Technology

If only they weren’t so greedy they could have built a nice ecosystem. The failure of BB10 had everything to do with people at the top being completely disconnected with the market.

I was part of a team in the university that was like a partnership with BlackBerry and our IT lab would code native BB10 apps for some Brazilian companies.

So what used to happen was that the professor responsible would have constant meetings with the BB team that sounded more like those companies cult-like brainwashing thing. I don’t know how to explain, but he’d come always excited that BB10 would take over the market because iOS devices had “lost” their status and hence become a “mainstream” device. They wanted to fit the niche of people owning a BB10 device for status reason, and because of that they were supposed to be very expensive.

I think anyone who remembers the devices knows they were priced higher than the most expensive iPhones and it just didn’t make sense. They didn’t have anywhere near the amount of apps that Android and iOS had already (and which were quite mature at that point), so instead they added an Android runtime in it and resorted to create hackathons where people would port their Android apps to BB10 and earn devices or other gifts. But the half-assed ported apps were terrible and riddled with bugs.

It all felt kind of scummy from the start, because they’d use this misleading advertising that their App Store had x million apps or something, but more than 90% of if were shitty ported apps that didn’t integrate with the system or half-asses apps that people uploaded to the store to get gifts or money (they also didn’t have any incentive to do any quality control in their store).

I still remember one lad we knew in the university who uploaded dozens of apps without consent from the actual owners that were just shitty old games and many packaged web-apps that were the same useless thing with different skins just to get the prizes.

Yet the people working in the labs were always brainwashed to think BlackBerry 10 was doing incredibly well, but whenever I looked on forums or Reddit everybody was talking about how crazy it was for anyone to buy it. Like… people wanted smartphones for the apps and although Facebook had a very limited BB10 version, Instagram for example never bothered with it.

The article is absolute trash for not mentioning this. "Their iconic keyboards..." is the closest it gets to describing them.

Thankfully, there is a link to the patent at the end.

Abstract

A keyboard comprising a plurality of transparent keys. In use, the keyboard is attached to a device such as a mobile device, to overlie a display screen of the device. One or more images displayed on the display screen are made visible to a user through the keys, which may be pressed by a user. User input is determined by identifying a pressed key, and the image or part thereof visible through the key when pressed.

Basically a detachable keyboard of transparent material as a display overlay, providing tactile feedback while the LCD allows for backlit and customizable key labels. I don't remember seeing a practical implementation of this IRL or in media but I might be too young for that.

The build quality and tactile feedback were much better. I never owned a BB but the keyboards were definitely something that I envied.

It’s hard to explain. The keyboards they built just felt and worked better. They clicked just right, they had the shape right. Once they licensed out production like their Android branded phones it wasn’t as good.

There was a device called Typo that copied their keyboard exactly but attached to iPhone that was good but they must have really copied BB because they got sued into smithereens.