Blackberry Playbook - for business or play?

It may be called the Playbook, but the Blackberry Playbook seems to be more geared towards business. After all, Blackberries are used for the most part by business people. The Blackberry Playbook showed off its multitasking capabilities and use in workplace environments during its demo video, as well as the fact that almost all of the people in the promo were wearing suits. Bottom line is that RIM is trying to use a business oriented device to target business people and people who want it for entertainment. But there wasn't a single game or entertainment app showed during the video! Whereas the iPad is a casual entertainment device that is targeted for everybody, including businesses.

Kobo eBook app to be pre-installed on the Blackberry Playbook

Just recently, Kobo has convinced Research in Motion (RIM) to pre-install their eBook application onto the Blackberry Playbook, which will give users access to over 2 million eBooks. Nearly half of these are free. so this goes to show how RIM wants the Playbook shifted more towards entertainment than business and will definitely be competing on the market with the Apple iPad. Although the Kobo app looks nice and I would probably download it nevertheless, I hate when companies pre-load software onto any hardware I buy.  It comes off to me as spam and I usually delete all of it before even testing it out. I would much rather just download the app from the Playbook app store. What do you think?

Is the Blackberry Playbook real?

When RIM released the Blackberry Playbook afew days ago, they showed off a teaser video of the device, but not the actual device, rather just an animated demo. During the conference where the RIM CEO talked about the release, he had what seemed to be a Blackberry Playbook, but surprisingly, he never touched the screen once. The screen seemed to be lit the whole time, but that could have easily been a stick or a light of some sort. I have a hunch the Playbook hasn't even been created yet and nothing is set and done. This is definitely not good, because when people get their hands on and it ends up much slower than what the video had showed, the Playbook will get a bad reputation. I wouldn't say anything about the Playbook is certain until we see a working model of the Blackberry Playbook.

Why the Blackberry Playbook is not an iPad "Killer":

 First let me get it across that no product has ever been able to kill an iPhone, iPod, or an iPad, so let's just keep that in mind. What makes you think that this is now the device to kill the iPad? It seems that every Apple killer always fails, although the Playbook may put up a better fight. But just saying that is not really fair because it is possible for a product to beat the iPad and this wouldn't be a very interesting article- so here goes:
1) Multitasking is not a reason to get a Blackberry Playbook. Yes it is true that the iPad s lacking this, but come November multitasking will be available, along with folders and printing. So if this the main selling point, I would say that it is not a valid one. Nevertheless, the multitasking that Apple has implemented is a scaled down version, so I do give some credit to the Blackberry Playbook.
2) The App Store. This is by far the ultimate reason. Put simply, Apple has the largest App Store currently available and even Android has a long way to go to get close, and Blackberry is very far behind. Hopefully Blackberry can get some high quality apps on their store for the Playbook, but I doubt it will ever be as big as the iPad in terms of apps. apps alone put the iPad way ahead of it's competitors.
3) So the Blackberry Playbook has a camera and the iPad doesn't. This is certainly something we would have loved to see in the iPad, but there is no doubt we will see it in version 2.0 . It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Blackberry released the Playbook around the same time as the second generation iPad. Call me an Apple fanboy, but the iPad 2g will be sure to have all of the features that the Playbook has and a few more. Apple was testing the market with the iPad, to see how people would take it, and now that they know it was a success they will be working hard on the next generation. If you really need a camera on a tablet so that you can take pictures of your dog then the Blackberry Playbook is what you need (note sarcasm).
4) Flash is not what media is leaning towards. Apple has proven to us that Flash capabilities are not needed to experience the web when they showed us the capabilities of HTML5. It seems like Blackberry has taken a step backwards with this one, although many will be overjoyed to finally view flash sites and play flash games.

It may seem like we are hating on RIM's newest creation, but we actually think its pretty cool. What we are saying is that it will never be an iPad killer. Nevertheless, it's the closest any iPad competitor has come yet- dual cameras, 1Gb of RAM, a pretty sleek interface and much more make the Blackberry Playbook a definite option when purchasing your next multimedia tablet.

Blackberry Playbook to be $300-350 ?

Today, Bloomberg is reporting that an analyst has guesstimated the price of the upcoming Blackberry Playbook to come in at $300 to $350 per device. When you compare with the leading tablet on the market, the Apple iPad, Blackberry would be giving a decent incentive for consumers to lean their way, rather than shelling out a minimum of $150 more to get an iPad. It could be said, though,that the iPad has much more to offer and appeals to a different (not too different) market. For now we can only wait, but at the estimated prices, I could see the Blackberry Playbook doing very well.

QNX OS found on the Playbook Will Take Over Blackberry OS!

Today, RIM- the people behind Blackberry, announced that they have definite plans to replace the current Operating System on their Blackberry smartphones with the slicker QNX Operating System that was recently revealed on the Blackberry Playbook. It was mentioned that this transition will take quite a bit of time, but it is one that we are definitely looking forward to. We'll just have to see how it plays out with Blackberry developers and whether or not they will be willing to convert their apps...

Blackberry Playbook- Kindle App Announced!

With the release of the Blackberry PlayBook yesterday, many people are anxious to hear some apps that will be available for the device on it's early 2011 release. The first confirmed app is in fact Amazon's Kindle app, that will let Blackberry Playbook owners read their Kindle books and texts right from their Playbooks! I think this was expected, since Amazon releases a Kindle app for nearly every device on the market, but it is still nice to hear that a Kindle app is confirmed.

Blackberry Playbook is Released

BlackBerry PlayBook - The BlackBerry PlayBook is expected to be available in retail outlets and other channels in the United States in early 2011. Further information is offered below:

At its heart, the BlackBerry PlayBook is a multitasking powerhouse. Its groundbreaking performance is jointly fueled by a 1 GHz dual-core processor and the new BlackBerry Tablet OS which supports true symmetric multiprocessing. Together, the abundant processing power and highly sophisticated OS enable the BlackBerry PlayBook to provide users with true multitasking and a highly-responsive and fluid touch screen experience for apps and content services.

With support for Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1, Adobe® Mobile AIR® and HTML-5, the BlackBerry PlayBook provides customers with an uncompromised, high-fidelity web experience and offers them the ability to enjoy all of the sites, games and media on the web. For more than a decade, the mobile industry has worked to bridge the gap between the “real web” and mobile devices through various apps and technologies and, in fact, a significant number of mobile apps today still simply serve as a proxy for web content that already exists on the web. The BlackBerry PlayBook closes that gap and brings the real, full web experience to mobile users while also opening new and more exciting opportunities for developers and content publishers.

The BlackBerry PlayBook features premium multimedia features to support high-quality mobile experiences. It includes dual HD cameras for video capture and video conferencing that can both record HD video at the same time, and an HDMI-out port for presenting one’s creations on external displays. The BlackBerry PlayBook also offers rich stereo sound and a media player that rivals the best in the industry.

For those BlackBerry PlayBook users who carry a BlackBerry smartphone*, it will also be possible to pair their tablet and smartphone using a secure Bluetooth® connection. This means they can opt to use the larger tablet display to seamlessly and securely view any of the email, BBM™, calendar, tasks, documents and other content that resides on (or is accessible through) their smartphone. They can also use their tablet and smartphone interchangeably without worrying about syncing or duplicating data. This secure integration of BlackBerry tablets and smartphones is a particularly useful feature for those business users who want to leave their laptop behind.

Key features and specifications of the BlackBerry PlayBook include:

* 7″ LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
* BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
* 1 GHz dual-core processor
* 1 GB RAM
* Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
* Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
* Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
* HDMI video output
* Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
* Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
* Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
* Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java
* Ultra thin and portable:
o Measures 5.1″x7.6″x0.4″ (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
o Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)
* Additional features and specifications of the BlackBerry PlayBook will be shared on or before the date this product is launched in retail outlets.
* RIM intends to also offer 3G and 4G models in the future.

For more information, visit www.blackberry.com/playbook.