ relatively low-spec hardware.
What I find even more alarming are these personalities depicting this as a Apple vs RIM thing when in fact the blogger has a point. I sense a hint of stealth marketing and shilling in this open discussion.
Also, his suspicions are based on more than just the commercial it’s also the lack of any physical proof of the device. (The conference video showing that the guy might just be holding a plastic shell for example)
The question now is how different will the real device be.
Declaring a product before it is finalized is an old tactic used to scare off competitors who might be thinking about entering the market.
The playbook likely exists in a complete form but only a prototype was sent to the marketing department. They were probably still working on the software and didn’t want a beta to get into the wild.
One of the RIM executives recently said that it will be sold at a “very competitive” price. That means $500 or less. This tablet has win written all over it.
If and when it arrives, I’m buying. So they’re just giving us a teaser at the moment. Big deal. Even if they just purchased QNX but who knows this device might already be in the works long before that. Planning may take years in the making. Say like Android, was it made (to be successful) in 7 days….? Even if it (Playbook) is a concept at the moment – it is a damn interesting concept. Tablet running QNX. Drool worthy. We should embrace it – concept and all. Competition is good. IOS, Android, WinCE (And subsequent derivative), MeeGo, ChromeOS, QNX, Symbian^3…and whatever else is out there.
So the controversy, if I understand it correctly, is that some guy on blogspot is speculating that a technology company has announced a product that may not yet exist in its final, shipping form?
He must REALLY hate game consoles, then.
Also, did anyone else chuckle at the prominent (and apparently hard-coded) advert for an iPad accessory that’s in the blog post? Not to mention the fact that the WHOIS data lists the same registrant for both singularityhacker.com (the blog) and easelforipad.com (advert’s domain).