MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

Feb 26, 09 - 04:24 pm Comment from: twilightmoon

The Storm is a completely failed experiment. I hope that RIM gets their act together and makes a real touch screen phone because this place holder is not going to cut it, and it's not competition for the iPhone among anyone who knows anything about tech.

Hopefully RIM makes a really nice version soon, something that forces Apple to compete.

Feb 26, 09 - 04:30 pm Comment from: boyweho

I think the last screen should say, "Nothing _else_ can touch it." To advertise a touch-screen device, and then say "nothing can touch it" doesn't make sense (to me).

Any Pink Floyd fans here? (my user name should be obvious to that)

Don't the echoes they use near the end of the ad sound a lot like the ones from the start of the song "Echoes"?

H click E click Y click , click SPACE click F click U click C click K click SPACE click Y click O click U click SPACE click , click SPACE click M click D click N click ! click RETURN click RETURN click S click E click R click I click O click U click S click L click Y click , click SPACE click T click H click O click U click G click H click , click SPACE click I click SPACE click H click A click T click E click SPACE click T click H click I click S click SPACE click F click U click C click K click I click N click G click SPACE click S click T click O click R click M click ! click

They have a Storm Add that plays daily here (Ontario Canada) and the only taking point in the hole add is the the screen clicks. How pathetic is that. Oh and they will never loose a browse off again (Apple needs to challenge this in a shootout).

Feb 26, 09 - 04:48 pm Comment from: Superior Being

Jeff,

It's way too early in the day for you to be hip-deep in the Molson.

This would be a good ad for RIM.
Marketing can usually do for sales what the actual product cannot.

I like this ad: using a blackberry as a bullet to shoot an apple. Very clever.

It's on par with the "I'm a Mac. I'm a PC." ads: using imagery and emotion to sell the products rather than showing the actual products themselves.

Feb 26, 09 - 04:59 pm Comment from: TheConfuzed1

It's actually a pretty good ad. Too bad the product isn't.

I've only seen one Storm in the wild. I asked the girl how she liked it, and she said that she hates it, and she'd rather have an iPhone, but her dad's plan is from Verizon, and he pays the bill.

And before anyone says something about her getting a job, and paying for her own... She can't work; she has cancer. :(

As a Storm user (company forced me), I can honestly say it isn't that great. The clickscreen is only moderately annoying once you get used to it -- what I really hate, though, is the clunky interface and the fact that it tends to be sllloooow. Not in data transmission, mind you, but in moving from one task to another.

The one high point to the Storm is that it has a really nice camera with an led flash. Apple could take cue from that, but that's about it.

Feb 26, 09 - 05:01 pm Comment from: monkeybiz

I see the Stormtard is still writing that same joke that was funny the first 100 times. it's time for another joke.

Feb 26, 09 - 05:06 pm Comment from: Andy

Ads for the new BlackBerry are making the rounds, and I have to say they are -- like the phone itself -- just a variation on Apple's own iPhone ads, except much more.

BlackBerry have well and truly entered Microsoft levels of tackiness.

How RIM insisted that a smartphone was no good without a honest-to-goodness physical keyboard, yet they just had to go and compete heads-up with the iPhone. RIM should stick to their original ideas and improve on them. RIM users probably want real keyboards so cater to them. You don't see Apple putting keys on the iPhone and they probably never will.

I'm almost expecting Apple to put out a virtual keyboard for desktop users. I've been using a real keyboard/typewriter for over 35 years and I guess I'll just have to learn to adjust.

Thank goodness it's not real. That's a great ad!

RIM will get their share of good PR for an ad they rejected, figures.

Feb 26, 09 - 05:51 pm Comment from: zek

"Hopefully RIM makes a really nice version soon, something that forces Apple to compete."

Why do people keep saying this? Apple made the iPhone with no competition whatsoever. Competition is only an incentive for lazy, visionless drones.

People, keep in mind, this ad is never going to be officially broadcast. The reason we're seeing here is so that the ad agency that produced it could advertise its services. RIM already has their own ad agency, so RIM will definitely NEVER buy it. However, if a big company is looking to switch advertisers, this ad might compel them to look into this little agency.

The ad itself takes a cue from Pret à Manger, а Brittish chain of organic sandwich restaurants (since recently they opened many in NYC; don't know if there are more elsewhere in US). They have signs on their walls with pictures of a green apple and a blackberry (the fruit, not the device), with text below them "Free WiFi available". In small print below that, there's a message saying something like "We're fine with that, but we prefer our apples and blackberries from the garden".

Someone from this agency must be eating often at 'Pret'...

Feb 26, 09 - 06:32 pm Comment from: Sitruc

@Dark Side of the Moon

That's what I thought when I watched the ad too. I think they are the exact same ones.

Feb 26, 09 - 06:50 pm Comment from: Cubert

Good ear, Dark Side.

Wow MDN, you sure are sensitive these days!

To be fair, you are stacking the deck with the worst reviews. There were plenty of more balanced reviews and the business press (especially Businessweek) loved it.

Feb 26, 09 - 07:59 pm Comment from: Brau

"Nothing can touch it"

True. You can't just touch it, you have to press down hard to click that dumb screen.

Feb 26, 09 - 08:10 pm Comment from: twilightmoon

"Why do people keep saying this? Apple made the iPhone with no competition whatsoever. Competition is only an incentive for lazy, visionless drones."

Because I own an iPhone and it needs a lot of work.

1. Mobile Safari is a dog. You can't scroll down a long web page without flicking endlessly, there's no "snap to this point" feature like they have in the Address book, and i you accidentally hit the top of the screen you get shot back up to the top. Ugh. Do I even have to go into how there's no caching so if you go from one web page to another you have to reload the previous one if it gets dumped (which is very common). Sure it's hella better than anything else out there currently but that's not to say there's not enormous room for improvement.
2. No copy n paste? No global search? I can live without background tasks but there should be some solution to this for the programs that need it, they scrapped the background server without any public comment and are pretending it was never announced?
3. No video, no flash for the smallish built in camera, no built in voice recording, no voice dialing..

I mean the iPhone is great but don't pretend that it's unable to be improved and Apple can just stop development on it!

Ummmm, have you ever tried the RIM browser. It runs one column after another. My thumb needs a break after scrolling through the headlines of the Drudge Report. On my iPhone, it renders effortlessly.

Feb 26, 09 - 09:20 pm Comment from: twilightmoon

Hello...

I don't need to try crappy unusable mobile browsers to know that Mobile Safari needs tons of work.

Mobile Safari at least doesn't crash constantly like it used to, but scrolling long sites on it is a huge chore. It could be tons easier using conventions used elsewhere already in use on the phone. Address Book has right column click to point scrolling and search, but not so for Mobile Safari.

In a way you kind of proved my point that RIM has a horrid browser means Apple can sit back and be lazy with improving Mobile Safari, if there was real competition they'd need to work harder to make it better. Simply "rendering effortlessly" or perfectly is not progress, it had that 2 years ago. They need to make it not suck to use for long sites, how about searching the text of webpages in the history like the desktop version? And search on a page? Why can't we get top sites on mobile safari and coverflow for the history?

Feb 26, 09 - 09:22 pm Comment from: Roberto

Umma Gumma

Feb 26, 09 - 09:23 pm Comment from: twilightmoon

For that matter why are we limited to 8 pages? It's not like they keep more than 1 or 2 pages in memory at a time anyway, often you get everything besides the page you're currently on purged from memory even without exiting?

We have 8+ gigs of flash storage, can't we get some cache action going on here? Please?

Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun

Wait until you see the ad where an apple drops on a blackberry!

Those of you saying bb browser renders column after column - that's like me bringing up some of the annoying features of Mac OS 8 and comparing them to Windows 7. At least take your info from the Bold or Storm, that thing has at least as good, if not better browser than iPhone.