{"id":1308,"date":"2011-04-04T23:34:54","date_gmt":"2011-04-05T03:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/?p=1308"},"modified":"2011-04-19T14:50:28","modified_gmt":"2011-04-19T18:50:28","slug":"blackberry-playbook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/2011\/04\/04\/blackberry-playbook\/","title":{"rendered":"BlackBerry Playbook"},"content":{"rendered":"

The BlackBerry Playbook coming out on April 19th<\/sup> has some familiar plays in it – if you grew-up in Ontario:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. RIM is a Waterloo-based company<\/li>\n
  2. RIM is\/was known for their trackball<\/li>\n
  3. The device is running the QNX operating system<\/a>, developed by Waterloo\/Ottawa-based QNX Software Systems (which RIM just bought)<\/li>\n
  4. The screen and input device is are an all-in-one deisgn<\/li>\n
  5. The whole enterprise seems like a string of poor decisions to create something that will be expensive and will not be successful<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Where have we seen these plays before?<\/p>\n

    The Unisys ICON!<\/strong> Wikipedia Article: http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Unisys_ICON <\/small><\/p>\n

    The computer built specifically for use in Ontario schools commissioned by the Ontario Ministry of Education.
    \n    \"\"<\/a>
    \n(Thanks for the image,     Old-Computers.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n

    Unisys ICON computers were kicking around my public school when I was a kid. They didn’t do much beyond very basic word-processing and had a lot of games on them, thanks to the local board of education, and a few of my friends. They were all networked, and relatively reliable, save for the poor teacher\/”computer lead” who gave admin access to some of the Grade 8 students.<\/p>\n

    The ICONs had a trackball (the PlayBook won’t, but the BlackBerry Pearl and others do), it had an all-in-one hardware design, and sat in the corner of our classroom, mostly unused.<\/p>\n

    The most relevant commonality is that the old ICONs were running the QNX operating system<\/a>!<\/p>\n

    The ICON was ultimately deemed too expensive to keep in use or develop for and was cast-off in favour of Apple and others’ more user friendly products.<\/p>\n

    So now you know Ontario: when you think BlackBerry Playbook, think Unisys ICON.<\/p>\n

    \n

    Update: Tuesday April 19, 2011<\/p>\n

    Apparently two more things they have in common is no E-Mail application and they both can’t connect to the internet on their own!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The BlackBerry Playbook coming out on April 19th has some familiar plays in it – if you grew-up in Ontario: RIM is a Waterloo-based company RIM is\/was known for their trackball The device is running the QNX operating system, developed by Waterloo\/Ottawa-based QNX Software Systems (which RIM just bought) The screen and input device is… Continue Reading BlackBerry Playbook<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,47,1,5,3,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1308"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1320,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308\/revisions\/1320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}