RIM has issued an official statement saying that it has determined that one thousand BlackBerry PlayBook tablets, the 16GB model shipped with an OS build that resulted on the devices being unable to properly load software on initial set-up. This is another hiccup in the somewhat rocky launch of the PlayBook (review here), calling into question the confident tagline RIM is using: “Amateur hour is over.” More on this story after the cut.
Once again, we attempt to bring you a roundup of the week’s tech news in under 6 minutes. The chaos of the Sony PlayStation Network breach continued into this past week. Apple unleashed an iOS update that addressed most of the location tracking concerns. Intel made their biggest announcement of the year with a new 22-nm 3D Tri-Gate transistor technology that really puts it ahead of the competition. Other major announcements came from the BlackBerry World conference as well as from a Samsung event. For the full list and video continue after the cut.
RIM's native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook - demonstrated at BlackBerry World 2011 earlier this week - isn't expected until sometime this summer, but one developer has already figured out a way to bypass the existing Adobe AIR environment and get QNX native code running on the 7-inch tablet. Adam Bell discovered that, with a little tweaking, it's possible to copy QNX apps coded on the QNX desktop environment, aka the Neutrino SDP (software development platform), over to the PlayBook and have them run as native code.
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Fresh from the BlackBerry World 2011 press conference in Orlando, Florida, comes speculation that RIM may be planning to release a 10-inch version of their BlackBerry PlayBook in time for the holidays this year. With the WiFi 7-inch PlayBook having just been launched last month to critical reviews on its firmware and a 4G version yet to be confirmed, would a larger slate be too soon?
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RIM has publicly demonstrated Android apps running on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet for the first time at BlackBerry World 2011 this morning, showing how code intended for Google's platform will be packaged and run on the QNX slate. Apps will each run in their own instance of a virtual machine, presented to the user as regular shortcuts and with the emulator automatically - and transparently - loading.
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The BlackBerry PlayBook has been criticized for its shortage of applications - even having to turn to Android later in 2011 to make up the shortfall - but it could get some salvation among artistic types with Adobe's help. Taking to the stage with RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis at BlackBerry World 2011, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen confirmed that the company would bring its "creative applications" to the tablet.
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RIM may be calling the BlackBerry PlayBook an enterprise tablet, but it can't seem to leave consumers alone at BlackBerry World 2011. After video chat and Facebook apps were announced yesterday, RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis confirmed today that Angry Birds for the PlayBook is coming sometime this summer.
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The biggest news this morning, of course, is that Osama bin Laden is dead, killed in a raid by the US Military. And the news was inadvertently broken first on Twitter by one Sohaib Athar, who is now begging media to leave him alone so he can get some sleep! In other news, BlackBerry World is happening now, and we are loaded up with BlackBerry news, including the news that the BlackBerry PlayBook will be getting updates every few weeks to get the somewhat disappointing software up to speed. Already, there is news that the PlayBook will be getting Video Chat and Facebook apps in May. Read on to see all the BlackBerry news, and much more, including Thunderbolt, Nokia, ASUS, Motorola and Apple.
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RIM made life difficult for early reviewers of the BlackBerry PlayBook with almost daily updates of the QNX OS the tablet is based on, improving and tweaking in the run up to launch. The company isn't threatening quite the same pace now that the PlayBook is on the market, but it is committing to very frequent updates: every few weeks, in fact.
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RIM has already shown it's willing to dip into other platforms if it thinks that will boost its market appeal - the arrival of Android apps on the BlackBerry PlayBook later this year will be evidence of that - but the company hasn't forgotten that enterprise users will want to securely manage their broadening ecosystem. The new multi-platform BlackBerry Enterprise Solution will allow admins to control and manage not only BlackBerry smartphones and QNX tablets, like the PlayBook, but also Android and Apple iOS devices too.
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One of our key complaints about the BlackBerry PlayBook was its lack of video calling support - leaving the front-facing camera pretty much pointless - and the absence of Facebook integration. Out of the box, the PlayBook's Facebook icon simply takes you to the social networking site's homepage; now, there's a new Facebook App for the PlayBook, along with a video calling app.
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RIM launched the Blackberry Playbook not long ago and started sending the machines out to reviewers to spend some hands on time with. We put up our review of the Playbook last week and noted that the firmware was a wreck. Chris called the firmware "half-baked" at the time he wrote about the device. One of the bright spots was that at least for a while the Playbook users could access the streaming content on Hulu.
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