On Boxing Day, as I was wandering the stores looking for ski boots, I came across the BlackBerry PlayBook. Well, not quite. I sort of went looking for it in the hopes that one wasn't available. I've been debating the place of a tablet in today's home and frankly, I couldnt find a reason one would buy one. But there I was, on the Feast of St. Stephen, walking out of London Drugs with a PlayBook.
I justified getting it in many ways. It was relatively cheap (I paid $249 for the 32GB version; compare that to $620 you would pay for the iPad 2), in fact, cheaper than my 32GB iPod touch I bought a few years back. It would be useful to test apps and things (I've been intending to build some apps for a while now) and I could use it at home to look up stuff when my computers were not on (which isn't as rare as I thought it would be). None of this really justifies buying one of these devices, but what can I say... I saw something shiny and nice... and I fell for it.
Anyway, onto my thoughts on the device itself, and inevitable comparisons to the other device that rides high in this space, the iPad 2.Note that a chunk of this was written on the PlayBook... but I had to do edits on the PC because of its horrendous ability to correct spelling mistakes (more on that later).
I found the PlayBook to be a nicely built device. Everything about it feels solid and reliable. It doesn't mean I am going to go about dropping it on the floor anytime soon. I must say though that it is heavier than I expected. This is the same reason why I wouldnt get an iPad, the thing is a bit too heavy to hold onto for long periods of time. The display and sound are especially lovely on this device. Of course, I hear the display suffers in terms of visibility in sunlight... but what sunlight are we talking about in dark Vancouver? The sound is especially brilliant. Play something on its stereo speakers and compare it the anything else out there. You'll be amazed.
Now, for the perceived negatives on this device. Take these with a grain of salt; I expect a lot from RIM and these sorts of devices in general, so perhaps they are a bit too harsh.
The lack of email/bbm/calendar/contacts is definitely annoying. Since I have a BlackBerry phone though, the bridge alleviates that in some way. I don't completely like that way of using email, but in a pinch, that will do. RIM is apparently addressing these shortcomings soon and things should get better. What is a lot more annoying is the lack of auto correct on the tablet. The BlackBerry phone is very good at learning and correcting your mistakes efficiently. I could type proper words quickly on the phone and expect punctuation to be added for me easily. Not so here. On the phone, I can press the space bar twice and it would put a "." for me automatically, as well as capitalise the next letter. This makes sense. Why this feature did not make it to the tablet is beyond me. I expect it to work out of the box on day 1. Still, this too can be fixed via a software update (I hope they do fix it).
The copy and paste/selection thing not working easily is quite annoying. This is especially the case in apps. Let's say I see something in the Globe and Mail app I want to copy it so i can search on google. well guess what? I can't. That is quite annoying. On the phone, the select option exists in every app I have seen. The crippled select/copy/paste mechanism that works (so far only in the browser as far as I can tell) isn't obvious. I thought tapping on a word would pop something up. Instead, I have to touch and hold for a few seconds before the thing pops up, then you have to select an option in the floating menu and then use it. I had to google that to see if it was even possible.
I can't find a way of searching for text on a browser page. Can you imagine that? This can be fixed too, but the fact that such a simple (and necessary) feature does not exist on a modern tablet surprises me. Or perhaps it shouldn't.
The huge lack of apps is frustrating. I used to think the browser could do it all. I am no longer certain of that. At least not the way it is done today. Some pages do work (like gmail). Many are simply piss poor when it comes to it. There is a Bing maps app. but I can't copy and paste stuff in it. Like when I clicked on the current location button and this error happened.
It searches in the wrong area (Business instead of Location) and doesn't even let me copy the coordinates to search in the right place! Using this app was frustrating. So, I looked for Google Maps. Google has done a great job with the maps app on the phone, and on the iPod et al. But, no such app exists for the PlayBook. So, I went to the mobile website. It never quite finished Loading. The browser tab was useless after I tried loading the page. Now, it could be some messed up JavaScript on the Google Maps side. At any rate, the PlayBook has no useful mapping software. There was an app called MapApp that uses the Google Maps API, but it wasn't very usable.
The lack of an integrated notification framework frustrates me. On the phone, when you get an email, a Facebook message, a BBM, a software update, an SMS, Google Voice message, what have you, they feed into a integrated, usable framework that notifies the user with a visual cue (the blinking light), a physical cue (vibration if you so choose), a audible cue (a chirp if you set it to). And everything went into your messages (apart from Google Voice) app and you could deal with it from there. Nothing of this sort exists on the PlayBook. How do I know if I got Facebook Notifications? Well, you won't know unless you open the Facebook app. How stupid is that? Again, I am sure this can be fixed... but the lack of parity features is frustrating. Why you would build something from the ground up and completely ignore the features that actually made your previous operating system/device highly usable is beyond me. It is as if RIM is working hard to make sure anyone who comes in contact with their device runs away from it. And pisses off those who have used past devices because of the lack of features in the PlayBook.
I used to work for a software company that got bought out by its competitor. The new company then set about building parity features from the old software into their offering. I don't think any customers of the old software quite got over the lack of parity features. Or the fact that parity was used with a lot of poetic licence. Four wheels does not a car make... and the PlayBook OS makes for a poor substitute for the old BlackBerry OS.
As I said, I expect a lot from RIM. I have had BlackBerry devices since 2005. I swear, I can still feel the phone vibrate in the middle of the night instinctively. It is still an extension of myself. I can do a LOT with my phone. I am constantly amazed at how much the BlackBerry can do and for how long. This is especially evident when these Android and iOS folks get all cute about things like messaging or email. My BlackBerry in 2006 had google talk and it worked. It worked for messaging to a desktop, to another mobile device, to whatever. As long as you had a google talk account, I could message you. And it worked well. Likewise for email. It is just reliable and beautiful. It played avi files out of the box. Mind you, it might have skipped if the avi was a bit too much for it to handle. But none of this converting nonsense like you have to do for iOS.
Now, what about improvements? For one thing, the browser is a real browser. The piss poor browser on my Tour (OS 5 I think) is atrocious. It works... but god, does it frustrate me. The browser on the PlayBook is a wonderful piece of work. It plays flash. Unfortunately, it also plays flash ads. And it is incredibly sensitive to me trying to full screen flash videos. It clicks on the ad for you thus opening it (in a new tab, but still). It runs multiple apps simultaneously. I actually find it annoying that RIM has to advertise that. Because the phone has done that forever. But, it is a differentiator to the iOS devices, so you need to point it out. I find it to be intelligent as well. For example, if I am watching a video and open a different app, it pauses the video. Now, if I am listening to an audio feed (like I do with the CBC radio feeds in a browser), it doesn't pause it. Sane and normal.
You can side-load content onto the device. What that means is that I can, using smbclient, connect to my PlayBook over the wireless network, upload and download media onto it. Say I have videos. Say I want to watch videos while I am not at home. I can do that. Avi videos that is. The same for pictures and what not. It also syncs your iTunes account to it, so if you use iTunes for media, then all that is available as well. I don't (there is no iTunes for Linux).
I've had an iPod touch for a few years now and I use it a lot to consume media. I use it to browse the news, post stuff on Facebook via other apps (mainly news). I am still using it for that. The PlayBook, while it has a much nicer screen and audio output, is no match for the little Apple device. A lot of that is because there is a vibrant app marketplace for iOS. RIM needs to fix that on their side. I've seen the iPad in action as well; it is a delightful device apart from its price. And the fact that you can't do normal things like side-load media. I am also impressed with their split keyboard thing for landscape mode on the iPad. Typing, selecting/copying/pasting etc on the iOS devices is a treat (mind you, it took many iterations to get here for the copy/paste! It was marketed as an actual feature!!!).
Anyway, I think I've gone on a ramble for a while now. The moral of the story is, this device is decent if you want something that is cheap and powerful and has a lot of potential. If you want all the apps in the world and all the polish that you've come to expect from an iOS device, you may be in for a bit of a shock. If you expect it to work like the legacy BlackBerry, you're also in for a shock. With that in mind, I'm still liking this device and will give RIM a chance to make things right. God knows, they've had their fair share of bad luck and poor decisions. Here's hoping, in the new year, that they turn both around. And, if you are an app developer, please, please, please create usable apps for the PlayBook. There are lovely apps out there (like the Al Jazeera one), just take the time to build something and hopefully, the ecosystem survives long enough to make it worth your while. And if any Canadian media types are reading (like the CBC or G & M/CTV, Shaw types), please build and improve your apps so they are on par with the other platforms.
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