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 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 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 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]