The fall of Blackberry
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For a High-Tech President, a Hard-Fought E-Victory
By Jeff Zeleny
Jan. 22, 2009
WASHINGTON There is one addiction President Obama will not have to kick: his BlackBerry.
For more than two months, Mr. Obama has been waging a vigorous battle with his handlers to keep his BlackBerry, which like millions of other Americans he has relied upon for years to stay connected with friends and advisers. (And, of course, to get Chicago White Sox scores.)
He won the fight, aides disclosed Thursday, but the privilege of becoming the nation’s first e-mailing president comes with a specific set of rules.
“The president has a BlackBerry through a compromise that allows him to stay in touch with senior staff and a small group of personal friends,” said Robert Gibbs, his spokesman, “in a way that use will be limited and that the security is enhanced to ensure his ability to communicate.”
First, only a select circle of people will have his address, creating a true hierarchy for who makes the cut and who does not.
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It's a good thread. I worked at BB as an intern just as the golden period was about to end.
This misses an important piece. BB had a network architecture that doesn't exist anymore.
They routed traffic through a central hub. This let them use wayyy less data during the 2G / 3G days than competitors (they'd use the central server to compress/decompress comms) - and it was uniquely secure. No one could replicate this. BB was years ahead on this.
They tried to build an OS that let them keep what they saw as a competitive advantage (the Blackberry enterprise server) - but still add new features to make it competitive with apps/browsers.
They couldn't get it to work and had multiple years of delays trying to get the best of both worlds. The thing that made them successful held them back from moving forward.
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I had the last two models, ending with the bold.
I’ll never forget the first one I saw in use, the CIO of Nasdaq had it and showed it off to me. Maybe 1998 or 1999. He was always experimenting with the newest stuff. I remember saying “you get your corporate email on your pager?!?
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What's a little scary is how fast this can happen now - both the creation of the company and its demise seemed to take place so quickly.
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@doctor-phibes said in The fall of Blackberry:
What's a little scary is how fast this can happen now
The shine is coming off the tech giants already. Google searches are turning into ad-optimized junk. Facebook is seen as brain candy.
The rise and fall of blue chip companies may become much faster... (though Google and FB will be around for a long long time).
Pro-tip on google: if you want to see good discussion based results instead of SEO, product placement crap - especially on product reviews - append "Reddit" or "forum" to the end of your search.
e.g. "best cordless vacuum reddit"
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@xenon wrote:
They routed traffic through a central hub. This let them use wayyy less data during the 2G / 3G days than competitors (they'd use the central server to compress/decompress comms) - and it was uniquely secure.
These days this would be seen as a privacy risk. Just for curiosity, if you know of any design or architecture specs. about that central hub, would mind linking to it? Just curious about they went about it at the time. Thanks.
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@xenon said in The fall of Blackberry:
@doctor-phibes said in The fall of Blackberry:
What's a little scary is how fast this can happen now
The shine is coming off the tech giants already. Google searches are turning into ad-optimized junk. Facebook is seen as brain candy.
The rise and fall of blue chip companies may become much faster... (though Google and FB will be around for a long long time).
Pro-tip on google: if you want to see good discussion based results instead of SEO, product placement crap - especially on product reviews - append "Reddit" or "forum" to the end of your search.
e.g. "best cordless vacuum reddit"
Yep. Product review sites are primarily paid ads.
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@axtremus said in The fall of Blackberry:
@xenon wrote:
They routed traffic through a central hub. This let them use wayyy less data during the 2G / 3G days than competitors (they'd use the central server to compress/decompress comms) - and it was uniquely secure.
These days this would be seen as a privacy risk. Just for curiosity, if you know of any design or architecture specs. about that central hub, would mind linking to it? Just curious about they went about it at the time. Thanks.
It was always a single point of failure - but this was over 10 years ago now. iOS and Android were super basic in their security capabilities and IT administration capabilities back then.
The centralized model enabled end to end encryption (especially important between end-devices and corporate networked assets), low latency and low data usage - real competitive advantages in those days.
Some more detail here: https://crackberry.com/blackberry-enterprise-server-bes-what-it
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@xenon said in The fall of Blackberry:
The shine is coming off the tech giants already.
There are millions of people surfing who've never even heard of Netscape.
Imagine having to pay for a browser!
