So RIM had their earnings call yesterday and it was about as grim as everybody figured it'd be. Thorsten Heins (the new CEO, still getting used to typing that instead of Lazaridis or Balsillie) admitted flat out that the company is in trouble, and Jim Balsillie is now off the board entirely. Not just stepped down as co-CEO like a few months back, gone completely. When the guy who used to run the place doesn't even want a seat at the table anymore, thats not a great sign for morale over there.
Heins is talking about "refocusing on enterprise" and pinning a lot of hope on BB10, which by his own timeline isnt shipping until later this year. I remember when a BlackBerry was the phone. My first job out of school, every single person in that office had one clipped to their belt, and if you didnt you kind of got looked at funny in meetings. Now I dont think I know a single person under 30 who carries one anymore, its all iPhones and the occasional Android holdout. Its wild how fast that flipped. Three, four years, tops.
I keep going back and forth on whether I feel bad for RIM or not. On one hand a lot of good engineers are probably about to have a rough year. On the other hand, the BlackBerry Messenger lock-in thing they rode for so long always kind of annoyed me, like the whole ecosystem was built around "well if you leave you lose your BBM contacts" instead of just making a phone people wanted to use. Anyway. We'll see if BB10 actually saves anything, but a full year of "wait for the next thing" is a long time in this industry.
Speaking of phones running hot, or in this case tablets — my new iPad (the one with the Retina screen, got it the week it came out) has been getting genuinely warm during long gaming sessions. I was playing Infinity Blade II Tuesday night for maybe forty minutes and the back corner, right where your left hand naturally rests, got noticeably toasty. Not burn-your-hand toasty, but enough that I noticed and mentioned it to my roommate. Consumer Reports apparently ran actual thermometer tests on this last week and clocked it at 116 degrees under heavy load, something like 12 degrees hotter than the iPad 2 doing the same thing. Their conclusion was basically "yeah its hot but not dangerous," which, fine, I believe them, but its still a little funny that the flagship Apple product of the moment doubles as a hand warmer if you play games on it long enough. The screen is genuinely gorgeous though, I'll give it that. Reading comics on this thing is a completely different experience than the iPad 2 was.
Also small thing but HBO announced yesterday that the HBO Go app is getting these interactive features tied to Game of Thrones season two, which starts Sunday. Apparently if you flip your iPad to portrait while an episode is playing it pulls up a map and background info on whatever house or character is currently on screen. I'm mildly obsessed with this show (my roommate got me hooked around episode 3 of season one, took some convincing) so I'll probably actually try this out this weekend even though I usually find second-screen stuff gimmicky. We'll see if it's actually useful mid-episode or if its one of those features I use once and never touch again.
Not a ton else going on this week worth writing up. Been busy, this post is later than I wanted it to be honestly. More soon.