The fall of Microsoft's Andy Lees: inside the Windows Phone power shift - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/14/2632983/andy-lees-windows-phone-power-shift <comment><USER3> Ballmer can play as much musical chairs as he wants. The problem is him. Despite a massive Microsoft talent drain, there are still smart, capable people at Microsoft. What Microsoft lacks is a cohesive vision about where they are headed. Bill Gates' vision was a PC running Windows on every desktop. Everything Microsoft did had to be reconciled against this.

What is Ballmer's vision? That's his responsibility as CEO. In fact, it's pretty much his most critical one. At this point, he's too high level to do much else. All I see from him is somebody that installs a really smart person in some new vertical that Microsoft all of a sudden deems super important only to let this person take the flack for things not going properly a couple of years after they start.

<comment><USER4> >What is Ballmer's vision?

Something about developers.

<comment><USER5> here is his vision from 2k6 on zune:

Have you squirted a song yet? That's the question Microsoft hopes your friends will ask you as you ponder which digital music player to acquire. Although you are more likely to buy an iPod this season — something even Microsoft admits — the software giant from Redmond is running a huge marketing campaign that it hopes will plant some seeds of doubt. After all, iPods don't squirt songs. And Microsoft's new player, Zune, does.

<comment><USER4> I actually bought a Zune. I had an iPod before that, but iTunes on Windows was awful. I bought a WP7 phone for the same reason, I wanted a managed music experience but iTunes wasn't an option for me.

Really, I think that could be a marketing campaign for Microsoft. "Our downsides average out to be slightly better for a small minority of the market! Spend weeks agonizing over the tough decision then settle for us!" I love my Windows Phone, but I'd likely be on iOS if Zune wasn't a better piece of software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't get it. I thought this was the Windows Phone playbook - release as early as possible (2010), gain something like feature parity in fall 2011 (i.e. the Mango release) and team up with Nokia to make some great hardware (the Lumia). This is what Windows Phone people have been telling me since the beginning of the year. The virtues, logic and shortcomings of this have been evident from the beginning so I don't see how Ballmer can point at anyone but himself.

It's a problem that anyone stretching the definition of "early adopter" already had a phone that did everything a Windows Phone does in 2009. Buying into a phone ecosystem sounds mundane to mildly entertaining to us, but it's a terrifying leap for most of the market - the vast majority of people will buy what their more technically inclined friends and family use. Think of how long it's taken for the iPhone to approach the prevalence of the Blackberry - <USER2> bizarre, then, that MS expected WP to bloom while two competent competitors are taking the market by storm. WP7's biggest fault has nothing to do with Andy Lees - it's too late to market.

<comment><USER7> The single-greatest reason to avoid Microsoft is that they're willing to sacrifice any and all partners (customers, retailers, developers, employees, etc) to attract more of the others.

As a customer you can count on Microsoft adding DRM to the product if anyone else in their development chain asks for it. As a developer you can count on Microsoft making uncomfortable changes without ensuring the devs can work with it. As an employer it's better than EA... mostly. As a retailer, Microsoft is desperately trying to cut you out of all extended revenue streams while still dependent on you to sell the lock-in to the customer in the first place.

You're pretty much guaranteed to be screwed with one way or another - to help MS, to help a favored partner, or just as they reposition a project (often in the trash).

WP7 could come with a free gold bar and would still be overpriced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When you have a universally well reviewed product and it's not selling, you have to change something. Usually the person on top.

<comment><USER9> In my opinion, the top that needs to change first is Ballmer. I think the first thing holding back Windows Phone in the markeplace is the name. "Windows Phone" inherits the baggage of desktop Windows and of Windows Mobile, neither of which is that positive. Something like "Metro Phone" or whatever would inherit less baggage and would be doing at least a bit better. The naming decision was and is Ballmer's, so...

<comment><USER8> OTOH, is it not selling because of the name, or because the local AT&T store has one model, and will never recommend it?

<comment><USER10> Or because they are _completely_ not marketing it?

When it launched they did some incredibly poorly thought out TV ads that looked more like some art-house feature than a television commercial. Only a notch above the completely ioncomprehensible campaign Palm ran for the Pre. Look where _that_ landed them.

And since then the marketing has been nearly invisible. Yeah sure, you'll see the Windows Phone Facebook page push some promotions and token events, but where is the _real_ force of marketing?

When Motorola first made its maneuver into Android-land, I remember every bus shelter, subway platform, billboard, _everything_ plastered in Droid ads, with clever (if slightly unimaginative) slogans.

Microsoft's marketing in _everything_ has been utterly incompetent. They've gotten so used to owning products that _require_ no marketing that they're not incapable of doing it.

Just think at the "major" marketing moves MS has made in recent years. Seinfeld? WTF?

The Lumia is an absolute _gem_ of a device. It's beautifully integrated and has industrial design that screams elegance. And nobody I know has heard of it.

<comment><USER11> I think this is probably their biggest problem too. I'm a pretty technical guy, maybe not up on the latest and greatest in the land of cell phones, but I get by.

That said, I'm still not even sure if I can go buy a Windows Phone device yet. I've seen some reviews of the Lumia, and it looks nice, but I honestly couldn't tell you if it's out or not, and who would even have the thing if it is. Or, for that matter, if ANY of the US carriers have ANY Windows Phone devices yet. I've read about upgrades to the OS, so I suspect there are handsets to be had, but I just don't know.

Yes, I could look up information about Windows Phone and available devices, but why should I? Nobody I know has one and the one person I knew that wanted one more than anything else ended up buying and Android phone because he couldn't wait any more. My point, which was OP's point, is that Microsoft should be doing their part to make sure I know this information passively, like all the other phone manufacturers have done. I've seen the interface, it looks slick, but that's where my knowledge of their platform stops.

In contrast, I see a new Android billboard (typically some flavor of Motorola's Droid) go up every month. I can't be bothered to keep up with all the variations, but I know they are available, and where to go get one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Its officially criminal that Ballmer hasn't been removed yet.</comment>


Machine Learning with Talend: Decision Trees - <AUTHOR> http://fr.talend.com/blog/2016/09/29/machine-learning-made-easy-with-talend-%E2%80%93-decision-trees <comment><USER2> It's pretty easy to visualize decision trees and there are already open source usable tools for that.

It would be way cooler if they could visualize Random Forest that can have thousands of these trees. This is what is actually used more frequently in practice.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, decision trees really shouldn't be used in practice. The variance of any single decision tree is too high to give you reasonable results.

See also [http://scott.fortmann- roe.com/docs/BiasVariance.html](http://scott.fortmann- roe.com/docs/BiasVariance.html)

<comment><USER4> They have their place - if you're more interested in inference than in prediction they can be useful tools.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a source for this? Pretty curious to see how that would play out.

<comment><USER4> No formal sources unfortunately, it's similar to using a linear regression model trained on historical data for inference (with some cross- validation/penalization to make sure we're not just finding signals in the noise).

We know for sure that there's a ton of bias (in the bias-variance sense), and that the predictions won't be nearly as good as a blackbox model, but we may glean some useful insights out of it.

Same idea with decision trees, in the past I've used them to find what factors influence customer support scores on online tickets, and we found some surprising and useful insights that were used for process improvements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Talend lost me when they started making you pay for their software.

Not because I'm opposed to paying for software, but because Talend isn't that good. If I want to use paid software, I want it to be super refined and usable. Talend feels very open source.</comment>


Pics: A Day at Xobni [YC startup] - <AUTHOR> http://www.xobni.com/adayatxobni.php <comment><USER2> For an Italian it is very hard to understand how it is possible that the kind of advertising Google, Xobni, and other companies do in order to attract employers can actually work.

I mean, to have something to drink it's ok... and even the cool Ikea desk, but this here matters 0.001%... instead the stress is in the following stuff:

1) What I'm going to do there? I'll have chances to learn more? 2) Salary, is high enough? 3) Environment: it's a too big and chaotic city? Are my coworkers handy or a bunch of antisocial nerds?

After one week two displays, the cool furnitures, and so on will matter zero, it's all the rest that will do the difference.

Of course I don't think you need to attract Italian or European hackers at all, but just to share this difference.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Free drinks are basically worthless--to the point of it seeming like a desperate come-on. Free food just means, "You are expected to stay here for lunch and talk business." The big questions are:

1\. Money, benefits, vacation.

2\. Do I get an office?

3\. How much time do I spend fixing other people's bugs?

<comment><USER4> It's funny, the importance of a office cannot be overstated, yet most of the start-ups I've seen are militantly anti-office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> sunglasses?

</comment><comment><USER6> What's Xobni all about? Using Bayesian inference to categorize the importance of emails?

<comment><AUTHOR> Think bigger.

We're making email suck less. The work here is at the intersection of Machine Learning, NLP, systems programming, and UI stuff. We're working on something that you will use every day.

<comment><USER7> You assume your users use Outlook, correct? I haven't used a desktop email client since 2001... How will Xobni help someone like me?

<comment><USER8> That would be somewhat shortsighted of us :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are hackernews comments so off topic? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The manufacture of bicycles in third-world countries appears to be on the increase.

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like any online discussion forum without active moderation [to force comments to be on-topic] will inevitably have threads that stray off-topic. If a particular comment irks you, at least you have the downvote option.

I do think off-topic comments can still contribute valuable information and insight provided they're not _unreasonably_ off-topic. Tangential conversations, as krapp mentioned... everyone is going to approach a topic from their own unique perspective.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if there is a way to add a penalty to comments off topic, not to affect a uses karma but just the comment ranking.

<comment><USER4> I think (since this sort of thing is weirdly relevant to my interests) that the problem isn't the threads going off topic, but that there's no effort required to see those threads. Because the topics of threads are relevant to the people participating in that discussion, just not necessarily to people viewing the topic from the root, penalizing those comments, to me, seems counterproductive unless the comments are obviously trolling or completely unrelated to the point.

That said, I think dang has mentioned penalizing off-topic comments before so it does seem like something they can do.

This may be solved by folding the threads by default. Presumably, the root comments are addressing the original post directly, so they will be the most on topic. But requiring users to take the (minimal) effort of opening a subthread to view it means only people who are interested in reading further will ever read it. Currently, having to scroll past and ignore threads you're not interested in appears to be causing a lot of friction.

Since the staff has mentioned wanting to add thread folding anyway, mentioning this is kind of moot i suppose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Threaded commenting systems encourage tangential conversations, so each comment becomes in essence the root of its own thread, and the deeper you go, the more the context deviates from the original topic.

Also, due to /comments, it's entirely possible to start a thread from somewhere in the middle rather than the top.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you assume they are so off topic what makes you think you'll get answers here on topic?

Sorry, that was off topic. I think one of the reasons is the points system. You can still get upvotes/karma for comments off topic. And it is easier to write something when you're not restricted to a topic.

</comment><comment><USER6> Because often the most interesting contribution is something off-topic.

If that were the case, I'd still make the contribution. I don't blame those that do.

</comment><comment><USER7> Because people don't read the source links before responding.

</comment><comment><USER8> Any specific examples?

<comment><USER9> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8620479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8620479)</comment></comment>


IE9 Won't Support Windows XP - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20100318/tc_pcworld/ie9wontsupportwindowsxp <comment><USER2> I don't get why people are upset that IE9 may not run on XP. Did they think that running XP is a perpetual entitlement to be able to run all future Microsoft software? What can IE9 do that's so important that IE8 or any of the competing browsers can't do?

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's people running XP who are disappointed. If this news means much to you you're probably tech-savvy enough to have installed a more capable browser.

Developers must be disappointed because this means the millions of non-tech users running XP (and not interested/capable in upgrading to 7) won't be automatically upgraded to a browser that can run websites built on modern technologies. Consumer-oriented HTML5-powered webapps will continue to require kludges or hacks or concessions to work for many users, and will keep requiring these until a critical mass of grandpa- or aunties-owned computer machines break and grandpas and aunties go to the Best Buy and get new ones.

<comment><USER4> Having to support decrepit platforms that nobody wants to program on anymore is part of being a developer. They will change, but they'll always be there.

<comment><USER5> But must they make it worse _every_ time they touch a browser?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To turn the logic around here. If MS should feel obligated to make sure all its software works on windows XP, then shouldn't web developers continue to feel obligated to make sure all their websites work on IE6?

<comment><USER7> That's a bizarre statement; MS wrote XP, and it wrote IE6. Why would MS supporting or failing to support its own software have any relation on third parties supporting MS's software?

<comment><USER6> The point I am making is that this logic doesn't work, MS has no obligation to make IE9 run on XP. MS continues to release patches for both XP and IE6, and that's all the obligation it has in terms of support. They have no obligation to release new browsers for old operating systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's not even a browser at this point, it's simply a closed test suite.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't see how this will affect anything. Those who are still using IE6 had plenty of time to upgrade to IE7/8, what makes you think that once IE9 comes along, everybody will suddenly upgrade?

<comment><USER10> It's because this means all the PC users who stay on Windows XP will be perpetually using IE6/7/8. IE9 usage will only grow as adoption of Vista/7 picks up. In essence, IE9 will have slower marketshare growth and web developers will be forced to cater towards the XP-using masses for another 5 years or more.

<comment><USER11> I'd guess there are 3 types of people:

1) Those who just use computers as they come out of box. These users will have Windows 7/Windows Vista and therefore are capable of running IE9

2) Those tech savvy people who insist on installing XP. They are smart enough to install and use some alternative browser (fx/chrome)

3) Those who are using that 10 year old computer and are using it as it came from the box. These people are the problem (in addition to corporate droids)

<comment><USER12> _Those who just use computers as they come out of box. These users will have Windows 7/Windows Vista_

Most netbooks sold in the last few years have run Windows XP Home, and some continue to ship with it. Granted, many of the buyers probably fall under your type 2, but not all of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox can run on XP and support HTML 5, but IE 9 can't? Wow. What a kick in the nuts. 10 more years of IE6.

<comment><USER14> IE9 on XP won't fix the problem, because IE6 will still run on Windows 7.

<comment><USER15> IE6 is packaged with XP. A large part of why it's around is that people who bought XP couldn't be arsed to upgrade to anything better.

If some corporate IT department wants to upgrade to Windows 7 but still reinstall IE6 over it for some crufty legacy app compatibility, I think they'll probably have much bigger problems that would make the OS upgrade pointless altogether.

Granted, Windows 7 currently ships with IE8, so we'll still have the same problem for a while.

<comment><USER14> They will _have_ to install ie6, some of them anyway, because there are a TON of applications out there built to IE6 that are years old with no one to support them and many of them have code bases that have disappeared.

It's a sad situation really. It's easier to install IE6 than rewrite the apps to work with another browser.

<comment><USER16> Targeting IE for "web" apps resulted in unupgradable windows-only apps plus a lie. The lie that they were "web apps". A cautionary tale about Microsoft lock-in causing damage to the web and to IT as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I guess this means if I want to not break the law I have to buy another, heavier os to VM for testing. Do I really have to buy win7 or vista just to test another substandard browser? (Screams at ms, shakes angry fists towards the heavens.)

</comment><comment><USER18> It's up to web developers to take the plunge and decide to stop supporting IE6.

Stop complaining about having to support IE6/IEx, bite the bullet and just direct people to download a competent browser.

</comment><comment><USER19> All they need is a flag which says 'This is XP, don't use those features'.

</comment><comment><USER6> Considering that the IE ship train has been tied to Windows for the past several cycles and IE9 will ship with Windows 8, this is hardly surprising (at that time XP will be 3 releases prior).

</comment><comment><USER20> Hah. Now there's a surprise. Just business as usual for Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER21> Microsoft is making a business decision that makes sense.

For them.

For those of us who prefer not to DRM our machines to death, XP is going to be around for some time to come. Most folks like us stopped using explorer long ago.

This decision helps open source browsers gain greater market share so I welcome it.

Anything Microsoft does that helps open source alternatives is win in my book.

Thanks MS!!!!

<comment><USER4> Erm.... Microsoft is a _business_. They are required by law to consider their shareholders' interests above all else.</comment></comment>


Engaging the Voyage to Vulkan - <AUTHOR> https://developer.nvidia.com/engaging-voyage-vulkan <comment><AUTHOR> Decent Reddit discussion

[https://www.reddit.com/r/vulkan/comments/4137sn/nvidia_engag...](https://www.reddit.com/r/vulkan/comments/4137sn/nvidia_engaging_the_voyage_to_vulkan/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Answering questions here:

[https://twitter.com/pixeljetstream/status/687777707741032448](https://twitter.com/pixeljetstream/status/687777707741032448)</comment>


Soundfocus (makers of AMP Audio) shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@AMP/soundfocus-may-2016-update-f571483734d0#.artmr3fg0 <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the product page: [https://www.ampaudio.com/](https://www.ampaudio.com/)

I was excited for an upgraded audio experience and extended battery life (paid for mine back in Nov 2014), but to be honest I'm not surprised. Nearly every communication from the company included apologies about 3/6/9 month delays.

</comment><comment><USER2> Alex and team, great job trying to bring these products to market. Best of luck in future endeavors. No one will ever know how hard it all must have been.</comment>


The U.S. government couldn't shut down the Internet, right? Think again - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-government-couldnt-shut-down-the-internet-right-think-again/2020/03/06/6074dc86-5fe5-11ea-b014-4fafa866bb81_story.html <comment><USER2> The whole idea of the Internet (originally 'ARPANET' or 'DARPANET' -'Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Network') was designed so that if whole areas were destroyed in a nuclear war, the system would rout around the 'dead area' and continue working.

Shut down the US networks - and the rest of the world would continue normally and disregard the US as a 'dead area'.

<comment><USER3> The rest of the world will surely continue normally once Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc are down, sure.

<comment><USER4> There's 'normally' and 'normally'. There might not be as much English-language content, but the Internet exists outside of FAANG.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a nice click bait article, it isn't explicitly mentioned the article but it's implied that if the COVID-19 got out of hand the government could shutdown the Internet. It can't happen in the U.S.

There is too much critical infrastructure that relies on the Internet, and I'm not talking about Government stuff, I mean water utilities, electric utilities, gas utilities, finance, and not their SCADA systems, but their ERP systems, finance systems, etc. Almost all B to B commerce runs across the Internet. I'm sure there are still some hold over dinosaurs, but most things traverse the Internet.

Trump is doing everything he can to placate big business and the stock market. If he were to turn off the Internet he would stop almost all U.S. Businesses, it would be like driving into a 30 ft thick concrete wall at 180 MPH.

Turning off the Internet would also cause a public panic of epic proportions, taking a bad situation and making it so much worse.

<comment><USER6> I agree with the sentiment that shutting down the entire Internet would cause potentially catastrophic damage to society, but I'm not sure that's the point. Take this quote:

>That means if a sitting president wants to shut down the Internet or selectively cut off a social media outlet or other service, all it takes is an opinion from his attorney general that Section 706 gives him the authority to do so.

Selectively cut off Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, news sites, blogs? Still damaging, but much more realistic than basically shutting off utilities. I think the author is right to point out that the President has an incredible amount of power over the Internet and that this arrangement should be reconsidered.</comment></comment>


Analysis Reveals Google Glass Costs Just $152 to Make - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/consumer-electronics/gadgets/google-glass-costs-just-152-to-make

<comment><USER2> Earlier estimates were as low as $80, but that did no include manufacturing costs. This adds about $50 to that estimate and includes another $20 for estimating production expenses. This is almost exactly 10% of its retail price. While this is high-margin, the ultra-constrained form-factor will likely require exceptional SW bundles to make the product a success, so the $1500 unit price needs to keep some padding to recoup R&D in this area.</comment>


Making It Illegal To Fail Students Who Argue Humans Co-Existed With Dinosaurs - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/22/making-it-illegal-to-fail-science-students-who-argue-humans-co-existed-with-dinosaurs/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

<comment><USER2> One reading of the proposed law is that students cannot be graded on their beliefs but they can be graded on their critical thinking skills. Does that mean that a student, presented with the body of evidence supporting evolution, who fails to be convinced, thus demonstrating a lack of critical thinking skills, can be failed?</comment>


Hidden gem among a sea of video meeting services - <AUTHOR> Mainly because you don't need an app to carry out video meetings even on ios and android which I don't think I've seen before (uses webRTC of course).
https://gotalk.to
Aside from that it can do recording, streaming of meetings to others, on-screen annotations and a few other things that similar services don't have yet. <comment><USER2> [https://www.daily.co/](https://www.daily.co/) is a real hidden gem in my opinion. Don't need to install anything, uses webRTC as well

You can have your own subdomain. Mine is at "[https://vincentntang.daily.co/whatever-I-want- here"](https://vincentntang.daily.co/whatever-I-want-here")

It's free, paid options give you ability to record sessions. Also it's professional marketable endpoint is nice.

It's helpful when I outsource my work to ad-agencies, and I need to share my screen.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's also Jitsi ([https://meet.jit.si/](https://meet.jit.si/)) which works without an app on iOS devices.</comment>


Push notifications getting through restricted networks? - <AUTHOR>

Last week I was on a cruise where satellite internet was available at ridiculous prices. Internet was sold by minute, and you had to login with your stateroom information after connecting to the ship's WiFi network to get access to the outside internet.
However, I noticed an interesting pattern with my android phone; When connected to the ship's WiFi, but without being logged in or using any internet plan, I would receive push notifications! (they were not local from apps on the phone, It was for things like instagram and pushbullet updates)
How were these push notifications getting through the block, while normal internet traffic was restricted? I tried HTTP, as well as SSH and never could connect unless I paid for the plan. <comment><USER2> Saw the same behavior with the GFW. My proxy for some reason breaks most push notifications, but if I turn it off I start getting them even tho the actual apps are blocked.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe push dns tunnels? That usually works on those networks.

Maybe one of the IT people on the ship was unable to login on his phone and so made it so push would always be able to send receive?</comment>


Chromebook (Exynos 5, 2GB) Takes Top Place In Laptop Sales On Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-Laptop-Computers/zgbs/electronics/565108/ <comment><USER2> My mom was recently diagnosed with cancer, shortly thereafter her house was burgled and someone stole her laptop and phone.

I bought her the chromebook off amazon and brought it to her. I had to create a gmail account for her as she was required to have one for this machine.

While the price was right, I was REALLY disappointed that the farking camera doesn't work in these yet! Neither does chrome Remote Desktop.

My mom has a tracheotomy right now and cannot speak, so doing Skype/FaceTime/video calls is important for her to see my kids.

Overall, I'd rate this machine a 4/10 based on the limited functionality, the limited storage and apps and the rather clunky UX.

The physical form-factor is really nice, but the thing, at half the cost of an iPad has maybe 1/100th the functionality. I can browse the web and create a google doc. That's it.

<comment><USER3> The camera works just fine... I've used mine regularly for meetings via Google Hangouts since I picked it up a month after release.

As for storage, what exactly are you trying to store on the device? It really seems to only be intended for use as a dumb terminal to Google services, and in the current iteration I've yet to find a reason to use the local storage.

My biggest beef is the inability to locally cache music and video from Google Play. I think if this functionality existed, I would agree that the local storage is inadequate.

<comment><USER4> I think you also get 100 GB of Google Drive storage with the new Chromebooks.

<comment><USER5> But it's limited for 1 or 2 years. After that you have to pay if you want that extra storage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Worth pointing out that CrOS's "secure boot" is somewhat unique among mainstream OSes in that it still respects the user's wishes by design[0] (aka developer mode), unlike iOS, WinRT, and (with some exceptions) Android devices.

[0] [http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design- docs/f...](http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design- docs/firmware-boot-and-recovery)

<comment><USER7> New HTC, Motorola and Samsung devices have unlocked bootloaders, not to mention the generally superior Nexus brand anyway. The "exception" is locked bootloaders and that's pretty much a Verizon thing these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The success of the Chromebook contrasts curiously with the death (?) of the netbook:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/31/netbooks- de...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/31/netbooks-dead-2013)

I never bought a "netbook" -- always had top-end notebooks for travel and desktops for home/office, so there never was a reason to consider a netbook for myself. However, I just bought three Chromebooks for family members this Christmas because, compared with tablets, Chromebooks are nearly as good for content consumption and far better for content creation.

Tablets, combined with popular online destinations and SaaS offerings, appear to have changed the market potential for newer netbooks such as the Chromebook.

<comment><USER9> Netbooks were great for travel where you didn't want to lug around a big laptop, and I'd argue that ultrabooks are essentially a new name for netbooks. Even full-size desktop-replacement laptops have got a lot thinner (and with better battery life) than they were five years ago. So I don't think the netbook has failed; it's just been subsumed into the wider laptop market.

<comment> muuh-gnu > ultrabooks are essentially a new name for netbooks.

The raison d'être of netbooks was not portability, it was the ridiculously low price.

> I don't think the netbook has failed; it's just been subsumed

No. Netbooks were new, trendy, selling well and overall successful. Everybody and their dog had them, bought them and would have kept buying replacements if they werent panically removed from the market and replaced with subnotebooks/ultrabooks at 2-4 times the initial netbook price.

<comment><USER10> Smart phones had a significant impact.

The original eee pc 701 had a small keyboard; a small (but I think nice) display and limited soldered in SSD storage. (4 gb). This was released 2007.

That's the same year the first iPhone was released. While netbooks are useful for some people a lot of people just need to read email, noodle about on the web, and play games.

I agree that it's really annoying that really cheap, portable, limited function machines are not available. Chromebooks are probably the closest, but the cloud thing is a bit of a worry for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A few commenters are asking about running their favourite distro on these. I've installed a Debian chroot on mine. I've been using it as my main machine for almost 2 months now. I'm quite happy with it, but I mostly use it as a terminal to bigger machines at the university.

To get X I hacked together a Chrome App[0] VNC client, based on noVNC. It's a bit laggy sometimes, but does the job for my purposes.

Ron Minnich (of Coreboot fame) wrote a guide for doing the same with Arch[1]. And there's Crouton[2] for Ubuntu, but I'm not sure whether it does ARM or not.

[0] <https://bitbucket.org/saljam/vnc>

[1] [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IVABFl9TJMFPqoE_c0vWP7Yh...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IVABFl9TJMFPqoE_c0vWP7YhA_mXdpThG2UIZsYOCgU/edit)

[2] <https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton>

</comment><comment><USER12> Nowadays I'm very douptfull about those rankings, I've seen a seller that we set up with Amazon in the top 3 in a category despite having done no sales.

<comment><USER13> They aren't straight rankings. They have a complex algorithm that has several weightings and probably include some velocity variables that affect placement.

There's been lots of speculation but Amazon rarely gives more than hints about how they calculate their best seller lists:

"We base rankings on all-time sales, as well as recent sales that are weighted more heavily than older sales, so that our lists are timely and aren't always dominated by all-time best-sellers like Harry Potter." \- Amazon Spokeswoman

Source: [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32336521/ns/business- us_business...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32336521/ns/business- us_business/t/secrets-amazon-best-seller-list/#.UORW7KUshn8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As much as I'm pleased* to see this, I don't think "without a major advertising campaign" is fair. There are no end of Google ads in the Underground at the moment, featuring Chromebooks front and centre, and I assume that's not the only place.

*disclaimer: I work for Google, so I may not be totally unbiased on this point.

</comment><comment><USER15> How many people buy laptops through Amazon? I always found the selection impossible to sort through, let alone figuring out if I'm getting this year's model or last year's model.

<comment><USER16> I do. I do research elsewhere, and then go to Amazon for price shopping. Asus in particular was best on Amazon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a little surprised it's happened so early but I'd attribute it to the fact that it's actually cheaper than an iPad. I've got the Acer c710 and actually like working with it even though it seems like the processor is a little slower than my old cr-48.

<comment><USER4> The price probably played a role, but I also think they address pretty different markets. Not everyone wants to hold a tablet in their hands all day, while others would rather use a tablet than a normal laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What is crazy is they have been sold out since early December (or maybe even before that).

</comment><comment><USER4> Has Portable NaCl arrived on the ARM Chromebook yet? Google promised it by the end of the year:

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57534803-93/google- offers-l...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57534803-93/google-offers-low- budget-arm-based-chromebook/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Interesting because for me it is showing up as $324 and not the famous $250 price. I am definitely buying one of these when it comes back in stock. I think I'll replace my Asus Transformer with a Chrome book and a Nexus 7

<comment><USER20> It's because it's from another seller.

If you look on the right side, you'll see $250 from Amazon but it's out of stock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I tried one at Best Buy earlier this month, since nobody else has one that you can actually put your hands on. They were sold out but they had a live demo model working in a display.

The keyboard just felt... _odd_. I don't know if it was because the keys were slightly larger and spaced farther apart than a similar low-profile Mac keyboard, or if it was the different placement of keys (no Alt key, but a large "search" key in it's place)

Anyone else have some opinions of the keyboard?

<comment><USER11> The Samsung ARM Chromebook I have has 2 normally located Alt keys. The Search key replaces Caps Lock (Good riddance!)

Are you sure you weren't using one of the Intel ones? Maybe it's the British/American difference...

<comment><USER21> Maybe I'm getting mixed up with the Acer C7 model, which was also on display.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Windows laptops have many different brands and models, and even Macbooks have been around long enough that there's different types, but there's basically just 2 Chromebooks. This means they might only be a tiny fraction of PC sales, but still out come as the #1 specific product.

</comment><comment><USER23> Anyone know where I could get one around Santa Clara? As a Canadian I don't think I can buy one in Canada. But I have to go to Santa Clara for the Open Compute summit. I checked the nearest best buys but nothing.

</comment><comment><USER24> More interestingly to me is that Apple has all but one of the top-10 laptops that is selling for over $500.

</comment><comment><USER25> Would love to get one of these babies and install Ubuntu.

Is it possible to install Java+Eclipse+Android SDK on it?

<comment><USER26> Even if possible, for me I think this setup would be a very painful experience with a slower CPU, low resolution display, and only 2GB RAM compared to what at least I'm used to, which is a Dell M4500 i7 with 8GB RAM, granted it did cost five times as much a couple of years back.

<comment><USER27> If he ditched eclipse, it could actually work. Developing Android apps with Emacs and the command line tools is really quite feasible, especially since there's no enterprise shit-ola which is what people rely heavily on IDEs to generate for them.

But I don't think the Android SDK is available in anything but x86... so, maybe if he used qemu emulation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> OS of Best Sellers in Laptop Computers

1 Chrome

2 OSX

3 Windows 7

4 OSX

5 Windows 7

6 Windows 8

7 Windows 8

8 Windows 8

9 Windows 7

10 Windows 8

11 Chrome

<comment><USER24> And #2,4,10 are the only 3 over $500

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wish I could install arch-arm to the internal drive.

<comment><USER30> If it's like the other chromebooks, you can if you enable Dev mode.

</comment></comment><comment> wes-exp Never underestimate the selling power of cheap crap.

<comment><USER31> It's far from crap, it's my standard day to day laptop now, has been since November.

I still have my lenovo laptop for when I need it, but that's pretty rare

<comment><USER32> Do you do anything besides typical "web-stuff" on it? Granted, I spend quite a bit of time in my browser, but then I have that pesky development-thing I do. I like my iPad, but it hasn't replaced my laptop.

<comment><USER33> If you find ChromeOS limiting, you can always install a full Linux distro on the machine.

My Samsung ARM Chromebook has two partitions, one of which loads into ChromeOS and one which loads into a full Ubuntu/ARM rootfs.

<comment><USER31> How do you find Ubuntu on it? I bought by arm chromebook totally expecting to put ubuntu on it, but I've just never got round to it

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> A few thoughts:

Is it sustainable as a business? Anyone know if Google is subsidizing these or if there is a profit margin, however small? I think it's all about attracting people to Google Apps for Business but if a lot of folks just load Ubuntu on it, Google might have second thoughts on it. I think it is meant as mostly a bundle with Google Apps for Enterprise to attract companies with cheap and/or rented hardware.

Also, being on the Amazon bestseller list is not a very good indicator of popularity. Since Google is very unlikely to release the real numbers we will have to rely on things like StatCounter, Net Applications or even popular web sites run by HN'ers to get more data on sales.

Will RMS consider this more or less free than Windows/Apple machines? On one hand you have multiple OEMs, dev mode to boot alternative OSes, compability with Web etc. but on the other hand you need a Google account to even use it, and it's tied heavily to Google cloud services, no native API, no chance of Firefox for it etc. i.e It can be seen as taking consumers even more away from independent offline usage to being at the mercy of the cloud providers. What happens if your Google account gets locked?

<comment><USER35> The majority of people will use the default OS.</comment></comment>


Inside the fall of BlackBerry: How the smartphone inventor failed to adapt - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-inside-story-of-why-blackberry-is-failing/article14563602 <comment><USER2> \-- "Verizon wanted an iPhone Killer"

\-- "How on earth did AT&T allow this ?" exclaimed an exasperated Lazaridis about the iPhone including a network challenging REAL browser

\-- "Fortune 500 CIOs gathered...."

The one long running thread along all of this article is how clueless BBRY was as to who their REAL customers were. It was anybody but the people holding their handsets in the palms. The end users never mattered.

</comment><comment><USER3> But adapt to what: some of us remember Steve Jobs on stage showing the leading smart phones. He said he would make one that's smarter than all of them. And easier to use than all of them.

Then he put the leading blackberries up. He said that half of it was plastic buttons. But plastic buttons don't adapt to the context: they have something printed on them. So how do you solve this?

Then he said, it turns out we did solve this, in software: with soft buttons. Button text changes dynamically.

So, he would make one giant screen. Then he said, well, how do you interact with it?

Then he derided styluses as something you lose.

Then he showed off multitouch.

And that was the start of the fal of BlackBerry.

People reduce the value of ideas to 0. But look at this luminary: the single idea, that we want something smarter than any phone (as powerful as a computer ,which is what they shrank down) and easier to use than any phone.

Then, if you want something easier to use you can't have plastic keys with stuff printed on them.

Then, a giant screen.

Then, finger interaction.

So much complexity drilled down in such a high-level way. That is what separate(s/d) a $400B company from yours. Or from BlackBerry, which failed to adapt.

Pure idea.

<comment><USER4> I'd still buy the crap out of a Desire-Z form factor with modern hardware (say Nexus 4 or better).

The touch screen is superior for lots of uses but when it comes to entering none-english text (code, operating a shell) it falls flat on it's face.

Of course if we are talking about fantasy tech I want the Psion 5MX form factor with a 1920x1200 screen and capable of running something like Raspbian ;).

<comment><USER5> When it comes to entering non-english text, touchscreens are fantastic for millions upon millions if not possibly billions of people for reasons other than "operating a shell".

I didn't have to sell my parents on buying new iPhones, finally, when they saw me switch from typing rapid English with a friend complete with a random emoji, to Korean while chatting with a cousin halfway across the world (for free, I might add, BB really missed an opportunity there), to Chinese handwriting recognition while still talking to said cousin, and finally Voiceover (the screenreader) just to demo to my visually impaired dad. Then setting up Facetime on the big(ger than previous generation iPhones) iPhone 5 display sealed the deal, so to speak.

Touchscreens are fantastic for the average consumer, and they can be great for techies too. They might fall flat compared to physical keyboards but we're not the target audience ...and even if I'm not, I do so much more than entering code or shell commands every day that I'm willing to make that trade in a heartbeat. Just the flexibility of software keyboards switching languages being an everyday thing nowadays kind of blows my mind still, having come from the world of Graffiti and hardware keyboards for years before iPhone.

<comment><USER6> > When it comes to entering non-english text, touchscreens are fantastic for > millions upon millions if not possibly billions of people for reasons other > than "operating a shell".

And for — as you demonstrate — not just entering non-english text but seamlessly switching between languages even within a single convo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article starts out acting like the release of Z10 was what killed blackberry. Hardly. They were dead long before the Z10, and releasing the Z10 with a keyboard was not the answer. To think it is is laughable.

As others have stated, they could have sold high end custom Android phones and done well. They have/(perhaps had) a good brand. If they had released a solid phone like a nexus or galaxy they would have done fine. The execs in the story admitted that their technology was significantly behind. Once they realized that, they should have pivoted to Android. Perhaps keep working on their own stuff behind the scenes to try to catch up. But they can't keep releasing inferior phones and expect to stay on top. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but there are a lot of people on the outside that have said blackberry is making the wrong decisions and headed to failure for quite awhile.

<comment><USER8> I would buy the shit out of Z10 with a keyboard+pointer. Until a new decent keyboard phone comes out, I'm sticking with my Torch 9800.

Also have an HTC One and often use a SG4. Wow, awful. And I hate games.

<comment><USER9> Why not use the trace keyboard? I know Sense 5 on the HTC One comes with a trace keyboard option. It might take a bit of learning to get used to, but using trace keyboards seems to be a lot faster and more efficient than clicking on small physical keyboard buttons. Then again, they don't provide the tactile feedback that a physical keyboard does, so you can't really type with muscle memory and have to look at the screen when trace-typing.

<comment><USER10> >> you can't really type with muscle memory and have to look at the screen when trace-typing.

I used to be a devout BlackBerry user, and could happily type out entire emails in meetings with my device under the table, send then, and be 100% confident that I had typed what I was planning on typing. Likewise I could type while walking, and only glance down to see what my incoming messages were. In many jobs, the ability to do that is essential to success. I can't come near that with any type of soft keyboard.

Having said all that, I don't use a BB any more - my 9900 died, and I bought a Nexus 4. I was looking at a Q10, but it was $300 more expensive than the Nexus, it still doesn't have anywhere near the number of apps, and I was no longer in a place in life where the key BB features - BBM and the ability to type long emails without looking - mattered any more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think RIM didn't understand how the game had changed. They pioneered the market with secure communications, talk and text, basically a dumbphone +.

When Apple entered the market, they partnered with Google for Youtube content and with AT&T for a good data plan. They changed the game from talk and text to consumption of content: data, video, internet, etc.

RIM was stuck in the belief that phones were phones, and that their phones were better phones. The iPhone changed the market so that people wanted portable computers that they could access content with.

RIM never understood this.

<comment><USER12> Maybe RIM as a company didn't understand it, but executive Mike Lazardis seemed to realise the threat, since in the article he apparently stated something like "if this thing carries on, we're competing with a Mac, not a Nokia" when talking about the original iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "To Mr. Lazaridis, a life-long tinkerer who had built an oscilloscope and computer while in high school, the iPhone was a device that broke all the rules. The operating system alone took up 700 megabytes of memory, and the device used two processors. The entire BlackBerry ran on one processor and used 32 MB. Unlike the BlackBerry, the iPhone had a fully Internet-capable browser. That meant it would strain the networks of wireless companies like AT&T Inc., something those carriers hadn't previously allowed. RIM by contrast used a rudimentary browser that limited data usage."

"I said, 'How did they get AT&T to allow [that]?' Mr. Lazaridis recalled in the interview at his Waterloo office. " 'It's going to collapse the network.' And in fact, some time later it did."

You have to give them at least a little bit of forgiveness for having to deal with AT&T/Verizon for so many years. I guess the constraints by their partners never allowed them to innovate.

<comment><USER14> I wonder if Apple knew, or did not care, that AT&T would have to adapt to carry the traffic?

<comment><USER15> I can only imagine the battle of reality distortion fields that must have taken place when Jobs first approached AT&T. It must have looked like a bar fight between Yoda and Sauron.

Arguably, no one else could have won that battle. Gates, maybe, but he was out of the game by then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >>"The problem wasn't that we stopped listening to customers," said one former RIM insider. "We believed we knew better what customers needed long term than they did. Consumers would say, 'I want a faster browser.' We might say, 'You might think you want a faster browser, but you don't want to pay overage on your bill.' 'Well, I want a super big very responsive touchscreen.' 'Well, you might think you want that, but you don't want your phone to die at 2 p.m.' "We would say, 'We know better, and they'll eventually figure it out.' "

Seems like they never stopped to think beyond the existing limitations, and what people would put up with for a better experience with the phone. Incumbents [1] tend to imagine that the problems they have identified (and decided to be unsolvable at the moment) are unsolvable for any newcomer too.

1\. Motorola had tried touchscreen smartphones before [2] and they had failed. They did not understand at the time that the reason for the failure was not because users did not want touchscreen phones, but because their implementation broke no new ground. It was simply an archaic OS running on a touchscreen that required a stylus.

2\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_A1000](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_A1000)

<comment><USER17> I had a A1000 and actually liked it compared to what else I could get at the time, but I used it more as a PDA with 3G internet than a phone.

Its main drawback was the resistive screen and bad battery life.

<comment><USER16> I used it as my main phone for many months. The battery life was indeed bad. It had many features, such as a web browser. However, like most phones of the day, they weren't quite usable. I never used anything other than th main phone function. When Apple put a full featured browser in the phone, along with a usable map app, it was quite the revelation to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> seems they read about disruptive innovation and tried it with QNX - and fell on their face.

christensen is correct in his observations on how disruptions happen, but his proposed countermeasures don't seem to work in a lot of real world situations.

BB tried to run the QNX as a separate disruptive unit which is a really bad idea if you intent to migrate your existing customers from A to B. announcing B will kill A before B is ready, etc.

BBM for all platforms would have been truly disruptive. Change the playing board, not just some pieces. WhatsApp, etc. show that this is indeed a market. BB had it right before them but got distracted by their handset/keyboard business.

The renaming of RIM to BB would have been the perfect moment to split the company. RIM for BBM, services, network - and BB for the hardware plus OS. RIM could have had a future. All easier said than done of course, but those execs earn a lot of money to execute exactly these kind of maneuvers.

<comment><USER19> QNX was too far from being competitive with iOS and Android. It still doesn't have a competitive app runtime environment. QNX turned out to be a distraction and time-sink instead of an advantage.

It's easy to build a case that Linux is less than completely optimal as a kernel for a phone OS. It is much harder to enumerate all the tasks to beat Linux, and budget all the resources to do it, and not lose your nerve as parts of projects slip, and end up shipping something half-baked. And then you end up in a death spiral where you don't have the resources to fill the gaps and you never catch up.

<comment><USER18> my point is that the OS here doesn't matter, switching an OS is very likely not enough to be disruptive.

say they would have switched to android - so what? now they would gave been on equal footing with samsung, etc, but with no reason for anyone to switch to BB at all. you disrupt into a completely different market, not the same with something that's now equal at best.

<comment><USER20> > switching an OS is very likely not enough to be disruptive

You're right. It's not disruptive at all, especially if all your core services (address book, calendar, etc.) are stored with a platform independent cloud service (read as: everything outside of iCloud, koff koff). Switching these days usually involves a short, tedious process of entering in all your passwords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What annoys me is that the BB10 OS is pretty damn awesome. I would even venture to say that it's even better for developers than Google's Android platform for being able to get code running from existing code bases. It may not be running a world class kernel like Linux (it uses QNX) but it has a decent userland with lots of industry standard awesome libraries exposed, unlike the undocumented bionic and high level java you are forced to use on Android. It literally is a dream developing and porting code to it over Android (I work at YC startup that develops a tech for porting). Business decisions and past mistakes aside, it saddens me that BB10 is more prevalent so I can use it over the alternatives as an engineer.

<comment><USER22> > It may not be running a world class kernel like Linux (it uses QNX)

QnX is in many ways lightyears ahead of Linux. What do you mean with 'world class kernel'?

<comment><USER21> Drivers, scheduler, and missing things I could get from things like procfs in Linux that doesn't have an equivalent. I have a had a few issues with GL on QNX as well. It's pretty amazing but not nearly as rigorously tested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 3 years ago, an ex-RIM engineer posted on a well-known Internet forum called ShackNews about his insider perspective. It was immediately deleted by him - but not before making the rounds of the tech blogs (in excerpts).

The money quote is that RIM thought the iPhone was impossible... It was not just beyond business scope - it was beyond their worldview.

"You guys could have avoided this entire conversation by just defining what Apple created as something more than a smartphone. What we call a smartphone today is a rather different than what was meant when the term was first coined.

The first smartphone was pretty much the Nokia Communicator back in the late 90s. It had data connectivity and some limited ability to run applications, and that pretty much what a smartphone was at the time. Today we take it to mean handheld wireless computer that happens to have a phone, but back then if you send a few packets you were a smartphone.

I was hired by RIM in 1999 just before they began work on their first phone and spent a good number years writing RIM proprietary protocol stacks that layered on top of the then new GPRS. Coming from a two-way pager background, RIM decided that phones should have two-way push synchronization of pretty much everything that Exchange provided along with a limited WML browser. The general thought was that phones would never have sufficient power density or radios sufficient bandwidth to allow anything more. That was incredibly predictably wrong, but it's how things went down.

Along with RIM was Ericsson, Palm, Motorola, and Qualcomm. Motorola came from a similar background as RIM and went on to build very similar devices. Both Nokia and Ericsson had come from phones and had decided feature phones should have far more sophisticated PDA functions. Palm started with PDAs then moved to the phones, but adamantly dismissed ideas like wireless synchronization for years making their first attempts at smart phone far more like early Nokia Communicators than early Blackberrys. Oddly enough, though Nokia made the first smartphone, which was followed by two more with RIM and arguably Palm in 20002, it was Ericsson that popularly coined the term in the mid 2000s.

So the point is that all these companies were fighting over what amounts to overgrown PDAs with phones and wireless stacks strapped on. Everyone assumed power density was no where even close to what was needed for general computing, that a full featured browser and heavy duty Internet services were impossible due to bandwidth and latency. Take a look at how our Java expert groups named standards, how people at the time talked about what features smart phones should have, and its clear that no one thought an iPhone was possible. Even Danger, which eventually went on to work on to create Windows Phone 7 and Android, was just working on a better Blackberry.

The iPhone did many amazing things, but what stands out in my mind was how it proved that these assumptions were flat-out wrong beyond any reasonable doubt. Apple pretty gave everyone the finger and said, "Fuck you guys we can build your distant impossible future today."

I left RIM back in 2006 just months before the IPhone launched and I remember talking to friends from RIM and Microsoft about what their teams thought about it at the time. Everyone was utterly shocked. RIM was even in denial the day after the iPhone was announced with all hands meets claiming all manner of weird things about iPhone: it couldn't do what they were demonstrating without an insanely power hungry processor, it must have terrible battery life, etc. Imagine their surprise when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it. It was ridiculous, it was brilliant.

I really don't think you're giving Apple enough credit here.

They did something amazing that many very prominent people in the industry thought was either impossible or at least a decade away, and they did it in a disgustingly short time frame."

Via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2044389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2044389)

<comment><USER24> I'm a bit of a phone nerd and was working at AT&T/Cingular when the iPhone dropped.

There were a combination of social and political forces that made the phone a success beyond its obvious technical prowess. Many people don't know this, but Apple had originally negotiated for a monthly residual fee from AT&T for each iPhone and Apple negotiated their own custom activation scheme.

For those of you not familiar with carrier land, this was the first time in the history of wireless networks something like this happened. Seriously, it was unheard of; Apple dictating terms to AT&T. Think of the ridiculousness of the situation; at the time AT&T is roughly 2x the size of Apple and gave the keys to the kingdom away. It's akin to IBM with Windows and DOS, which was again political and not technical.

The iPhone was a Trojan horse. The App Store opened up the carrier markets to apps. Do you know how apps got on phones before the App Store? Pre-loading: the ultra political game of getting manufacturers and power brokers within operators to load your application in the factory. That was basically the only way you'd hit a significant number of users, and even then you were probably buried under 4 levels of menus.

Apple blew that world apart, which was, again, political and not technical. Tons of other companies launched App stores before Apple but Apple executed.

These kinds of massive upheavals in the world don't happen with just technology. There's a tremendous amount of social and political capital required to make something like this work (and frankly some cajones and some luck).

What we saw from Apple was a perfect orchestration of technology, art and the body politic. It's the kind of thing you're lucky to see once in a generation, IMHO.

Edit: Before the iPhone we never had a single person camp out for a phone. On iPhone launch, we closed the store at 3pm to reopen for launch at 4, but people had already been lining up the day before O_O. It's hard to overstate what a shock this was to us. It had never happened before.

It would blow your mind if you knew what people were willing to do to get iPhones. The things I've seen; it's more like an intoxicant than a phone, but it is a great phone, isn't it? It's so hard to categorize the iPhone.

Edit 2: I knew that Blackberry was dead the day my friend walked into my office and demoed an SSH client on his iPhone for managing his servers remotely. Of course, his phone was jailbroken to do this, but nobody even wanted to jailbreak a blackberry. The iPhone is a computer and blackberry was a killer email experience with a phone stapled on.

<comment><USER20> >> Do you know how apps got on phones before the App Store?

Umm, yeah, I do. Handango and manual sync.

While Handango wasn't as frictionless as the App stores are today, it was popular, multiplatform and had a pretty good selection.

<comment><USER23> As a counterpoint, before the iPhone came out, it was standard practice to wipe the PDA Phone (usually Windows Mobile) when doing a software upgrade. Can you imagine the average consumer dealing with this engineer-designed nonsense? My boss at the time was persuaded to try a Windows Mobile phone by a very adamant - she lasted a month.

Google search for "Caution: Installing this update will delete all the information on your PDA Phone."

Contrast this with OTA upgrades of iOS 7 and 30% adoption within 24 hours and the Android 4.2 OTA upgrades (global adoption rate obviously lower) ...

<comment><USER20> > As a counterpoint, before the iPhone came out, it was standard practice to > wipe the PDA Phone (usually Windows Mobile) when doing a software upgrade.

While you make a valid point of the state of OS upgrades at that time, I'm not sure this is a counterpoint to where and how people got apps.

<comment><USER23> I agree. More of a parallel - getting apps now is on device OTA - before it required a tether to a desktop. Pure mobile is cloud + identity + device.

<comment><USER20> Funny thing - I still buy all my mobile apps from iTunes and Google Play on the desktop. Old habits die hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's not clear that there's anything at all that they could have done differently that would have made them successful. Releasing BBM on multiple platforms earlier would not have made very much money. Completing BB10 earlier would not have caused it to beat IOS, Android, or Windows Phone. The Playbook would still have failed to iPads, Android tablets, and Window 8 tablets if it was designed as a standalone product. I think they were just doomed, really.

<comment><USER26> Sell high-end android handsets with blackberry apps and designs that are optimized for business use. Concentrate on other sorts of tooling beyond just email and IM in the mobile business space. Or one of a hundred other ideas that are more sound that what they actually did.

RIM innovated once and then stopped, but the world kept changing and passed them by.

<comment><USER27> Actually an Android handset with some really solid, secure apps and no consumer cruft (copy of some movie you can't delete, Blockbuster app, etc.) would have been pretty killer back when I had a Blackberry through work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The problem with this article is that you could write about similar infighting and bureaucracy and failed initiatives at the most successful companies, not just the failures. It doesn't identify or explain what was essentially different about the BlackBerry situation.

(I don't have the answer. Maybe it's just randomness.)

<comment><USER29> My take is that they could not manage the team growth that was supposed to support their business growth. When team was relatively small they could execute well. After they grew and had to hire just to fill those new positions random people dragged them down. The quality of late BB OS6 and 7 was awful compared to the 5th. This all happened when they were making good sales and were still growing.

<comment><USER28> Okay, then the question becomes: how or why was their HR/recruiting worse than at Apple or Google?

<comment><USER29> Harder to get (new) top people into Canada? Or just because their HR was plain worse?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I never liked the keyboard, but for a while, it was the best thing around.

Blackberry was dead when they didn't recognize the iPhone's impact.

They could have easily have developed something to compete with it, while still having the keyboard line of products.

They scoffed at the iPhone, then ignored Android. Now they are paying for it.

Pride comes before the fall.

</comment><comment><USER31> I remember talking to a finance girl in NYC and she the only real options were BB or iPhone. BB because it was the most serious, you could type the fastest, iPhone was allowed though. I've seen lots of people in politics, running political campaigns texting canvassers constantly, etc. also love the BB. Well BB tried to switch to being the iPhone and it didn't work. Only reason Android succeeded at copying iPhone is that it is often cheaper and goes through faster hardware iterations through many OEMs so often has better hardware to boot.

<comment><USER32> Political people love Blackberries because a BB within a BES community is both secure and makes it easy to obfuscate accountability. You could rotate devices in such a way that you can compartmentalize who can communicate in writing by moving phones around. You can also shut people out by not giving them the list of device PINs for important people.

If you've ever worked at a place where the execs frequently "lost" BlackBerries, they were up to something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "smartphone inventor"... Journalists these days can't even do basic research...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is almost painful to read - rushed, still late, yet, broken. Quick and dirty is not always quick, but its often dirty:

"The product was the BlackBerry Storm. It was the most complex and ambitious project the company had ever done, but "the technology was cobbled together quickly and wasn't quite ready," said one former senior company insider who was involved in the project."

"The product was months late, hitting the market just before U.S. Thanksgiving in 2008. Many customers hated it. The touchscreen, RIM's first, was awkward to manipulate. The product ran on a single processor and was slow and buggy."

</comment><comment><USER34> > The plan was to push wireless carriers to adopt RIM's popular BlackBerry > Messenger (BBM) instant messaging service as a replacement for their short > text messaging system (SMS) applications – no matter what kind of phone > their customers used.

I doubt that would've saved Blackberry or even that they could've pulled it off. How could they convince (extort) carriers? Banning non-compliant carriers from selling Blackberry? Good luck with that (especially with other phone manufacturers pushing too).

</comment><comment><USER35> I love having a physical keyboard on my phone. I wish someone made one phone sized and with Bluetooth.</comment>