Will Robertson's Blog

I just read a great post by Steven Troughton-Smith on it being short-sighted to see the current smartphone operating systems as just that:

“If you’re thinking purely in terms of ‘smartphones’ whenever you think of iOS, Android and Windows Phone, you’ve blown it. It’s so incredibly short sighted to think of these OSes as a smartphone play – they are all so much more than that.

These are the three OSes going to power consumer devices (phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, TVs, etc) for the next 20-30 years, or be the template for such.”

But I respectfully disagree with his ending in which he states:

“It’s a completely different game being played now. And this, more than anything else, is why companies who think they’re just making smartphones (RIM, for example) will have no place in the world of tomorrow.”

BlackBerry 10 is designed to power smartphones, tablets, laptops, and more (QNX’s automotive partnerships, rumours of a BB10 powered AppleTV-like device). Hopefully the BlackBerry 10 Jam Conference on May 1 will show Steven more of RIM’s plans for a mobile computing platform, and not just a smartphone platform.

In an interview from January, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins stated:

“Critics aren’t seeing the bigger picture, as PlayBook was never meant to be simply a tablet. PlayBook has been designed as a mobile computing platform that will be offered to QNX’s global list of clients in various industries.

PlayBook shows as a tablet, but it really is a mobile computing platform that you can run on various hardwares and integrate into various systems.”

Here is a leaked internal video from RIM showing their vision of the future matches up quite nicely with Steven’s. Notice around the 50s mark, a guy puts his BlackBerry down on his desk and it is instantly powering his desktop monitor. The same OS from the smartphone expands to the desktop.

It is a mistake to assume RIM’s current BBOS and devices dictate what they will continue doing with BlackBerry 10. BlackBerry 10 is a new beginning for RIM and the start of their new computing platform. I can not speculate on how successfully RIM will execute on this vision, but it would be short-sighted to say RIM does not see past the smartphone.

Continuing my posts on sessions at the BlackBerry 10 Jam Conference, here is one I am looking forward to: COM114 – “Building Connected Apps with Cascades”. This session goes over how to build BlackBerry 10 apps in Cascades that connect to your favorite social networking services APIs using OAuth. Whether you are trying to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Foursquare, you will probably need to use OAuth to log users in to these services.

COM114 – Building Connected Apps with Cascades Many developers want to connect their apps to a popular API or build a client for their favorite public APIs, whether its Twitter®, Facebook® or foursquare®. This session looks at using Cascades, a rich UI framework which is part of the BlackBerry® Native SDK, to make these connections. We’ll look at technical issues such as authorizing an app with your preferred API, making authenticated requests and processing the data and binding remote data to UI components.

This session is presented by Kyle Fowler, a developer at Foursquare, who has recently been working on the Foursquare for BlackBerry App. In the past he has built Blaq, a Twitter app for BlackBerry, and Fourplay, a Foursquare app for PlayBook. Needless to say, it sounds like he knows what he is talking about when it comes to connected apps. Hopefully he is putting that early access to the Cascades framework to good use and working on a shiny new Foursquare app for BlackBerry 10 devices!

Many of the app ideas I have rely on these social platforms, so I imagine this will be a very helpful session to jumpstart my Cascades development. By getting the OAuth login part out of the way – something that has slowed me down on previous BlackBerry PlayBook apps – I will be able to focus on the actual functionality of the app.

To make building connected apps even easier with Cascades, Kyle has went ahead and modified a OAuth library for Qt written in C++, adding BlackBerry 10 and Cascades specific functionality. Kyle said he would be making this library available during #BB10Jam, so keep an eye on his Github.com page.

There are now over 70 sessions lined up for BB10Jam, sadly I can’t make it to all of them, but stay tuned for some more posts on some of those sessions I will be able to make it to.

A major part of the BlackBerry 10 Jam Conference is the breakout sessions and labs presented by RIM and other developers on a wide range of BlackBerry development topics. The big focus is of course BlackBerry 10 and the Cascades UI framework (I’m sure I will be blogging about that soon). But there are some other interesting sessions lined up, one of them being:

“The Automotive Market for BlackBerry 10 Developers” presented by QNX’s Andy Gryc

The QNX operating system is already deployed in more than 30 million vehicles worldwide, and BlackBerry®10-based systems will be the foundation for many next generation in-car infotainment systems. A merger of mobile and automotive platforms represents new market potential for BlackBerry® app developers using BlackBerry® 10. Learn how a car infotainment system is structured, and the differences between car and device platforms. This is an ideal introduction to the automotive market for the app developer looking to move into this space.

With BlackBerry 10 powered by the QNX operating system, BlackBerry 10 developers will have the opportunity to build apps that span smartphone and tablet devices, but also the embedded automotive infotainment systems that QNX and their partners are putting into cars. These infotainment systems typically come loaded up with GPS navigation, media and voice controls, bluetooth, internet connectivity, and deep integration into the car’s systems and controls.

Obviously not all apps will translate well to in-car use cases, given the very different environment and accessibility. These systems are also used while driving the car, so alternative voice and steering wheel controls often are used. Apps on these screens must also be easy to use and designed to reduce driver distraction.

To get a good idea of where RIM and QNX are taking the BlackBerry 10 platform for automobiles in the future, check out this video from Mobile World Congress 2012 of the QNX Porsche – decked out with a PlayBook integrated into the dashboard, NFC connectivity, and two PlayBooks in the headrests for back-seat passengers, controllable by the front seat PlayBook.

After signing up for Andy’s session, I got thinking about what sort of apps would make sense to bring to the automotive market. I am sure his session will give me some good inspiration.

My last blog post mentioned a contest I entered to win a trip to the BlackBerry 10 Jam Conference in Orlando this May. This weekend I got an interesting email, the subject line read:

“Attending BlackBerry Jam? You will if you reply to this email”

Thanks to BerryReview.com and RIM, I won the trip to the conference! In just two weeks I will be heading down to Orlando to get my BlackBerry 10 smartphone prototype, sit in the audience for Thorsten Heins keynote at BlackBerry World, attend sessions on BlackBerry 10 app development, and meet a ton of developers, bloggers, and RIM folks at the parties.

The Financial Post regularly republishes Bloomberg news articles on their website. For some reason they deem it necessary to change the headline. In this case, where Bloomberg has a positive story about RIM with a positive headline, Financial Post finds the single negative line in the article and uses it as the headline.

Bloomberg: BlackBerry Fans Cite Reliability as They Snub Competitors

Financial Post: BlackBerry fans fret about their phone’s future

The article goes on to quote several BlackBerry users, all of which are praising the devices and explaining how much they like them.

“As long as I stay involved in this type of job, I’ll need a BlackBerry,” said John Yester, who has been a firefighter outside of Pittsburgh for the past 15 years.

“I’m able to keep in contact faster with clients, and we can actually have real conversation,” said Berry

In Venezuela, where the device is ubiquitous on the streets of Caracas, President Chavez has dubbed his BlackBerry and Twitter account his “secret weapon.”

I wonder why Financial Post had to turn the headline negative?