Being a BlackBerry user is both rewarding and painful. One one hand, you have one of the best platforms for messaging — whatever type it is — and rock solid stability. However, on the other hand you have a platform that let’s face it, in the consumer age is falling behind faster and faster with each passing day. Just look at the BlackBerry browser — it’s a joke. RIM might as well not even include it for consumer oriented BlackBerries because it’s so slow, renders for crap, and is all around terrible. The BlackBerry platform as a whole needs some dramatic revelation.
And that is precisely why Skyfire for BlackBerry is no more. *Gasps!* Yes, that browser that was shown off a couple months back was quite a looker even in it’s beta stage. It easily beat the pants off the stock BB browser and was promising enough from early previews to even unseat Opera Mini and Bolt. But again, that may not ever be.
According to the Skyfire team, because of the unrefined and frankly, outdated BlackBerry platform when compared to more modern mobile OS’s such as Android, Windows Phone 7, and the iPhone, the BlackBerry is lacking. The biggest culprit as highlighted by the Skyfire team is the inconsistence, scattered nature of BlackBerry API’s and the downright laughable Java machine that is present.
With all of this new found time on their hands, what will the Skyfire team do to pass the team? Work on their Android port of course! Good news for Android users, not so much for Berry users. Looks like the only saving grace BlackBerry aficionados have now is waiting for RIM to rollout that webkit-based browser they’ve been so feverishly busy on.
Any of the aforementioned geeks and/or camps care to weigh in?
IntoMobile > Skyfire
- February 22, 2010 5:03 am
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time criticizing Internet Explorer 6′s continued lingering in the public sector. For consumers, IE6 is at the very bottom of the totem pole of relevance. The corporate sector however, is an entirely different story. My personal opinion was that the reason for the reliance on old software and technology was simply because of legacy hardware and software dependent on the outdated browser. Well, I was right — partially. There’s actually several good reasons as highlighted by Esther Schindler in her article: “Why You Can’t Pry IE6 Out of Their Cold Dead Hands”. Now before you start jumping on this as another anti-IE6 rant, take note that this is actually a well laid out explanation.
So why exactly do businesses stick with IE6?
- Companies simply don’t know, or don’t feel like upgrading.
- One or two company dependent programs hinder upgrades.
- “Why fix it if it isn’t broken?”
- “User control”: Most popular sites these days (ie: Facebook and YouTube) rely on modern web browsers to work properly. Why spend extra money upgrading software and paying for web filtering software on top of it when a broken, standards deficient browser does all of the work for you?
When you sit down and think about it, the reasons above make sense. Though at some point, relying on outdated IT equipment will come back to bite you. Whether it be in the form of greater upgrade costs when the company is finally doing a massive upgrade or a catastrophic hardware/software failure, staying complacent with old junk just isn’t a good idea.
So do I have more respect for the companies who do hold off for such reasons as highlighted above? No. Regardless if it’s a decision of the individual company or because of a 3rd party program developer that refuses to upgrade and support newer browsers, it all comes down to cheap and/or lazy people. Update or whither out of existence.
Read the full article at IT Expert Voice
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You may remember the small post concerning IE 6 and the grass roots movement web wide that is moving to kill IE 6. While it is corporate standard and even for some home dwellers the browser of choice, IE 6 is a grossly outdated browser in terms of speed, security, and web standards support. Heck, when designing and coding a website, maintaining IE 6 support often means increased development time and websites that aren’t as feature rich or content rich as they could be without IE 6 support. So what exactly does Microsoft have to say about this movement that is gaining traction?
