Dear Blackberry,
There is an entire culture of 'distaste' brewing toward your OS, and devices right now, which makes the new Umbrella Corporation, G00gle, look like the savior to our every need.
As part of my wide ranging responsibilities at my place of employment, I develop applications for your phone / OS's. My experience has made chewing on glass seem reasonable.
Some words of advice. Take it for what its worth.
1) Assuming your company makes no mistakes is a big issue. The image of only paid for support ticketing system reaks of a cash grab and a holier than thou attitude. You made five billion dollars last quarter, and that was a poor quarter, would a wordpress linux box or some kind of walkthrough on setup conditions for each phone really put you out?
2) Poor people / resource management: Instead of firing those people who just might have known something about the OS / Blackberrys, since you guys hired them in the first place, they must have had some clue, direct them to help your development base, even if it means bringing coffee, for us developers certainly won't be getting any sleep while QAing every single issue that is not done by your company.
Or hire some people for the tedious stuff, like checking to see if the entire development process is documented and organized by phone, and by OS for each phone, in some reasonable non Starfleet Battles manual kind of structure. Some other things like noting that when you offer an OS for a phone, have a simulator for it released, OS 6 for Bold 9700?, is the asian version the same as the NA version, who knows.... does anyone know? I presume in the world of testing, this must exist somewhere in your recesses of your IT servers.
3) Descriptive words.. be careful using them. "Super Apps", for one. Either document the process clearly and openly or call them more apply "Magic Super Apps", because its going to take fucking magic to make one functional and timely.
4) Misleading phone support, I have called you guys numerous times and if it weren't for dropped calls, I wouldn't have remembered the experience at all.
5) Abusing Java. If you make demo's for one version, how about making them for the new versions. There was this notion java at one time was to be written once and ran everywhere, now its 'written half a dozen different ways, and now runs nowhere'. A hacked together open source Eclipse shouldn't be 'the defacto standard' for almost making 'super' applicatons for the phone.
6) Developers Network. Back to a key phrase here 'network', sort of infers a connecitivty, a community, part of the team atmosphere.. Ahhh well played Blackberry, well played..you guys had us all fooled, silly developers, you need to be some 'bespeckled "yes" person' who sees only rainbows and butterflys asserting that everything is ok, for one to think your culture is supportive.
At first, I had considered myself lucky if I wasn't timed out by your site at least once a day, then it became only hopefullness, where if I just could get that file downloaded over night, I'd be cheery. Do I just sit and lament, nooooo, I send an email to webmaster to let them know there might be something amiss.
To my surprise, my inbox contains an almost immediate reply.
Could it be they truly care? Am I finally going to get to heard from someone who is moved by my plight.
... no of course, not this isn't, your parents you are emailing ... instead, its a kind response telling me my email of my incredibly worthless concerns are probably spam, without anyone having read such, and I should sign up for some kind of.. something... oh like I read the rest of that auto responding email. It makes a bold statement when the 'ai' put into my email to the webmaster is so smart it can tell my intentions from its content. That's down right Big Blue material.
7) Forward selling. Don't like the problems of today? Ah OS 7 will fix everything, will any of your apps run under it. Probably not, but does anyone know. From the phone support, it doesn't look like it will. Not to worry, these will make your Blackberry Super Apps more magical, more special. Almost vapourous.
8) Registration issues, well those Olympics have already been well documented by others, but I did almost shit myself that signing software is now free. Does anyone know if signing helps an application run or not? If you can make one run seemingly easier without signing the app, then why do it? Why does signing have to run out? If I wish to tag every single app with the same sign, and its 'mine' what does Blackberry care? Aren't more apps good? And what would happen if I gave the signing keys away anyway? This assumes someone could make a good app with it. Cracking the encryption seems easier than cracking the rhyme or reason behind the processes, let alone making magic apps.
If these recommendations help in any way, feel free to contact me, I promise I actually respond to my emails or put some time aside to help, I'm just that kind of guy.
Yours truly,
Edward W. Stanley
Have I given up? Of course not. This is building character. I'll make the apps work despite the obstacles. Its vaguely reminiscent of grinding through WOW or COH levels. At least there are no subscription costs; yet. Will I advise anyone else to make apps, maybe my above missive speaks for itself.
