Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

A big complaint about BB in general and PB per se was their slow boot time. BB designers and engineers put a dummy button on top of the Z10 to mimic an on/off switch. Brilliant! All it does is put the device into the equivalent of "Standby" on PlayBook OS. There has been zero talk of boot time as, for all practical purposes, QNX doesn't require it. A major, ignorant xxxxx has been squelched. Good job Waterloo.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, my PlayBook runs nonstop 24/7/365 and has for almost two years. The dummy button is brilliant.

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

Huh?

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

The "off" button puts the device (Z10) into "standby" mode.

As a result there have been very few complaints about "boot time". People feel like they are turning off their Zs. BB has taken a common complaint right off the table by fooling them into utilizing "standby" as found on the PlayBook.

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

You're talking utter nonsense. If it's tapped, it goes to standby like every other device. If it's held down, the device shuts off and takes a fair amount of time to boot. If the battery is removed, it shuts off and also takes a fair amount of time to boot when it is re-inserted.

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

DC/DC is quite correct. Holding the button down for three secods will initiate a full shutdown and power off requiring a reboot from boot rom. Pressing and holding the button for a shorter period presents up to three options, one of which is reset, which will shutdown the OS reset the processor and reboot from boot rom. Developers who lived through the early beta OS days with the Dev Alpha program know these operations quite intimately.

The reboot does take some time. In fact the Z10 (iPhone and Adroid devices also for that matter) don't boot substatially faster, from a systems analysis point of view, than the BlackBerry OS devices V7.1 and earlier. About 75% of what looks like boot process on early BlackBerry smartphones hapens after the OS is fully up and running. They still have substantial work to do before they can interact with the user: The JVM has to be initialized, all installed applications and libraries, including the UI, have to be symbolicly linked to the JVM and any auto start applications have to run through their startup sequence. Developers who write autostart apps or libraries will be aware of the need to wait from the time the JVM kicks off the startup of the app until the facilities needed to run become available.

I don't think there is anything useful to be gained by calling the Z10 sleep/power button an idiot button, but it is quite clear to whom idiot refers.

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

You folks are missing the point. When the PB was initially released a popular complaint from reviewers were slow boot times because they were simply used to using a button to "turn off" the iPhone or whatever. Putting something into standby without using a button to turn the device off did not register in their minds. QNX OSs can be run for decades without shut down. My PlayBook has, aside from occasional reboots, has run 24/7 for close to two years. It has never been shut down.

The Z10 could be operated the same way (I.E. "swipe") but as we saw with the PlayBook all that did was confuse people who felt compelled through force of habit to use a button which resulted in the typically longish reboot of the device.

Unless I'll not be using the Z10 for a period of days which is highly unlikely, it, like my PlayBook, will never be shut down except for the odd reboot.

The proof is in the pudding as there is very little chirping about BB10 reboot times now despite the fact that Z10 does indeed have longer boot times -although markedly improved- than its competitors.

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

Sorry, but I know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm guessing you don't recall complaints of PB boots times or even the laughable ones about no "home button" or "I can't work the power button" despite the fact that the design of the UI rendered the power button mostly superfluous.

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

Just turned off my Z10, Dev Alpha C and PlayBook. Powered on the PlayBook then the Z10 finally the Dev Alpha C. The Dev Alpha finished booting 15 seconds before the Z10 which finished a full ... well still wating for the PlayBook ... still waiting ... two minutes before the PlayBook.

The PlayBook does take a long time to boot. And if you put it to standby and don't use if for a few days (or one day when it first came out) the battery would be dead. So you either remember to charge it amost every day whether you use it or not, or turn it off and make an apointment to turn it on before you need to use it. The complaints about PlayBook boot time were, and are, valid. I hope they will be fixed with the upgrade to BB10.

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

Except for turning it on from a power down state.

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

If the PlayBook or Z10 for that matter isn't going to be used for a period of days, then by all means shut it down. If it's not going to be used for some days then what matter is a couple of minutes boot to up? The people holding onto the old paradigm a la apple felt it absolutely imperative to shut the PB down even if only for minutes and this led to complaints everywhere about boot times despite the fact that the PlayBook never needs to be shut down (aside from maintenance restarts) if used even just a few times per week.

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

No disagreement from me regarding PlayBook OS boot times. It is why I never shut down my PB. The OS never needs to be shut down battery level concerns aside. Swipes instantly to life equals zero "boot time". Of course, I use my PB daily. Must be 1000s of charge cycles by now.

Make an appointment for 2-4 minutes?

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

How many times per day does one need to power down the PlayBook? Mine has never been shut down (aside from restarts).

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

Mine was shut down about a week after I bought it, full price, on the first day it was available. It was a huge distraction to BlackBerry (FKA RIM) and cost them money and resources. It is barely an afterthought in the market (and no mention at the last quarterly results meeting) and has two year old hardware. Yep, great device you got there.

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

And it can still do things the competition will never be able do due to the nature of a superior OS. iOS is basically an app launcher and android is a clunky mess requiring comparatively huge amounts of processing power to do what the PB can do with two year old hardware.

Yep. It is quite the device indeed.

BTW, do you remember the biggest gripe about the PlayBook at the time of its release? That's right, no Angry Birds. Who would have thought that a game no one even cares about any more would have affected the PB launch so adversely?

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

The biggest gripe was no native e-mail.
After all, you could bridge.

Right?

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

I had a 9650. Native email never meant a thing to me. I do think the angry birds thing was bigger but native email probably edged out no "home button".

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

I walk to the desk where an iPad and a PlayBook lay side by side wanting to check something quickly (email, web, FaceBook, whatever). The PlayBook was shutdown the last time it was used otherwise the battery would be dead. The iPad wasn't and still has plenty of battery left. Do I press the start button and wait for the PlayBook to boot up, something that will take longer than the task I want to perform, or do I pick up the iPad and get the job done? Not much of a choice really.

Now I like my PlayBook and use it every day (at least I did until I got the Z10). The underlying technology is superior. The UI displays some interesting features but is unfinshed and lacks polish. One needs no more proof that the UI was a dead end than RIM (now BlackBerry) went out and bought a company to implement the UI for BB10. The market for devices that run QNX is probably tiny and already satisfied.

QNX is a good OS, and any company that tries to build a super/smart phone without a real time OS underneath will eventually run into difficult issues. But users won't care about that until the issues affect their usability. As a third party developer for BB10 I can't take advantage of the rich feature set of QNX that I can when I'm building an embeded controller for a car, router or reactor. Since most of these features require priveledge access I probably never will.

The only compelling reason for using BlackBerry that doesn't come down to personal preference or bias is platform security, and even that is being challenged by WP8 of all things.

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

Why did you shut down the PlayBook? It will hold a charge for several days on standby.

Your take on app development is interesting. I know that QNX can be locked down pretty tight but I didn't realize that that might hamper app developers.

QNX is being integrated into many areas such as the automobile industry and who knows where next. Military uses. Industrial. TH has stated that the future of BB lies in mobile computing. It'll be interesting to see what he means by that.

BTW, I've been spoiled by multitasking. I run multiple cross referenced programs all the time. Swipe, swipe, swipe. Good stuff.

Re: Gotta Admire the Genius of the Idiot Button
 

Well now I know where you get some of your misguided ideas, you don't read what is written.

Where did I say QNX hampers app developers?

Already used by the military, industrical, medical, communications. It has been arround since 1982. My first exposure to the OS came in 1987. Most of the features for which one would choose to use QNX as the OS are not available to a third party developer.