Welcome to WhackBerry

We all know the story. Boy meets girl. Girl is too shiny and sleekly designed to pay him any attention. And she hangs out with all the rich boys. But what would happen if once he finally attains her by saving up all his money and dressing in business suits so he fits her target market... and her arm falls off? And then one knee joint turns into a banana on Wednesday mornings? And he realizes that she only has memory for dictionary words and nobody's names?

Well, I was that boy once. And so were you probably.

Don't get me wrong. Once you go Black you never go back. Though this is mostly because RIM's most clever move was to entrap the unsuspecting and shallow American youth with its BlackBerry Messenger program, I love my BlackBerry like a diabetic loves insulin shots. But since my first day as a User, little things about the software bugged me. As more and more issues came up, I became increasingly frustrated. It was when these frustrations started surfacing visibly (twitch in my right eye, expletive outbursts, crying in my sleep) I knew I needed therapy. So I started keeping a list. I found this very therapeutic; once I added something to my "BlackBerry Flaws" note, I felt a wonderful calm. At peace, even. The list is now several hundred lines long.

I'm not expressing the concerns of old people here. They don't know how to use phones to begin with and probably miss all of the finer points discussed on this blog. But hey, ignorance is bliss. I am here to discuss what is driving droves of young adults away from the Blackberry and into the waiting (steel and glass) arms of the Android and the iPhone.

This isn't a tech blog. I haven't done real research, I'm not an authority on semi-conductors, I don't know code, and I'm not doing an exhaustive study of how to comprehensively restructure Blackberry's software. In my case, that would probably end up being an Android with BBM anyway. My purpose is to inform RIM of the glaring errors in the BlackBerry that I simply can't understand how they allowed to be released to the public. The issues I point out will mainly be problems that exist in the current software, I won't be discussing every feature I would love to see on the BlackBerry. Not all goals are realistic, after all.

My project is to send RIM one Matchstick Message each Wednesday and Sunday evening, each describing one problem I see with the existing BlackBerry software. Some problems will be glaring inadequacies, others will be a matter of semantics, but all have kept me up at night. I hope this encourages RIM to hire an extra engineer or two, or at least that I provide the existing engineers with a few laughs and break from playing World of Warcraft (I heard it can get addicting).

Sincerely,

Tara Raffi

Enthusiast