Well, I have gotten rid of the Pre and sold all my old Blackberries and I am now on the iPhone 3GS. I decided I would post a few thoughts, for the record (or for anyone just tuning in, I do consider myself a VERY power user). So, why did I ditch the Pre. The biggest reason is uncertainty. I love the Pre I really do, it’s a great device, yes it has it’s issues (it is just a 1.0 device, the 1.0 iPhone a issues, some which took 2 revisions to get addressed). The issue I have is with Palm and how “they do things”. If you remember with the Treo’s there were issues, and *if* they got addressed it was unannounced, buried in some KB article that you could only find with the help of several level 2 support guys and far too many hours on hold with them. Also, they are VERY “closed” when it comes to announcements…even Apple who is legendary when it comes to secrets, at least they will say “yes, we know it’s a problem we are working on it”. With Palm who knows (but, as Dr. Phil says, past behavior is a great predictor of future behavior), they thing that finally made me “give up” the Pre is that Palm announced that the Eos was a “maybe”…not a we’re working on it, but “maybe we’ll release it if things go well with the Pre”…that was shocking that they would say that. Oh, and they released a GREAT device, we still don’t have an official SDK…as of writing this the “homebrew” thing is moving strong…but, still. I think Palm *had* a good momentum (they did release just before the iPhone), but I think that they totally dropped the ball since then…very few apps…and no SDK. Bad move.
Now, what about Blackberry (any kind)…well, here are my issues (in no particular order). First, that I’m fairly convinced that RIM hates developers. $2000 to get to join their developer program?? Really? 2k? Even with the new “App Store” they have, it’s still a joke for how they “encourage” developers (they don’t). Apple on the other hand has a $99 developer program, not bad. Oh, and Apple’s app store has like 50k apps. My number 2 reason is that BIS goes down frequently, but you never know if it’s really down, kinda down (delays), or if it’s the carriers. At least with the iPhone it’s all “internal” nothing to really go down (carrier, kinda…if you have wifi it still works). Plus, even on Wifi equipped Blackberries, I find that a lot of apps still use the carrier not a wifi connection.
Well, those are my thoughts…for now.
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