OK, a second post about #MoMoMelb. I’ve already had a bit of a moan about Monday’s event so you might think I’m dead against them. No, wouldn’t want to give that impression – consider this constructive criticism 😉
One of the generous sponsors of MoMoMelb is Blackberry, all these events have their sponsors – it just wouldn’t work without them. And the sponsors have to feel like they’re getting value for their dollars. All I can say is that they might need to adjust their message a little…
We were to be treated to a ‘sneak peek’ of the new Blackberry tablet, the Playbook. Since Apple’s release of the iPad, there’s been a steady stream of press predicting a range of usurpers… so far the predictions have failed to come to much. Anyway, Blackberry is a pretty solid player – a much more worthy adversary in this space than a bunch of OEM hardware makers cranking out cheap tablets and slapping Android onto them, and given the audience, we’ve all heard the reports and speculation, so there’s a fair bit of anticipation in the room.
So, with this captive, tech-savvy audience, what do they do? They play the promo video that accompanied the launch more than two months ago and talk through some specifications which were also released at the same time… that’s it! That’s the Sneak Peek! What a missed opportunity! To be fair the hapless company rep probably had no more information than that – the device isn’t scheduled to ship here for at least another 5 months – if they meet their targets!
Anyway – I had a little laugh to myself about the optimistic predictions they have for battery life, on a device that runs flash, probably in the background! Ha ha! seems I wasn’t the only one who didn’t swallow everything at face value.
Anyway, I don’t know about tablet computing – it’s one of those things that you’ll either find a space for in your life or you won’t. I’ve used an iPad a fair bit, and I love it for a few things; news browsing in particular, over breakfast! But you’re not going to carry one in your pocket. I certainly won’t be buying one. iPads are the darlings of the senior staff around our place, so I suppose there’s going to be a healthy take up of PlayBooks amongst people who don’t pay for their own hardware.
Actually, on that subject there was another hilarious moment when someone asked who had a Windows 7 phone – a surprising number of hands went up. The question was followed with “who bought it themselves”, ummm no-one! After all, IE7, what were they thinking?