Matthias, you give a textbook example of why the innovator's dilemma is a thing. Thank you for that great history lesson from an insider's perspective.
I was a co-op student there in 2006 the summer before the iphone came out. I still remember the day I had a conversation with a higher up. I was telling him how excited I'll be for the day that portable cameras, mp3 players, and GPS will be obsolete because the BlackBerry will do them all instead. I was told in clear terms that this was impossible. Mobile cameras would never be good enough. GPS used too much battery. Music would always work better on an iPod type device. I think about that conversation a lot.
so you talked with someone who thought that technologies had stopped evolving and we had reached the final level already ? Even in 2006, it was clear that it was going in the direction that it eventually followed. I remember the first time I handled my Nokia N70, and with hindsight it laid the foundations of the smartphones. I replaced it with an E71 - another Symbian, and it was with the first Android device that they started really going smoothly on the internet
@@xl000 It was odd and really changed my mind about the company. I kinda get the camera thing because smartphone cameras were comically bad, and there were assumptions that laws of physics might limit their quality. The mp3 thing was bewildering though because yea of course battery life and storage will keep increasing. Really sad though. BlackBerrys were very special phones.
Matthias yes no kidding, But Blackberry was awesome and breakthrough. It’s easy to put this report together after years latter (Monday morning) It’s what kept us productive in Busines And they were Very secure communications
This has got to be one of the most thoughtful and well put together lessons on the tech industry. I greatly enjoyed watching, as I did using my last blackberry 81xx-something with all the keys and the lovely thumb trackball. BES, the RIM support team, and the documentation were always top notch! It was a pleasure to support.
One of the killer features on the iPhone keyboard was a capacitive touch screen instead of the previous resistive ones. Capacitive was hard to do well, and they pushed the tech a bit and therefor got an edge on everyone else at launch.
Another tidbit of history: Apple was able to do multi-touch well because they acquired Fingerworks a short time before the iPhone came out. I would guess a lot of the research done by the Fingerworks team went into making a great touchscreen phone. I think it also helped with their laptop touchpads. Even now, I think most people would prefer the Apple trackpads. Thanks for the history on RIM/Blackberry. One thing I think hurt Blackberries a lot was their web brower. It was quirky, non-standard and clumsy to use. Using a browser on an iPhone or Android was a lot more pleasant. If you only wanted email and instant messaging, BB was fantastic.
There are few technologies I remember in my IT carrier that were as influential as Blackberry. Having portable email was a game changer. I still remember my first full screen Z20 Blackberry. It had features that Apple and Google never had. The work and personal profiles is still missed. Thanks for sharing!
I joined the OS team at RIM in 2006 through an acquisition. Nessus was a great OS and bugdisp worked extremely well (cheers Victor!), but it needed user mode threads (and a dynamic memory allocator!), and source level debugging. I built a proof of concept for both but it never gained any traction - RIM was just too successful, having vanquished Palm, Microsoft, Motorola, Noikia .. management felt we were unstoppable. I really do believe there was a path forward for Nessus to evolve to native mode applications, but the breakneck speed that RIM was growing at just blinded people to the upcoming threats. I don't really blame them either - Barack Obama refused to give up his Blackberry, the Queen of England was touring our factories. We were on top of the world, but it wouldn't last.
The low level OS was not in bad shape, but ultimately that didn't matter to app developers and third party developers, because there were layers and layers on top of that. Having come up with the bugdisp concept was something I was particularly proud of, and Victor was a great old school guy to take it over. There was a kafuffle over bugdisp ownership at some point, but that might have been just before your time.
Really interesting. I started administering and owning blackberry servers in 2004... I had many of the units from the original "pager" - The battery life was... forever. The network worked... everywhere. I switched to the iPhone when the 3GS came out, whenever that was. I thought the blackberry OS was MUCH more sophisticated than iOS at the time... but iOS was pretty.
I absolutely love hearing your unique perspective on all this! I loved hearing what you had to say about BlackBerry's competitive advantages and what happened as the industry evolved. The way they were able to deliver email over the no-internet network is really cool, but once the networks and chipsets matured, it just didn't matter anymore! Another interesting bit of related history that you skimmed over is that when pursuing the iPhone, there were two internal projects. One based on the Mac OS X and one based on the iPod OS. Of course the OS X-based system ended up winning out. The original iPhone (both hardware and software) was developed so aggressively by such a small team of developers, it's incredible what they were able to put out in a stable state at launch. The announcement of the iPhone was really what got me into software development when I was in college. I slept on the sidewalk to get the first iPhone on launch day, and have enjoyed watching the industry changing over time.
Thanks for making this video. I was an early adopter of RIM/Blackberry and a professional fan of technology development. Your story proves the point that technology solutions exist in a dynamic environment where (in my NASA days) we describe a "feed forward" loop. quite different than a feedback loop. Well done in sharing this story. I remain a fan of all your videos. Truly the best of the UA-cam Mathias. Be well.
Reminds me of the telecom industry at the time. In 1975 I worked for a large hospital that had a step by step telecom switch from the local telco. It used a manual cord board and had rotary dialing. We bought an ITT digital phone system which supported DTMF and had many more features. It was programmable to a certain extent. Then in 1984 we bought a Northern Electric SL-1 system that was fully programmable and even had digital phone sets. When I left in 2006, it had been upgraded to an Option 81C and we were upgrading to VoIP. I ended up teaching VoIP at the local community college for 12 years.
I got my first Blackberry from my work in 2006 and that was my only phone device till 2016 when my work ended it and asked us to switch to bring-your-own-device. Thats when I switched to an iPhone. I think WhatsApp was the only thing I missed when I had the Blackberry. I don't remember if I did a lot of typing on the Blackberry but definitely didn't enjoy the touch keyboard on the iPhone. When 3rd party swipe keyboard came out, that is when I started typing more, and of course, now swipe is built-in and much better. I still have a hard time typing on the iPhone without swipe all these years later. Thank you for this. I bought the Losing the Signal book from your recommendation have been enjoying reading it. The part that stuck out was a) Mike wasn't a software person so that limited his ability to contribute with the OS, apps and also perhaps he gave his less focus; and b) Mike seemed to be very conscious of his personal brand and I was surprised he ran the ads and marketing!
Thank you for the history lesson. I am old enough to have gone through that period but had resisted on getting work emails on personal time so by the time I relented and was deciding on which device to buy, the IPhone 4 had won out. I had no experience with the physical keyboard so it was the sexier larger screen and web browsing ability that had won me over.
You're right, RIM could probably not be saved, but had they taken an innovation step with a modern OS, they could have been acquired by Google for instance instead of buying Android. Great video! I loved my Blackberry and its right thumb wheel and the keyboard. Even now, after 15 years, I write shorter emails on my iPhone than I would on my Blackberry - the phisical keyboard was just so much better!
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 yes but not always. Sometimes companies get acquired to gain market share (customers). It's happened to me twice already, I was in small, healthy and very competitive companies and were acquired to gain market leadership. But of course we were pretty expensive in both cases
I was at Symbian, which failed around the same time, but for different reasons. Like you, I sometimes think about what could have been done differently, but even with hindsight I think it was inevitable. Once a small organisation grows with a success, it's always going to seem foolhardy to divert significant attention and resources away from that, and it's probably the correct business decision not to; you can't know that your research project will succeed, it's a massive gamble. If you're the size of Apple, Google, Microsoft or Samsung you can afford to either acquire a promising company that's already done some/most of the research, or to fund multiple new research projects so that one of them has a chance of success (but see the counterexample of Windows Mobile!)
I still have a Blackberry 8100. My favorite was the 8220 Pearl Flip. I really enjoyed that story. 2007 was an interesting time when everyone was innovating and there were a ton of devices coming to market. Now all the phones are the same. I really miss that.
Great video, brings back a lot of memories. Also might be worth adding the app-based BlackBerry competitor "Good for Enterprise", later "Good Dynamics" which of course BlackBerry ended up acquiring. I still feel there's a niche for a locked-down limited-functionality mobile device for highly-regulated industries. We were never able to completely replicate the corporate BlackBerry device experience with it's seamless built-in VPN access to on-premise web servers. Even today, the MDM device enrolment and management experience with iOS/Android isn't as good as BlackBerry used to be.
Thank you for this, Mathias. I watched Blackberry from afar and was concerned it wasn't keeping up. I've seen it happen before in other tech industries and have seen it since. It's frustrating to work for a company that fails to innovate because they currently have a winning product. Then watch it slowly fall behind and dwindle away.
Point of order. (RIP Motorola) Moto was taken over by a "activist investor" by the early 2000s and had spun off the semiconductor, Two-way radio and computer/programming divisions along with all the patents to the highest bidder. This left the Mobile phone division, though funded, with out engineering resources and that was eventually sold to Google who took some patents some technology and sold that to Lenovo. I would argue that Moto Mobile phone division was agile in the 90s but had a shadow of their engineering fortitude by 2006. By 2007 "Motorola" was a brand that had gravitas but internally they were just a couple of trade marks and some patents others didn't want. In practicality Motorola was lobotomized by it's investors for RIM, Apple and Google. Though Google picked it's pockets before senting to a 'happy-dale" in upstate China.
Motorola and Nokia were both inside jobs. Corporate raiding (or similar) should be a punishable offense of the highest order. I'd put those SOBs in the same jail cells with common criminals. We're talking here about the tech stuff, but in reality, this is about thousands or more employees that got shafted so other corporations could play the game. Not cool in my book.
Interesting. Thanks for this. 23:02 "today's ginatic phones" So true. I think the phone I enjoyed using the most - based on size - was the Galaxy S4 Mini - 124.6 mm (4.91 in) H X 61.3 mm (2.41 in) W X 8.9 mm (0.35 in) D. A phone that could sit in a pocket and not stick out of the top.
Great insights! Thank you Matthias! I started working in telecom part time besides uni in 2008. Sold heaps of blackberry, Nokia 9300/9500 communicator and later on the early smartphones like XDA with Windows Mobile. As a techie and working in the industry at that time, I really enjoyed this. Thank you!
Awesome insight! Thanks for sharing. RIM sorta reminds me of Kodak who I worked with some of their people after their hayday. Their stories echo of how quickly things can change. As a Canadian I find RIMs downfall unfortunate.
Way back when I briefly worked on a project to convert Toronto's stoplights from electromechanical controllers to electronic control over a network, so that the city could adjust timing dynamically to account for traffic flow. The local microcomputers in that network used QNX and I found it to be a really nice, reliable, lightweight Unix for the time. So a good choice on RIM's part, IMO, even if it didn't work out in the end.
I worked as a C-level strategy advisor at both Palm & Motorola just before the iPhone launched. Palm was actually way ahead of everyone but IP issues massively delayed the release and killed them. Gotta remember at the time that Apple was going nowhere before the iPhone - the iPod had been successful but it was just keeping the company relevant and there was no app store or ecosystem to speak of - that came, much much later, but Palm had all of the above, plus successful devices in the market. Motorola was doomed all around, they were not interested in innovating or new tech, just replicating the StarTac success... Interesting stuff.
WebOS arrived at the current solution to multitasking before anyone else properly attempted any solution. But now it exists to shit up my TV experience
I worked for Motorola as a software engineer on the network side in the early 2000's. I know that they had plans for touchscreens, but they were insistent that they would absolutely NOT license Qualcomm tech. They were Motorola, after all. They were the innovators of cellphone tech. They'd figure it out themselves. Well...
Apple had a cold hard start after its competitors made their pitches. Microsoft had already released Windows CE for OEM handhelds and tablets. Dozens of mobile devices offered audio playback capabilities threatening the iPod and Apple's future. The company, which survived financial ruin, appeared to be a helpless Darth Vader, sitting quietly monitoring the ensuing onslaught of its newly acquired empire. It was about to lose it all again with an emboldened army now breaching the ship. Apple suddenly sprung up from its throne grabbing its iPhone and stormed out of the command chamber. Airlocks shuttered thunderously behind as it made its way down the ship's pitch dark outboard into a foreboding stillness interrupted by periodic red flashes, piercing sirens, and exhaust of its artificial lungs. Unbeknownst to the infiltrators, they were being watched as they attempted to sneak in with their weapons drawn. Apple turned on its iPhone to emit a six-colored rainbow laser beam. Aided by the force, it sheared and sliced through the stampede of oncoming bodies as it marched down the passageway, telepathically flinging their carcasses into piles. Finally, it reached the entrance and stood on the precipice in quiet solitude, gazing out to the distant flickering afterburners of enemy ships scurrying off into deep space. Its empire was spared from eminent destruction to start a new chapter in computing history.
I had Blackberry phones at work for several years. When the higher ups switched us to Samsung phones, the thing I missed the most was the physical keyboard. I could type so fast on those things. I still miss them to this day and never have been able to even approach my old typing speed. Touch screen keyboards are far inferior. I think the only reason they've stuck is the fact that they allow for larger screens that can be used for other things.
That’s the truth. At the time, I didn’t ever really do browsing on my phone; just text and email. So the physical keyboard for me provided the physical feedback that I liked. I really missed it for a long time having the touch keyboard over physical. Still kinda miss it.
@@KnowledgePerformance7There were a few Android devices with hardware keyboards in the early 2010s, but today the only options are external Bluetooth or USB devices.
Loved my 7290, I was given one with the BIS service to help manage an IT helpdesk, I even used many times the browser consulting the newly built mobile browser of Trenitalia that could give you the status of a train almost in real time so I could switch stations in case of troubles, also the wheel interface was very good
My first real software job was writing software for PalmOS (later Pocket PC) and using various mobile data services most of which died out in favor of GPRS. Most of the software was for couriers, security guards for scanning barcodes or receiving jobs. Similar to what you describe we had to be very miserly with data, mobile data was insanely expensive with many of our customers paying around $100/MB. TCP wasn't an option as any packet loss would very quickly rack up data use via retries and we did everything over UDP and squeezing as much as we could into each UDP packet.
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 Many years later I built a native application for latest Blackberry OS (the QNX one) as part of their launch push to get applications into their ecosystem. The OS wasn't bad and the development experience was really good, but was lagging behind Android in features. I wonder if there was a license to Nokia as it was all QT based. Blackberry gave me a device at the time and I used it for several years, have yet to have another phone with the same level of voice quality.
Really good video and explanation of how RIM probably couldn't have done things any differently. I worked at Ericsson from 1999 and up until 2008 and so I saw the effect of the iPhone and Android on our own dumb phones from a different perspective.
I had an erisson 788 for a whilie, cute simple little phone phone. Was given to me by Mike Lazaridis, he got it as a freebie. I figured I should play around with a GSM phone a bit as we were starting development on that front.
Matthias, I noticed some weird crypto channel video on my sub feed that i've never subscribed to, and went to check the channel and all videos out and the videos there are yours, which means your main channel has been hacked.
great history. one thing leaves a bitter taste in my mouth: when your analysis is true and rim couldn't be saved (and i think you're right), it just means that its impossible to compete against the monopolies. That's a harsh reality. I hope they get broken up. I actually used an palm pre which went the "start with linux and put a nice UI on top" route and your analysis is absolutely spot on for this as well: while the UI was great, the battery life was really poor.
The only think that can kill those big companies is the big companies themselves. And they do, it just takes time. Just look at the giants from the 80's, where are they now?
Good Times. I was an engineer working on the packet data network part of Motorola's iDEN about the same time blackberry was in its heyday(although it served a different market i.e fleets needing push-to-talk/walki-talki features). Eventually cell phones got cheap and fast enough that it went the same way as Blackberry although it still exists in several Latin American countries.
RIM did an iDen product. I think bribed to do so by Motorola. iDen was weird, but the push to talk feature was useful for its niche. The GSM folks even added a push to talk feature to the spec in response, but I don't think anybody ever implemented it. I imagine now it could be just done over data.
I loved the Blackberry. I was the senior IT guy at a Fortune 200 company when they came out and I quickly was responsible for provisioning literally thousands of them for company staff. From an Enterprise perspective, Blackberries totally rocked - extremely fine grained security setting, group policies to restrict web browsing and non-business uses, PTT "radio" function to keep my support staff in touch and best of all remote provisioning. From my Boomer/computer engineer perspective, I adored the physical keyboard. That said, once the iPhone came out, Blackberry dropped the ball entirely in my estimation. Within a week of the iPhone release, I had corporate executives clamoring for them to be tied into our enterprise systems. The modern smart phone race went on while Blackberry retained its largely corporate user base and they lost the thread of where the industry went. Sad.
This video made my day 😉Getting more details on the backend infrastructure was really cool (not that I haven't got rough idea what was behind the scenes, but being reminded things like 3DES used to be encryption standard was nice blast from the past😉). Thank you for this!
Aww man, it almost sounded like your visit to your Google interview was almost Job’s 1979 Xerox PARC moment for RIM, or even Microsoft’s campus visit to develop on the McIntosh in 1984. You had visionary keys for a moment long enough to see the writing on the wall and spared yourself from spinning your wheels for dying company. Not sure if you had an NDA knowing about Google development of a mobile device, but it seems like it didn’t matter much and fell on deaf ears on a peak sales year. Good story!
I'm not sure, its quite possible that Mike Lazaridis already knew about Android through different sources. But he wasn't overly concerned about it atany rate
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221, probably Mike Lazaridis was already more interested in contemplating the perimeter of the universe at that point and had resolved to think of RIM as a cash cow for other glittery projects and others - good people still, however - could manage and ably maintain the shop.
Super interesting. I believe this same story is playing out with legacy auto companies struggling to develop new compelling vehicles and hesitancy to let the old technology die. It's always a new player that comes in and stirs things up.
Thank you for sharing, I really enjoyed your insider history lesson of RIM and the Blackberry phone. I enjoy your videos and ingenuity this was different but equally enjoyable.
My impression, is that RIM lost it at the moment when it declined the idea of moving from integrated solution, to providing a service (the same messaging service) as an application for iOS/Android. I remember these discussions that RIM wanted to continue providing integrated solution at the time, when their phones' UX was already behind "current expectations". Yes, there is still BB app now, but the moment in 2009-2010 was lost.
I worked for IBM/TSS back in the late 90's and we got Rims for communication and they were great. Nice to hear some of the back story of those devices.
My plan was to skip through this long-ish video, picking out the points I was interested in, but it held my interest from end to end. Well done! I think I can skip the movie instead.
Very good exposition, Matthias, quite clear and no doubt correct. Did you think your work colleagues had the same intuition at about the same time frame that you did?
Like my dad, riding out the blackberry to the bitter end because of the keyboard. By the time he actually had to switch to an android phone, they were so advanced he got to show off a new feature every family dinner for months. Stuff like gesture control, photo gallery sorting options, camera zoom etc. Now he uses it to play clash of clans.
I was using an HP handheld computer, which was a computer and not a communication device. A simple pager was all the communication I wanted. An offline handheld computer that fit in my pocket was all I needed for PIM and keeping my schedule. I eventually got a Blackberry when the cellphone technology was better. The software was the best thing about the Blackberry. It really integrated PIM and communications very well. The Blackberry was based on efficiently handling small amounts of data. The modern smartphone is an entertainment device designed to handle huge amounts of data transmitted fast. What's the point of being efficient with small amounts of data when you can transmit, receive, and process huge amounts of data. Now, my little PIM is just an app, not a whole device.
it bugs me how much data the stuff uses these days. With a blackberry-like approach, the cheapest data plan would be more than enough. But the carriers would hate that!
Very interesting history. Knowing what happened only from a consumer perspective, the insight into how and why it happened is fascinating. Thank you Matthias
What you were talking about at around 20:10 and the "bigger, better (I"m guessing more "general purpose") OS" then Blackberry would have had to have imitated Nokia and created a competitor to their Symbian OS at the time (early 2000s), or perhaps licenced an OS out (I don't believe that Nokia would have licenced out Symbian) and then there would have been the problem of it requiring more computing power in the handset (with a bigger battery to cope) and increased the cost per unit
I had BBES as part of my environment until 2013. BBES hung on for a looong time. In fact, if I'm not mistaken the last of the QNX software is EOL this month.
I used BlackBerry's for many years and even today I still use many BlackBerry Apps on my Android. The Hub introduced with the QNX based OS10, is still the best communications interface I have ever used and I still use it. I still use BBM as well. I still think mid-era BlackBerry devices were better for communication than modern mobile devices, but nobody cares so much. Better does not always mean more liked. Just how it goes and when those Apps go away, I will adapt to something new.
Really interesting. And we are seeing a similar outlook for Ford, GM etc with Tesla doing the Apple/Google bit. . . I was also in electronics, but from the 80’s. Worked on one of the first ABS systems for cars.
Not really, cars are much more a construction infrastructure problem than a product design thing. Tesla got an apple like image but the problems they have from construction are painfully obvious. And the big names are just going to buys apple/google software anyways which users have been saying they prefer. And also very importantly, they get bailed out by the government every time they make poor decisions that would normally cause them to close...
Random tidbit: In the NTP v RIM patent suit, RIM was able to use post-grant proceedings to essentially ask the USPTO to reconsider the patents. I believe they were successful and that was the springboard of the Novak Druce patent firm (it has changed around a bit, but it's back to Novak Druce). It also kickstarted a boom of reexamination proceedings at the USPTO.
Thanks for a great overview. It was very interesting to learn about design of those older devices. I'm still using my Blackberry KeyOne, it's a nice modern device. But it's sad there is no replacement for it any more. I feel like they almost got it right in the end with KeyTwo LE model, which was a cheaper version.
regarding the hiring solution around Waterloo: We had bought a small company over there, adding some very specific technical knowledge to our portfolio, merged it with a small startup from California. But one of the reasons we gave up (I think in 2009...?) was the nearly impossible task to get good engineers in or to that area... RIM got everything, the rest was... well, there, bcs even RIM had no need for them...
Great story Matthias! What do you think about this idea for saving RIM back in 2003: a full-on partnership with Microsoft. Develop the new hardware at RIM and have Microsoft develop the advanced operating system, based on Windows NT. Microsoft tried numerous times to get into the phone business but they were always too late. They may have been very interested in partnering with RIM at the time when Blackberry was the king of the corporate and government world.
My favorite Blackberry feature is how it disabled the wireless modem when the battery got low. If you then charged the phone, the wireless modem would stay disabled until you _manually_ enabled it again. The number of times I missed notifications because the system wouldn't automatically re-enable the wireless modem after being charged was... too many.
sidekick II and G1 are the best phones i've ever touched, and i've touched 100s from 2000 till now. just from being fascinated with phones and in friend groups who were also (and a friends dad worked in a cell store in the 90s/200s)
I watched the movie a few weeks ago. It is interesting how it was in that vs how you described it. It is the same exact storyline, thankfully. I wonder which character was supposed to be you, Lol. Great video and legendary story
Mr. Matthias, I am asking you this in your comments since I can't find a more direct way of contacting you. Could you by any chance consider uploading a video where you talk at length about your time working at RIM? Just interesting stories or explaining what it was like to work there, what the people were like, etc. Some of us would be very interested :)
I loved my Bold. That track ball was amazing at the time lol. I bought a gen 1 iPhone and went back to the Bold because the original iPhone couldn't stream music over Bluetooth and the hardware keyboard was so much better. Good times.
I can't tell you how much I miss the keyboard on my blackberry. I still have a few blackberries, but no service is attached. I would happily move back to it if the thing had a modern radio capable of connecting to the network. With the Blackberry, I could easily text one-handed without looking at the phone. It's not doable with a touch screen where it's just a single flat surface.
At the time right before the z10 was out, I was providing IT services for a couple of big companies, and went to an 'implementing blackberry enterprise infrastructure' seminar, few days, all cool and that, and still remember, they (rim) were fixated that higher end phones were only for managers, ceos, and so, the exact opposite of what people in the time was doing, what led to the mobile phone being a fashion item. I've just implemented one bb enterprise to try it out and didnt bother selling even one of those, everyone back then had a bb, and a couple of years later it was dead... It was so funny to me how they can be so wrong! Cheers!
I know a few people who looked at the original RIM text devices, not as pagers or smart phones, but as mobile writing instruments, because of the speed of text entry that one could get. Also it was something that could be dropped into a pocket or purse, had long battery life, and would quickly sync with your main computer. It may not have been handy for editing, but often when writing, the objective is to get the idea moved from bouncing around in your head and possibly getting lost, into a form that can be edited later. When I look at the equipment on the market today for that, it all looks like either far too much hardware to haul around without a dedicated bag. There are a couple of portable keyboards that are about the right size, but they mostly look like someone thinks that everyone who's interested in such a device is going to be using them at a table or desk.
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 Agreed, it was. I still have my Tandy 200, which was the device that Tandy derived life support patent license fees for the clamshell design of a screen that flips down over the keyboard. The problem again is that both devices are not likely to fit in a pocket, or a clip on a belt. (Mine has the problem that the on/off button isn't functioning properly. Once the device gets turned on, you can't turn it off. I'm pretty sure it's a push on/push off button, and that it will take me all of 10 min to replace if I can find the appropriate replacement switch, but it will work fine as a plugged in device. I'd kind of like something about the size of a Flipper Zero but with a keyboard and text editor built in. Something that one could pull out on mass transit, or while carpooling to work, use to take notes or scribble a story idea or plot in, that can then be fleshed out on the computer at home that night, or next November. If it can sync notes to a phone to iDrive, or Google Drive, that might be a handy feature, but then we start getting into feature creep, and I'm thinking that something like that should be added to the timeline for later updates.
I remember using QNX at Algonquin as part of our real time OS class, such a blast from the past! It's very interesting hearing an insider's view of what has happening.
I didn't expect to find a Blackberry history lecture from my favorite woodworker. I do find it strange that in 2024 I still can be talking to someone on a smartphone and have distortion and dropouts as they go through an underpass etc. Why don't they have error-detection/correction? Also recently watched an interesting video where they compared a modern smartphone with the Cray-1 supercomputer. You also mentioned Craigslist which is a desperately out-of-date website seriously needing an total redesign.
Wonderful video! I had an 8800 with the trackball on it. Wanted to like it, but it was 2008 and all the cool folks had iPhones with Twitter, and all I had was a trackball full of pocket lint :( I was always torn on the Palm stuff, I had a Kyocera 7135 which was the Palm flip phone with color screen. I really liked it overall cause it was just a large flip phone most of the time and the screen was a touch (only for the stylus) screen as well.
Oh man, I forgot about cleaning the lint out of the little track ball. I had one like Matthias showed in the video, and the model that came after that. Loved those phones, and held out for longer than most before moving to an Android phone.
Matthias, you give a textbook example of why the innovator's dilemma is a thing. Thank you for that great history lesson from an insider's perspective.
I was a co-op student there in 2006 the summer before the iphone came out. I still remember the day I had a conversation with a higher up. I was telling him how excited I'll be for the day that portable cameras, mp3 players, and GPS will be obsolete because the BlackBerry will do them all instead. I was told in clear terms that this was impossible. Mobile cameras would never be good enough. GPS used too much battery. Music would always work better on an iPod type device.
I think about that conversation a lot.
Things was simple back then.
You were ahead of your time. Right idea but the tech wasn't there yet at that time. But they squandered there lead. In the end they'll still fail.
so you talked with someone who thought that technologies had stopped evolving and we had reached the final level already ?
Even in 2006, it was clear that it was going in the direction that it eventually followed.
I remember the first time I handled my Nokia N70, and with hindsight it laid the foundations of the smartphones. I replaced it with an E71 - another Symbian, and it was with the first Android device that they started really going smoothly on the internet
@@xl000 It was odd and really changed my mind about the company. I kinda get the camera thing because smartphone cameras were comically bad, and there were assumptions that laws of physics might limit their quality. The mp3 thing was bewildering though because yea of course battery life and storage will keep increasing.
Really sad though. BlackBerrys were very special phones.
Matthias hits it out of the park again! Loved the in depth history lesson from an engineer who's clearly thought this through :)
Matthias yes no kidding,
But Blackberry was awesome and breakthrough. It’s easy to put this report together after years latter (Monday morning)
It’s what kept us productive in Busines And they were Very secure communications
This has got to be one of the most thoughtful and well put together lessons on the tech industry. I greatly enjoyed watching, as I did using my last blackberry 81xx-something with all the keys and the lovely thumb trackball. BES, the RIM support team, and the documentation were always top notch! It was a pleasure to support.
One of the killer features on the iPhone keyboard was a capacitive touch screen instead of the previous resistive ones. Capacitive was hard to do well, and they pushed the tech a bit and therefor got an edge on everyone else at launch.
yes, and the multi touch allowed for two key rollover, which made typing easier and faster
Another tidbit of history: Apple was able to do multi-touch well because they acquired Fingerworks a short time before the iPhone came out. I would guess a lot of the research done by the Fingerworks team went into making a great touchscreen phone. I think it also helped with their laptop touchpads. Even now, I think most people would prefer the Apple trackpads.
Thanks for the history on RIM/Blackberry. One thing I think hurt Blackberries a lot was their web brower. It was quirky, non-standard and clumsy to use. Using a browser on an iPhone or Android was a lot more pleasant. If you only wanted email and instant messaging, BB was fantastic.
There are few technologies I remember in my IT carrier that were as influential as Blackberry. Having portable email was a game changer. I still remember my first full screen Z20 Blackberry. It had features that Apple and Google never had. The work and personal profiles is still missed. Thanks for sharing!
I joined the OS team at RIM in 2006 through an acquisition. Nessus was a great OS and bugdisp worked extremely well (cheers Victor!), but it needed user mode threads (and a dynamic memory allocator!), and source level debugging. I built a proof of concept for both but it never gained any traction - RIM was just too successful, having vanquished Palm, Microsoft, Motorola, Noikia .. management felt we were unstoppable. I really do believe there was a path forward for Nessus to evolve to native mode applications, but the breakneck speed that RIM was growing at just blinded people to the upcoming threats. I don't really blame them either - Barack Obama refused to give up his Blackberry, the Queen of England was touring our factories. We were on top of the world, but it wouldn't last.
The low level OS was not in bad shape, but ultimately that didn't matter to app developers and third party developers, because there were layers and layers on top of that. Having come up with the bugdisp concept was something I was particularly proud of, and Victor was a great old school guy to take it over. There was a kafuffle over bugdisp ownership at some point, but that might have been just before your time.
Oh so you designed it? I really liked it - very elegant and efficient design. It stayed essentially the same until I left around 2010.
Really interesting. I started administering and owning blackberry servers in 2004... I had many of the units from the original "pager" - The battery life was... forever. The network worked... everywhere. I switched to the iPhone when the 3GS came out, whenever that was. I thought the blackberry OS was MUCH more sophisticated than iOS at the time... but iOS was pretty.
I absolutely love hearing your unique perspective on all this! I loved hearing what you had to say about BlackBerry's competitive advantages and what happened as the industry evolved. The way they were able to deliver email over the no-internet network is really cool, but once the networks and chipsets matured, it just didn't matter anymore!
Another interesting bit of related history that you skimmed over is that when pursuing the iPhone, there were two internal projects. One based on the Mac OS X and one based on the iPod OS. Of course the OS X-based system ended up winning out. The original iPhone (both hardware and software) was developed so aggressively by such a small team of developers, it's incredible what they were able to put out in a stable state at launch.
The announcement of the iPhone was really what got me into software development when I was in college. I slept on the sidewalk to get the first iPhone on launch day, and have enjoyed watching the industry changing over time.
Thanks for making this video. I was an early adopter of RIM/Blackberry and a professional fan of technology development. Your story proves the point that technology solutions exist in a dynamic environment where (in my NASA days) we describe a "feed forward" loop. quite different than a feedback loop. Well done in sharing this story. I remain a fan of all your videos. Truly the best of the UA-cam Mathias. Be well.
Reminds me of the telecom industry at the time. In 1975 I worked for a large hospital that had a step by step telecom switch from the local telco. It used a manual cord board and had rotary dialing. We bought an ITT digital phone system which supported DTMF and had many more features. It was programmable to a certain extent. Then in 1984 we bought a Northern Electric SL-1 system that was fully programmable and even had digital phone sets. When I left in 2006, it had been upgraded to an Option 81C and we were upgrading to VoIP. I ended up teaching VoIP at the local community college for 12 years.
I got my first Blackberry from my work in 2006 and that was my only phone device till 2016 when my work ended it and asked us to switch to bring-your-own-device. Thats when I switched to an iPhone. I think WhatsApp was the only thing I missed when I had the Blackberry. I don't remember if I did a lot of typing on the Blackberry but definitely didn't enjoy the touch keyboard on the iPhone. When 3rd party swipe keyboard came out, that is when I started typing more, and of course, now swipe is built-in and much better. I still have a hard time typing on the iPhone without swipe all these years later.
Thank you for this. I bought the Losing the Signal book from your recommendation have been enjoying reading it. The part that stuck out was a) Mike wasn't a software person so that limited his ability to contribute with the OS, apps and also perhaps he gave his less focus; and b) Mike seemed to be very conscious of his personal brand and I was surprised he ran the ads and marketing!
Thank you for the history lesson. I am old enough to have gone through that period but had resisted on getting work emails on personal time so by the time I relented and was deciding on which device to buy, the IPhone 4 had won out. I had no experience with the physical keyboard so it was the sexier larger screen and web browsing ability that had won me over.
You're right, RIM could probably not be saved, but had they taken an innovation step with a modern OS, they could have been acquired by Google for instance instead of buying Android. Great video! I loved my Blackberry and its right thumb wheel and the keyboard. Even now, after 15 years, I write shorter emails on my iPhone than I would on my Blackberry - the phisical keyboard was just so much better!
companies are generally not available for purchase until things go badly. By which time, Google had already bought Android for much less money
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 yes but not always. Sometimes companies get acquired to gain market share (customers). It's happened to me twice already, I was in small, healthy and very competitive companies and were acquired to gain market leadership. But of course we were pretty expensive in both cases
It's really cool to hear your Blackberry story.👍
I was at Symbian, which failed around the same time, but for different reasons. Like you, I sometimes think about what could have been done differently, but even with hindsight I think it was inevitable. Once a small organisation grows with a success, it's always going to seem foolhardy to divert significant attention and resources away from that, and it's probably the correct business decision not to; you can't know that your research project will succeed, it's a massive gamble. If you're the size of Apple, Google, Microsoft or Samsung you can afford to either acquire a promising company that's already done some/most of the research, or to fund multiple new research projects so that one of them has a chance of success (but see the counterexample of Windows Mobile!)
I still have a Blackberry 8100. My favorite was the 8220 Pearl Flip. I really enjoyed that story. 2007 was an interesting time when everyone was innovating and there were a ton of devices coming to market. Now all the phones are the same. I really miss that.
Great video, brings back a lot of memories. Also might be worth adding the app-based BlackBerry competitor "Good for Enterprise", later "Good Dynamics" which of course BlackBerry ended up acquiring. I still feel there's a niche for a locked-down limited-functionality mobile device for highly-regulated industries. We were never able to completely replicate the corporate BlackBerry device experience with it's seamless built-in VPN access to on-premise web servers. Even today, the MDM device enrolment and management experience with iOS/Android isn't as good as BlackBerry used to be.
Thank you for this, Mathias. I watched Blackberry from afar and was concerned it wasn't keeping up. I've seen it happen before in other tech industries and have seen it since. It's frustrating to work for a company that fails to innovate because they currently have a winning product. Then watch it slowly fall behind and dwindle away.
Point of order. (RIP Motorola) Moto was taken over by a "activist investor" by the early 2000s and had spun off the semiconductor, Two-way radio and computer/programming divisions along with all the patents to the highest bidder. This left the Mobile phone division, though funded, with out engineering resources and that was eventually sold to Google who took some patents some technology and sold that to Lenovo. I would argue that Moto Mobile phone division was agile in the 90s but had a shadow of their engineering fortitude by 2006. By 2007 "Motorola" was a brand that had gravitas but internally they were just a couple of trade marks and some patents others didn't want. In practicality Motorola was lobotomized by it's investors for RIM, Apple and Google. Though Google picked it's pockets before senting to a 'happy-dale" in upstate China.
Motorola and Nokia were both inside jobs. Corporate raiding (or similar) should be a punishable offense of the highest order. I'd put those SOBs in the same jail cells with common criminals. We're talking here about the tech stuff, but in reality, this is about thousands or more employees that got shafted so other corporations could play the game. Not cool in my book.
Interesting. Thanks for this.
23:02 "today's ginatic phones" So true. I think the phone I enjoyed using the most - based on size - was the Galaxy S4 Mini - 124.6 mm (4.91 in) H X 61.3 mm (2.41 in) W X 8.9 mm (0.35 in) D. A phone that could sit in a pocket and not stick out of the top.
Great insights! Thank you Matthias! I started working in telecom part time besides uni in 2008. Sold heaps of blackberry, Nokia 9300/9500 communicator and later on the early smartphones like XDA with Windows Mobile.
As a techie and working in the industry at that time, I really enjoyed this. Thank you!
Awesome insight! Thanks for sharing. RIM sorta reminds me of Kodak who I worked with some of their people after their hayday. Their stories echo of how quickly things can change. As a Canadian I find RIMs downfall unfortunate.
Way back when I briefly worked on a project to convert Toronto's stoplights from electromechanical controllers to electronic control over a network, so that the city could adjust timing dynamically to account for traffic flow. The local microcomputers in that network used QNX and I found it to be a really nice, reliable, lightweight Unix for the time. So a good choice on RIM's part, IMO, even if it didn't work out in the end.
one thing that bugged me about QNX is how they kept harping on about microkernels. But other than that, I agree with you
I worked as a C-level strategy advisor at both Palm & Motorola just before the iPhone launched. Palm was actually way ahead of everyone but IP issues massively delayed the release and killed them. Gotta remember at the time that Apple was going nowhere before the iPhone - the iPod had been successful but it was just keeping the company relevant and there was no app store or ecosystem to speak of - that came, much much later, but Palm had all of the above, plus successful devices in the market. Motorola was doomed all around, they were not interested in innovating or new tech, just replicating the StarTac success... Interesting stuff.
As I recall, Palm started chasing other things instead of evolving their core success. Wasn't WebOS theirs? Then there was the folio debacle.
WebOS arrived at the current solution to multitasking before anyone else properly attempted any solution. But now it exists to shit up my TV experience
I loved my Tungsten T2
I worked for Motorola as a software engineer on the network side in the early 2000's. I know that they had plans for touchscreens, but they were insistent that they would absolutely NOT license Qualcomm tech. They were Motorola, after all. They were the innovators of cellphone tech. They'd figure it out themselves. Well...
Apple had a cold hard start after its competitors made their pitches. Microsoft had already released Windows CE for OEM handhelds and tablets. Dozens of mobile devices offered audio playback capabilities threatening the iPod and Apple's future. The company, which survived financial ruin, appeared to be a helpless Darth Vader, sitting quietly monitoring the ensuing onslaught of its newly acquired empire. It was about to lose it all again with an emboldened army now breaching the ship.
Apple suddenly sprung up from its throne grabbing its iPhone and stormed out of the command chamber. Airlocks shuttered thunderously behind as it made its way down the ship's pitch dark outboard into a foreboding stillness interrupted by periodic red flashes, piercing sirens, and exhaust of its artificial lungs.
Unbeknownst to the infiltrators, they were being watched as they attempted to sneak in with their weapons drawn. Apple turned on its iPhone to emit a six-colored rainbow laser beam. Aided by the force, it sheared and sliced through the stampede of oncoming bodies as it marched down the passageway, telepathically flinging their carcasses into piles. Finally, it reached the entrance and stood on the precipice in quiet solitude, gazing out to the distant flickering afterburners of enemy ships scurrying off into deep space. Its empire was spared from eminent destruction to start a new chapter in computing history.
I had Blackberry phones at work for several years. When the higher ups switched us to Samsung phones, the thing I missed the most was the physical keyboard. I could type so fast on those things. I still miss them to this day and never have been able to even approach my old typing speed. Touch screen keyboards are far inferior. I think the only reason they've stuck is the fact that they allow for larger screens that can be used for other things.
That’s the truth. At the time, I didn’t ever really do browsing on my phone; just text and email. So the physical keyboard for me provided the physical feedback that I liked. I really missed it for a long time having the touch keyboard over physical. Still kinda miss it.
Still waiting for a smartphone with a usable blackberry style keyboard
@@KnowledgePerformance7There were a few Android devices with hardware keyboards in the early 2010s, but today the only options are external Bluetooth or USB devices.
They failed because you left. :)
😂
😂 Um, no.
A wooden slinky conveyor belt is the kinda innovation that woulda saved the company.
Matthias had a RIM job?
@@mikeguitar9769 yeppers 👍
Loved my 7290, I was given one with the BIS service to help manage an IT helpdesk, I even used many times the browser consulting the newly built mobile browser of Trenitalia that could give you the status of a train almost in real time so I could switch stations in case of troubles, also the wheel interface was very good
My first real software job was writing software for PalmOS (later Pocket PC) and using various mobile data services most of which died out in favor of GPRS. Most of the software was for couriers, security guards for scanning barcodes or receiving jobs.
Similar to what you describe we had to be very miserly with data, mobile data was insanely expensive with many of our customers paying around $100/MB. TCP wasn't an option as any packet loss would very quickly rack up data use via retries and we did everything over UDP and squeezing as much as we could into each UDP packet.
those were the good old days, no sending XML back and forth and all that crap, just optimized and packed binary C data structures!
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 Many years later I built a native application for latest Blackberry OS (the QNX one) as part of their launch push to get applications into their ecosystem. The OS wasn't bad and the development experience was really good, but was lagging behind Android in features. I wonder if there was a license to Nokia as it was all QT based.
Blackberry gave me a device at the time and I used it for several years, have yet to have another phone with the same level of voice quality.
I really enjoyed these "insights from the inside" , thanks for sharing :)
Best regards.
Really good video and explanation of how RIM probably couldn't have done things any differently. I worked at Ericsson from 1999 and up until 2008 and so I saw the effect of the iPhone and Android on our own dumb phones from a different perspective.
I had an erisson 788 for a whilie, cute simple little phone phone. Was given to me by Mike Lazaridis, he got it as a freebie. I figured I should play around with a GSM phone a bit as we were starting development on that front.
Matthias, I noticed some weird crypto channel video on my sub feed that i've never subscribed to, and went to check the channel and all videos out and the videos there are yours, which means your main channel has been hacked.
great history.
one thing leaves a bitter taste in my mouth:
when your analysis is true and rim couldn't be saved (and i think you're right), it just means that its impossible to compete against the monopolies. That's a harsh reality. I hope they get broken up.
I actually used an palm pre which went the "start with linux and put a nice UI on top" route and your analysis is absolutely spot on for this as well: while the UI was great, the battery life was really poor.
The only think that can kill those big companies is the big companies themselves. And they do, it just takes time. Just look at the giants from the 80's, where are they now?
Looks like your other channel was hacked.
Again 🎉😢😂😮
Good Times. I was an engineer working on the packet data network part of Motorola's iDEN about the same time blackberry was in its heyday(although it served a different market i.e fleets needing push-to-talk/walki-talki features). Eventually cell phones got cheap and fast enough that it went the same way as Blackberry although it still exists in several Latin American countries.
RIM did an iDen product. I think bribed to do so by Motorola. iDen was weird, but the push to talk feature was useful for its niche. The GSM folks even added a push to talk feature to the spec in response, but I don't think anybody ever implemented it. I imagine now it could be just done over data.
Fascinating stuff, particularly starting at 18:15
I loved the Blackberry. I was the senior IT guy at a Fortune 200 company when they came out and I quickly was responsible for provisioning literally thousands of them for company staff. From an Enterprise perspective, Blackberries totally rocked - extremely fine grained security setting, group policies to restrict web browsing and non-business uses, PTT "radio" function to keep my support staff in touch and best of all remote provisioning. From my Boomer/computer engineer perspective, I adored the physical keyboard. That said, once the iPhone came out, Blackberry dropped the ball entirely in my estimation. Within a week of the iPhone release, I had corporate executives clamoring for them to be tied into our enterprise systems. The modern smart phone race went on while Blackberry retained its largely corporate user base and they lost the thread of where the industry went. Sad.
Still have my Z30. I loved the BB virtual keyboard and BB10 os. Now its my alarm clock. Cant let go even though its so out of date
Loved using my Bold for the short time I used it ❤️😊
This video made my day 😉Getting more details on the backend infrastructure was really cool (not that I haven't got rough idea what was behind the scenes, but being reminded things like 3DES used to be encryption standard was nice blast from the past😉). Thank you for this!
Aww man, it almost sounded like your visit to your Google interview was almost Job’s 1979 Xerox PARC moment for RIM, or even Microsoft’s campus visit to develop on the McIntosh in 1984. You had visionary keys for a moment long enough to see the writing on the wall and spared yourself from spinning your wheels for dying company. Not sure if you had an NDA knowing about Google development of a mobile device, but it seems like it didn’t matter much and fell on deaf ears on a peak sales year. Good story!
I'm not sure, its quite possible that Mike Lazaridis already knew about Android through different sources. But he wasn't overly concerned about it atany rate
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221, probably Mike Lazaridis was already more interested in contemplating the perimeter of the universe at that point and had resolved to think of RIM as a cash cow for other glittery projects and others - good people still, however - could manage and ably maintain the shop.
Super interesting. I believe this same story is playing out with legacy auto companies struggling to develop new compelling vehicles and hesitancy to let the old technology die. It's always a new player that comes in and stirs things up.
Thank you for sharing, I really enjoyed your insider history lesson of RIM and the Blackberry phone. I enjoy your videos and ingenuity this was different but equally enjoyable.
My impression, is that RIM lost it at the moment when it declined the idea of moving from integrated solution, to providing a service (the same messaging service) as an application for iOS/Android. I remember these discussions that RIM wanted to continue providing integrated solution at the time, when their phones' UX was already behind "current expectations". Yes, there is still BB app now, but the moment in 2009-2010 was lost.
I worked for IBM/TSS back in the late 90's and we got Rims for communication and they were great. Nice to hear some of the back story of those devices.
My plan was to skip through this long-ish video, picking out the points I was interested in, but it held my interest from end to end. Well done! I think I can skip the movie instead.
Very good exposition, Matthias, quite clear and no doubt correct. Did you think your work colleagues had the same intuition at about the same time frame that you did?
I don't think most people thought about these things much
Like my dad, riding out the blackberry to the bitter end because of the keyboard. By the time he actually had to switch to an android phone, they were so advanced he got to show off a new feature every family dinner for months. Stuff like gesture control, photo gallery sorting options, camera zoom etc.
Now he uses it to play clash of clans.
Too bad he lost the "not compatible with games" feature
That is quite an interesting story. You make UA-cam a better form of entertainment.
I was using an HP handheld computer, which was a computer and not a communication device. A simple pager was all the communication I wanted. An offline handheld computer that fit in my pocket was all I needed for PIM and keeping my schedule. I eventually got a Blackberry when the cellphone technology was better. The software was the best thing about the Blackberry. It really integrated PIM and communications very well.
The Blackberry was based on efficiently handling small amounts of data. The modern smartphone is an entertainment device designed to handle huge amounts of data transmitted fast. What's the point of being efficient with small amounts of data when you can transmit, receive, and process huge amounts of data. Now, my little PIM is just an app, not a whole device.
it bugs me how much data the stuff uses these days. With a blackberry-like approach, the cheapest data plan would be more than enough. But the carriers would hate that!
Very interesting history. Knowing what happened only from a consumer perspective, the insight into how and why it happened is fascinating. Thank you Matthias
Now that was a nice piece of history I did not know about, thanks for sharing this Matthias extremely off-topic for your channel 😇
That was an awesome history lesson. I can only imagine the "oh shit" moment at the Google interview when you realized RIM was years behind.
Greatly appreciate your candor on this
That trackball though... the combination of haptics and ease of use was really a wrork of art.
I started in tech marketing X.25 hardware in 1985. Man, those were the days.
Great reflections on this subject. Not sure if i need to see the movie now :)
What you were talking about at around 20:10 and the "bigger, better (I"m guessing more "general purpose") OS" then Blackberry would have had to have imitated Nokia and created a competitor to their Symbian OS at the time (early 2000s), or perhaps licenced an OS out (I don't believe that Nokia would have licenced out Symbian) and then there would have been the problem of it requiring more computing power in the handset (with a bigger battery to cope) and increased the cost per unit
I had BBES as part of my environment until 2013. BBES hung on for a looong time. In fact, if I'm not mistaken the last of the QNX software is EOL this month.
Good analysis, as always Matthias! 🙂
I used BlackBerry's for many years and even today I still use many BlackBerry Apps on my Android. The Hub introduced with the QNX based OS10, is still the best communications interface I have ever used and I still use it. I still use BBM as well. I still think mid-era BlackBerry devices were better for communication than modern mobile devices, but nobody cares so much. Better does not always mean more liked. Just how it goes and when those Apps go away, I will adapt to something new.
Really interesting. And we are seeing a similar outlook for Ford, GM etc with Tesla doing the Apple/Google bit. . .
I was also in electronics, but from the 80’s. Worked on one of the first ABS systems for cars.
Except Apple and Google were bigger than RIM to begin with
Not really, cars are much more a construction infrastructure problem than a product design thing. Tesla got an apple like image but the problems they have from construction are painfully obvious. And the big names are just going to buys apple/google software anyways which users have been saying they prefer.
And also very importantly, they get bailed out by the government every time they make poor decisions that would normally cause them to close...
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 Technology wins over corporate speak🙂
Random tidbit: In the NTP v RIM patent suit, RIM was able to use post-grant proceedings to essentially ask the USPTO to reconsider the patents. I believe they were successful and that was the springboard of the Novak Druce patent firm (it has changed around a bit, but it's back to Novak Druce). It also kickstarted a boom of reexamination proceedings at the USPTO.
Thanks for a great overview. It was very interesting to learn about design of those older devices.
I'm still using my Blackberry KeyOne, it's a nice modern device. But it's sad there is no replacement for it any more. I feel like they almost got it right in the end with KeyTwo LE model, which was a cheaper version.
regarding the hiring solution around Waterloo:
We had bought a small company over there, adding some very specific technical knowledge to our portfolio, merged it with a small startup from California. But one of the reasons we gave up (I think in 2009...?) was the nearly impossible task to get good engineers in or to that area... RIM got everything, the rest was... well, there, bcs even RIM had no need for them...
I really liked the blackberry when they were available. We even invested into their stocks and did extremely well. Sold out right before the fall.
Excellent video! What phone do you use today?
Very interesting Matthias! I want to watch the Blackberry movie sometime.
Great story Matthias! What do you think about this idea for saving RIM back in 2003: a full-on partnership with Microsoft. Develop the new hardware at RIM and have Microsoft develop the advanced operating system, based on Windows NT. Microsoft tried numerous times to get into the phone business but they were always too late. They may have been very interested in partnering with RIM at the time when Blackberry was the king of the corporate and government world.
My favorite Blackberry feature is how it disabled the wireless modem when the battery got low. If you then charged the phone, the wireless modem would stay disabled until you _manually_ enabled it again. The number of times I missed notifications because the system wouldn't automatically re-enable the wireless modem after being charged was... too many.
Great video. My whole family were avid blackberry users and I even ran a home lab with exchange and Blackberry Enterprise Server.
I think rim was one of those companies that existed to move the market foward, but like you said was limited form the start.
Did you sell your shares like Mike Lazaridis before it crashed?
What a mad dog! Love your work!
I miss my physical qwerty keyboard on a phone so much.
sidekick II and G1 are the best phones i've ever touched, and i've touched 100s from 2000 till now. just from being fascinated with phones and in friend groups who were also (and a friends dad worked in a cell store in the 90s/200s)
Love these videos. Thank you Matthias
I watched the movie a few weeks ago. It is interesting how it was in that vs how you described it. It is the same exact storyline, thankfully. I wonder which character was supposed to be you, Lol.
Great video and legendary story
Mr. Matthias, I am asking you this in your comments since I can't find a more direct way of contacting you.
Could you by any chance consider uploading a video where you talk at length about your time working at RIM? Just interesting stories or explaining what it was like to work there, what the people were like, etc. Some of us would be very interested :)
Thanks for the insight
I came late with OS10 but really enjoyed it at the time.
Cheers,
What happeded to your main channel?
I loved my Bold. That track ball was amazing at the time lol. I bought a gen 1 iPhone and went back to the Bold because the original iPhone couldn't stream music over Bluetooth and the hardware keyboard was so much better. Good times.
Thanks for sharing! Also, being an awesome Canadian!
Hello from the Munich team porting BBM to iOS and android :)
I loved my blackberry. hearing your information about the history and enter working is mind blowing.
Agreed, "No social media" is the best feature!
I can't tell you how much I miss the keyboard on my blackberry. I still have a few blackberries, but no service is attached. I would happily move back to it if the thing had a modern radio capable of connecting to the network. With the Blackberry, I could easily text one-handed without looking at the phone. It's not doable with a touch screen where it's just a single flat surface.
Fantastic information though you didn't state your position at RIM.
At the time right before the z10 was out, I was providing IT services for a couple of big companies, and went to an 'implementing blackberry enterprise infrastructure' seminar, few days, all cool and that, and still remember, they (rim) were fixated that higher end phones were only for managers, ceos, and so, the exact opposite of what people in the time was doing, what led to the mobile phone being a fashion item. I've just implemented one bb enterprise to try it out and didnt bother selling even one of those, everyone back then had a bb, and a couple of years later it was dead... It was so funny to me how they can be so wrong! Cheers!
I know a few people who looked at the original RIM text devices, not as pagers or smart phones, but as mobile writing instruments, because of the speed of text entry that one could get. Also it was something that could be dropped into a pocket or purse, had long battery life, and would quickly sync with your main computer. It may not have been handy for editing, but often when writing, the objective is to get the idea moved from bouncing around in your head and possibly getting lost, into a form that can be edited later. When I look at the equipment on the market today for that, it all looks like either far too much hardware to haul around without a dedicated bag. There are a couple of portable keyboards that are about the right size, but they mostly look like someone thinks that everyone who's interested in such a device is going to be using them at a table or desk.
I heard the Tandy 100 was also popular for that -- long battery life, and a real keyboard you could touch type on.
@@matthiasrandomstuff2221 Agreed, it was. I still have my Tandy 200, which was the device that Tandy derived life support patent license fees for the clamshell design of a screen that flips down over the keyboard. The problem again is that both devices are not likely to fit in a pocket, or a clip on a belt. (Mine has the problem that the on/off button isn't functioning properly. Once the device gets turned on, you can't turn it off. I'm pretty sure it's a push on/push off button, and that it will take me all of 10 min to replace if I can find the appropriate replacement switch, but it will work fine as a plugged in device. I'd kind of like something about the size of a Flipper Zero but with a keyboard and text editor built in. Something that one could pull out on mass transit, or while carpooling to work, use to take notes or scribble a story idea or plot in, that can then be fleshed out on the computer at home that night, or next November. If it can sync notes to a phone to iDrive, or Google Drive, that might be a handy feature, but then we start getting into feature creep, and I'm thinking that something like that should be added to the timeline for later updates.
I remember using QNX at Algonquin as part of our real time OS class, such a blast from the past! It's very interesting hearing an insider's view of what has happening.
I didn't expect to find a Blackberry history lecture from my favorite woodworker. I do find it strange that in 2024 I still can be talking to someone on a smartphone and have distortion and dropouts as they go through an underpass etc. Why don't they have error-detection/correction? Also recently watched an interesting video where they compared a modern smartphone with the Cray-1 supercomputer. You also mentioned Craigslist which is a desperately out-of-date website seriously needing an total redesign.
...and removable batteries! Thanks for such a nice blast from the past.
@Matthias random stuff
Has your main account been hacked?
Wonderful video!
I had an 8800 with the trackball on it. Wanted to like it, but it was 2008 and all the cool folks had iPhones with Twitter, and all I had was a trackball full of pocket lint :(
I was always torn on the Palm stuff, I had a Kyocera 7135 which was the Palm flip phone with color screen. I really liked it overall cause it was just a large flip phone most of the time and the screen was a touch (only for the stylus) screen as well.
Oh man, I forgot about cleaning the lint out of the little track ball. I had one like Matthias showed in the video, and the model that came after that. Loved those phones, and held out for longer than most before moving to an Android phone.
Annnnd subscribed..
I still need to buy your build guides at some point
So very interesting. Great explanation.
The Blackberry PRIV (the Passport a close second) was still my favourite phone I ever had.
That was just so interesting!!! Where did you go after Blackberry?
haven't had a 9 to 5 job since.
I see the potential for a collaboration between Mathias and @BobbyBroccoli that covers this saga in greater detail.
Ummm why is his main channel called Ripple? Dont tell me it got stolen?