David Pogue Fires Back at Critics of BlackBerry Storm Review
By Simon Sage on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 9:37 AM PST In BlackBerry, Hottest Hardware
You might recall David Pogue’s harsh review of the early Verizon BlackBerry Storm in the New York Times, responded to with accusations of Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) fanboyism and full-blown blog rebuttals. In this video, he addresses the recent OS update, and what his situation was during the review process - namely that RIM wouldn’t tell him what was going on with the OS, and insisted that everything was as it should have been.
As a fellow reviewer of beta products, I can feel for Pogue - we can cut developers slack when they’re showing us something that’s not quite finished, but they have to play ball. Tell us if there’s something they know about and they’re working on, which was exactly the case with the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Storm; the .76 patch seems to have fixed many of the problems folks were having with the original build. Why RIM wouldn’t mention this to a high-profile reviewer is just a tad confusing. In terms of RIM’s strategy of “realse now, patch later”, it may have done more harm than good. What do you guys think - was it worth getting out into the market soonner instead of waiting a few weeks to iron out the kinks, and only have it available a week or two before Christmas? With Bell and Telus (NYSE: TU) launching their Storms in Canada this week, reviews like this (however accurate) could easily influence purchases.
Above all, Pogue’s comparison of attitudes of the BlackBerry community to the iPhone’s is startlingly accurate. It’s true that the CrackBerry fanbase is digging in their heels in light of a buggy BlackBerry 9530, and I certainly worry how clingy they’re getting to the brand even with such glaring problems on the Storm. Given, we have to take Pogue’s review with a grain of salt, as it’s not nearly as doomsday-ish as he had made it out to be, but you can’t ignore the bugs RIM had at launch.
[via BlackBerry Cool]
The Storm is still NOT as good as an iPhone.
Having to press the whole screen down - since it is one huge button - slows down typing. It tires you. Thus, long emails will be avoided on the Storm.
The lack of WiFI is a HUGE disadvantage. There are many places where 3G is not available. And WiFi is FASTER even if there is 3G.
The Storm, however, will help keep the current Blackberry fans happy to have something that LOOKS like an iPhone. Thus it maintains Blackberry’s current fans. But it won’t sell to new customers, however, like the iPhone does.
You’d change your tune if you saw the entire video that Pogue sent into RIM. His device was horribly buggy.