I think it is time to admit what has been obvious for a long while now, that my time as an independent mobile app developer is over. I have not released updates to any of my apps in over two years now, and given the state of the market, I don’t really have the motivation to work on any of these projects in the near future.
The apps for the BlackBerry, Nook, and Windows Phone stores have long been inaccessible. And this summer when I let my Apple developer license expire, the apps for iPhone will disappear as well. While I will not be aggressively purging any other app stores, there isn’t much left that is compatible with the latest operating systems.
This has been a really fun project, (and for a few years a fantastic full time job). I am sure that there will be future software projects (even if they are more likely to be on the web), but until then I am getting enough coding in as part of my day job.
Thank you to everyone who supported me over the years.
When the BlackBerry movie was first announced I assumed that I would have a professional obligation to go see it, but then it has a extremely limited release and played on zero screens where I live. However, the film has since made its way to hulu and I finally got to see it last week.
I enjoyed the film, but when you are such an expert it is easy to get distracted by the little details that the movie gets wrong. Still most of this doesn’t matter, and the one thing the movie really got right was showing how good Mike Lazaridis and BlackBerry were at network efficiency and squeezing a lot out of the limited wireless speeds available at the time.
The big thing that movie got wrong as the (widely accepted belief) that BlackBerry was doomed following the launch of the iPhone. BlackBerry’s executives were correct in that the iPhone would overwhelm the 2G networks, and BlackBerry would find itself capable of making a touch screen. (Issues with the first Storm phones were not with the hardware as the movie implied, but with the software the only got decent half a year after launch). What actually put BlackBerry in trouble was the later launch of Apple’s app store. BlackBerry responded with a store of their own but didn’t preinstall it on new devices and was too deferential to the carriers and corporate CTOs to make it front and center the way they should have. I know it doesn’t work a biopic to spend too much time on a company’s short comings in the years after the founder left, but for those of us who were advocating for BlackBerry to make the right changes it can be frustrating to see everyone continue to learn the wrong lessons.
BlackBerry App World is set to close at the end of the year, so this is the last chance to download any apps including all Ebscer apps. I had hoped to publish some last minute updates before the shut down, but apparently the option to publish updates ended a month ago without me realizing it.
To the many BlackBerry users that have supported me and my apps over the past decade, thank you.
BlackBerry AppWorld turns ten years old today. While the store is currently limping towards its demise at the end of the year, it is worth celebration and acknowledging the run that it has had. Ten years is a long time, and for many of those years it was at the center of my world. It was the means through which all of my hard work was distributed to tens of millions of others.
For many years it was the only way that I collected money to pay my rent.
BlackBerry has moved on from apps and phones, and quite honestly I have since moved on from BlackBerry.
But I still miss it at times. So, here is to a celebration of AppWorld’s final birthday. At the very least it was good to me…
The BlackBerry 10 game Head Words has been updated to version 1.5 in BlackBerry AppWorld. This version adds a new “Drinks” category that will probably be the last new item that I ever post for sale in the BlackBerry store. Additionally the other categories include updates for items that have become popular within the past year such as The Good Place, and Camila Cabello.
About Head Words
Head Words is a native multi-player guessing game where after selecting a category, one player places the phone on their forehead while the other players give clues. With one minute to guess as many words as possible, the player can tilt the phone down for each correct answer, or tilt the phone up to pass. At the end of round a word list will show what was guessed right and wrong. The swipe down menu provides an option to turn the sound on or off.
The game includes five categories for free, and the option to purchase access to ten additional categories for a dollar each.
At the end of March, BlackBerry will be eliminating the possibility to purchase BlackBerry apps. Any previously purchased apps and any free apps will continue to be available until the end of 2019.
This applies both to apps that are paid upfront, and for app that require an in-app purchase. All 32 Ebscer BlackBerry apps can be downloaded from appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/vendor/1111/
As BlackBerry 10 has just passed the 5 year mark it seemed like a good time to take a look back at the platform. The very first BlackBerry 10 phone, the all touch screen Z10, proved to be the most popular accounting for 63% of all devices.
The second phone to launch, the Q10, proved to be the second most popular. This shows how the BlackBerry 10 platform never really got all that far past the initial launch of the devices. The three devices that were launched in the first half of 2013 (Z10, Q10, Q5) ended up accounting for 88% of all BlackBerry 10 phones. While later devices such as the Passport and Z30 got a good amount of media attention, they never got quite the same sales as the initial batch that BlackBerry released.
Mostly this is probably due to the lack of support for BlackBerry 10 from the wireless carriers (especially in the United States) after the initial launch of the platform.
This data was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free checklist app Stuff I Need. Data shown on the chart is from the launch of BlackBerry 10 in January 2013 through the end of January 2018.
Last week marked the fifth anniversary of the launch of BlackBerry 10, and with the OS abandoned at this point we can look at the complete history of OS adoptions by users of the platform.
Throughout the life of BlackBerry 10 users were fairly quick to update to the newest version of the OS with almost every version exceeding 70% adoption after the first two months. This rate slowed down for the final version of the OS (currently around 64% adoption rate) as the users that cared most about getting updates have probably moved on to other platforms that are still planning future updates.
This data was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free strategy game Pixelated and the free checklist app Stuff I Need. Data shown on the chart is from the launch of BlackBerry 10 in January 2013 through the end of January 2018.
The BlackBerry 10 Hockey Scores app has been updated to version 4.4. The app now offers the option to show the scores for different dates, so you can easily check to see yesterday’s scores, or tomorrow’s game times.
About Hockey Scores
In addition to showing the scores of each game, the app also shows the game time, shot on goal, shot attempts, hits, faceoff percentages, and a full list of all of the game’s goal scorers.
A one time in-app purchase can be used to remove all advertising from the app.
The version will not be released on BBOS, and should be coming to iOS soonish.
The final two months of 2017 saw a slight uptick in the use of OS 10.3.3 but things were mostly unchanged over the course of the past year as BlackBerry is no longer updating their OS.
This data was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free strategy game Pixelated and the free checklist app Stuff I Need. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of December 2016 through the end of December 2017.
A year after the release of version 10.3.3 the distribution of BlackBerry OS versions looks the same as it has since last summer with roughly half of all users running the final version of the OS.
This data was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free strategy game Pixelated and the free checklist app Stuff I Need. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of October 2016 through the end of October 2017.
With a higher resolution screen, a better camera, LTE support, and an OS that has been updated in the past eight years, the iPhone 7 is far superior to the BlackBerry Storm. Still there are a few things that the old phone still does better. With Apple releasing iOS 11 next month, lets hope that some of these features get included.
Unified Inbox
The BlackBerry Storm had a messages app that combined multiple email accounts, SMS, BBM, Twitter, and almost all other messaging platforms into a single feed. While not as complete as BlackBerry 10’s Hub, it was still superior to the siloed experience found on iOS. Attempts to address this issue on iOS with a notification center are not remotely useful.
A default email client that supports push for gmail accounts
The default email client for iOS is bad in many ways. However the lack of push support for the world’s most popular email service is particularly embarrassing. Third party clients support this, and BlackBerry has had this feature since well before the iPhone was ever launched.
Notification LED
One of BlackBerry’s simpler features was a small led that could be configured to blink different colors for different types of notifications. This allows you to know if you have any messages just a glance, and without even touching your phone. I am utterly baffled as to why other phone manufactures have not copied this feature.
An accessible file system
My iPhone has 128 GB of storage, yet I am unable to download email attachments simply because there is no place to just store arbitrary files. This could also be useful for transferring songs and pictures on and off from the phone. Apple’s attempt to hide complexity is actually making simple operations more complex.
A clickable screen that actually clicks
Honestly, neither the BlackBerry Storm’s click screen, nor the iPhone’s 3-D touch are good ideas. An interface that can work with a simple touch screen is a superior experience. But if you are going to have a clickable screen, you may as well commit to having a clickable screen. The 3-D touch feature on iOS is difficult to trigger intentionally, and in practice is more likely to trigger a long press event.
The distribution of BlackBerry 10 OS versions continues to be unchanged this summer with roughly half of all users running OS 10.3.3 and over 90% of users on at least some variant of 10.3.X.
This data was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free strategy game Pixelated and the free checklist app Stuff I Need. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of July 2016 through the end of July 2017.
In the early days of BlackBerry the browsers were underpowered and couldn’t really support HTML, let alone anything more powerful. BlackBerry started shipping a serious browser in 2008. Not only did it not support Flash, but it had javascript turned off by default. In 2010 (a few months after Steve Job’s letter), BlackBerry shipped their first webkit based browser. It also did not support Flash. All through this time, BlackBerry would publicly support Adobe, and then not ship anything on their phones.
In 2013 BlackBerry 10 was launched, and Flash support was finally included in the browser. However it was disabled by default. Less then two years later in early 2015 BlackBerry released OS 10.3.1 which removed support for Flash.
Despite almost a decade of standing behind Adobe Flash, BlackBerry only actually included it on their phones for a bit under two years, during which time it was always disabled by default. Furthermore, they did this years after everyone else had already moved on. Apple was far more straight forwards in their rejection of Flash, but BlackBerry did the technology no favors as well…
The distribution of BlackBerry 10 OS versions is just as boring as you would expect it to be for an abandoned operating system. Almost all users are on some variant of OS 10.3.X with roughly half running the newest point release.
This data was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free strategy game Pixelated and the free checklist app Stuff I Need. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of May 2016 through the end of May 2017.
