Comments on: Sorry — a $120 keyboard won’t save RIM’s $200 PlayBook

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 17:33:17 +0000

I’ts 2 things, a great protective case plus a keyboard. Other protective cases sell for $50-60 so the super thin, 30 day charge keyboard is quite nice to have.

By: AV

AV — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:58:15 +0000

Looks like a small laptop or netbook. One cannot do away with the keyboard as easily as with the mouse. But comparing a playbook to iPad, I find the iPad over-sized while the Playbook is just perfect, not too constricting yet not too naive in its appearance. I do hope that RIM will continue in its approach/course with Playbook.

But I will take a thin 15inch windows laptop over anything on the market today. Don’t really understand tablets or what purpose it serves.

By: JRDELUNAIII

JRDELUNAIII — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:15:41 +0000

I thought I read somewhere that the Playbook and this keyboard uses data encryption for the bluetooth connection so make it very secure. I am not an expert nor do I play one on TV, but I would think this would be a very good thing for business users, etc. as I do not think that the bluetooth being used by the iPad or any of the competitors have any encryption. Again someone please correct me if I am wrong.

By: Gautam

Gautam — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 04:28:12 +0000

This is really lame. BB doesn’t get what tablets are meant for. No wonder they are no where to be seen on the tablet market.

By: Kevin C. Tofel

Kevin C. Tofel — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:56:28 +0000

Great points. In the mobile market Apple has become the standard by which others are judged so when a product doesn’t have a feature or function that an iOS device already has, it gets grilled. And any issues found in iOS can get glossed over. In my defense, I railed on iOS (and left the platform) partially because the notifications irked me to no end. It wasn’t until those were fixed that I added an iPhone back into my device rotation.

Also of note (since you mentioned stock ownership), I wanted to point out that GigaOm writers are not allowed to own individual stock in any companies they cover. In fact, we can’t own stock directly in any company that is in the *industry* we cover. Appreciate the thoughts and the conversation!

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:47:20 +0000

Good question. In a nutshell: Apple product fetishism.

I think that Apple/Steve Jobs idolatry puts blinders on people. I also think that it is a matter of region-centric biases (American press prefers to write about and support American products), and I imagine that a whole lot of people in the US tech sector or who write about US tech own stocks in Apple, which might also be a factor. All of these factors and no doubt others create a snowball effect which becomes self-fulfilling.

I’ve only every owned Apple computers, and I am an iPhone owner (previously a blackberry owner). I love my computers, but the iPhone has some major shortcomings (as did the Blackberry). Difference is, articles like this treat the shortcomings of RIM devices as fatal flaws, and really ignore the problems of Apple products. For instance, cutting/copying/pasting on my iPhone is the bane of my existence. It can take 15 seconds to fix a typo in an email I am sending out and I most often have to delete the entire word to fix a single letter! I have yet to read a review that slams the iPhone for this although it is to my mind a fundamental usability problem in what is allegedly a perfectly designed and usable product.

By: Kevin C. Tofel

Kevin C. Tofel — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:33:40 +0000

Dave, appreciate the lengthy thoughts. Based on your comments, which I’m not disagreeing with, why do you think RIM isn’t selling PlayBooks in meaningful numbers to the tablet market?

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:25:48 +0000

I think you make too many assumptions about what potential playbook buyers and actual playbook users want. I am a very happy playbook owner. Frankly, I don’t really want a keyboard or native email and calendaring. For my family it’s a multimedia device that can deliver ebook, movie, browsing, flash games (for the kids primarily), social networking apps, and all of the key experiences I want on a small tablet, and at an appropriate price. iPads are too expensive, can’t multitask very well, and for no good reason do not support flash.

My wife had no interest in even setting up Bridge let alone native email support. She is happy to do her after hours email triage with her blackberry and I think a whole lot of people – playbook users or not – feel the same way.

And to get back to the keyboard, even for $200+$120 the device does so many things better than the iPad for a much more accessible price. I would love to see a follow up article that compares value and functionality in the tablet market. I think that side-by-side, where cost is a factor (surely for most household and business decisions), the Playbook is a much better device than you give it credit for.

By: Kevin C. Tofel

Kevin C. Tofel — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:48:54 +0000

Paul, I think you’re confusing the PlayBook as a product and RIM as a company. If you check my review of the PlayBook — linked in the post — I found it to be an excellent tablet for what it could do at the time. So I’m not trashing the PlayBook. Instead, I’m suggesting that RIM’s strategy to make the PlayBook a viable and financial success for the company is a “too little, too late” strategy, which is a very different point. Hopefully, that helps explain a little; thx!

By: Paul Fezziwig

Paul Fezziwig — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 12:34:37 +0000

Why is it professional journalists continue trashing the PlayBook but consumer reviews overwhelmingly love it? Who’s right? Or better yet, who’s opinion is more valuable?