Look people, I love Blackberry just as much as the next person, but to be perfectly honest, there are a LOT of Bluetooth enterprise devices. We sell several at our store. Now I suppose I'll play along with RIM as the Jesus of the Enterprise and say that they're playing with much higher and mightier stakes than Palm, HP, Nokia, Ericsson, all put together. I'll also go along and say that, even in the face of the upcoming launches of 4.0 BWC, the upcoming BWC rebranding, and the more phone-like form factor of the 7100t (which makes it less of an enterprise device and more of a prosumer device), and the upcoming price breaks on T-Mobile's Blackberry Web Client Only (don't ask me how we are accomplishing this little nouget, but rest assured I'm told that for 20 bucks a month you get full html browsing and full BWC access, but no BES...), I'll go along and say in the face of all this RIM's still primarily targeting their enterprise markets. Now that I've granted every major concession against all the arguments I've levied at this particular subject, I still am left with this:
USER FREAKING OPTION! Put an additional switch underneath the battery to enable the additonal bluetooth profiles. I mean for the love of christ, the Bluetooth headset is one of the most HIDEOUS vanity items in the world (I of course, own two) but it's almost an additional $200 to prevent a SINGLE wire from running down your shirt.... On the other hand, the Bluetooth SIG has done a wonderful job of promoting a wide array of products with a wide array of features. For those of you unfamiliar with the power of the Blue-side of the force, go check out salling clicker. I guarantee you, a Bluetooth enabled BB that would with this software would put almost every other presentation remote out of business. What about proximity alerts? RFID? Simply sending your BB Business Card to a room full of people you've just met. Of course, use your phone to access the internet from your laptop.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have a dream... I've been on the Bluetooth bandwagon for years. I've been using Apple products and from the minute they added Bluetooth support I've owned only Bluetooth phones. If you're unfamiliar with what you're ACTUALLY losing I recommend taking a look at some great software that has been developed for Bluetooth, like the Salling Clicker. I'm convinced that the reason that everyone has lined up behind RIM on this one because there's not enough out there DRIVING Bluetooth. Telematics and Headsets, that's it. I see it everyday. No one recognizes the potential of a BT enabled coffee machine, because everyone's too wrapped up in their damn HS810. If you're interested in Bluetooth check out
http://www.bluetooth.com it's the website maintained by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. Check out Salling Clicker. If you're unaware what I'm talking about consider this, Bluetooth is a short-range, high-bandwidth, low latency that has the power to unite an entire home theater system, with only power cables running from behind it. It's a powerful technology, and I for one am MAD AS HELL that RIM and others (Motorola, don't think I'm not looking at you! You too Sharp!) are stunting its growth.
Of course, that's just my opinion I could be wrong.
(My apologies for the Rant, I'm always open to some good ole fashioned intellectual discourse, and if you disagree with me, feel free to say so, I'd love to discuss this further, right before I hurt you ;) )
