Bye BlackBerry; iPhone mistake; CES redux
Crafted while realizing that January will be a long, cold month
Snow day is for the birds and us, too (Credit: Lance Ulanoff)
Dismantling Blackberry
It’s been well over a decade since I regularly carried a BlackBerry but to this day, I miss the classic QWERTY keyboard design and my 9000’s little rollerball that I used to occasionally take apart for cleaning.
The BlackBerry OS was unique and gritty. It struggled mightily in the transition from an excellent text-driving interface and messaging system to one that could ably support graphics and apps. A lot of it had to do with screen sizes: BlackBerry’s gave up half their screen real estate to the keyboard. Eventually, the company developed some devices with big touchscreens and a slide-away keyboards, but some were poorly executed and not all that well received.
As a company BlackBerry further hampered itself by building a more complex OS and hardware but not supporting it with better mobile CPUs and more RAM. I once pressed former Blackberry CEO Mike Lazard on this. It didn’t go well.
I was using a Blackberry into 2010, but by then the BlackBerry 9000’s trackball was so gummed up, I had to take apart the phone to make it work. I didn’t switch completely to the iPhone until 2011 when the phone finally made it to the Verizon network.
Last week, long after me, most consumers, and even businesses stopped caring about BlackBerry Phones (they still employ some of its software), the company officially ending support for all phones still running on the BB OS. Surprisingly, this impacts some relatively new phones made in 2017 (BlackBerry gave up on its proprietary OS and switch to Android a few years back), but it’ll mostly all but brick the old ones some have been holding onto for dear life.
I often wonder what might have been with BlackBerry if it had capitalized on its market position from the early aughts and moved fast to compete with touch-screen devices like the industry-changing iPhone. It didn’t and now BBOS will fade from memory just as our classic BlackBerry devices did years before.
A New iPhone with old problems
My wife loves her new iPhone 13, but in the switch from an iPhone 8 and its now classic Touch ID home button to the TrueDepth Module, she’s discovered one frustrating thing about the newer design: She keeps accidentally taking screenshots of her iPhone screen.
For those of us who have been using this design for years, this is a common and relatively well-known iPhone problem. If you accidentally squeeze both the power/sleep and volume up button, you grab a screenshot.
Funny thing is this is by design. It’s the way you are supposed to grab screenshots if you want them. The issue is that the placement of these buttons makes it quite easy to also press the volume when all you want to do is put the phone to sleep.
My wife was relieved to learn that it’s not just her. I told her that Apple’s answer to the issue was to add the ability to quickly delete said grabbed shot. You just tap on the thumbnail that appears right after the grab and then the trash can that appears in the upper-righthand corner.
It’s not so much a fix as it is a band-aid. Maybe Apple will get this right in the next major redesign.
CES Redux
CES was just as weird as I thought it would be. Strike that, it was weirder. There were in-person events (some keynotes and press conferences with okay turnout) but I think some parts were way-beyond ghost-town-ish. Usually packed press events like CES Unveiled and another called Pepcom were eerily small and quiet. The good news is that there were a ton of new product announcements. I suggest you trot on over to this page at TechRadar to see the best of it (it’s a lot). The lesson here is you don’t have to be there to be there.
Even though I watched it through my computer screen, two autonomous race cars passing each other at 80 mph (and faster), did kind of blow me away.
Yes, I’m hooked on Wordle. I have some thoughts
BTW: If you’re into birds and into photography, you should check out my Instagram
Stay well
See you soon