THINKS PLAYBOOK MAY WORK
POSTED BY DAN YOUNG
Research In Motion (RIM) debuted its latest device, the PlayBook in September 2010. For them, the release marked a significant departure from their traditional messaging devices and, most importantly, their operating system.
At first glance, the PlayBook looked solid. It has a good size and weight. It feels a bit bigger than the Samsung Galaxy tablet, but is more compact than the iPad or Motorola Xoom. The device has decent memory, a good processor, better graphics and the requisite radios, save for cellular which will come in its next iteration. Overall, it clearly has potential as being a nice piece of hardware once it matures.
On the software side, well, it has issues. First off, as a developer, you only have access to Adobe Flex as your primary development environment. RIM says this will change, however, not for a while. This presents the first major issue with the device.
The second: messaging; there is none that is natively supported. Yes, for a company that was founded on messaging, the PlayBook in its first iteration does not have the ability to support messaging without being connected with a supporting device that "extends" messaging capabilities to the tablet. Again, RIM says this will change. Until it does, this is a major fail.
Beyond the fact that the device does not have cellular, it does not have messaging and you cannot develop native apps for the new QNX-based operating system, it is a nice device, albeit more of a novelty. By mid 2011, it should show potential.
