Adobe AIR Development

[TheDarkIn1978]

Engadget's preview of the PlayBook sounds like it's going to be a show stopper.

[EDIT] interestingly, from the video in the link above, closing an app is different in the simulator that on the actual device.  there is no "X" in the corner of the minimized application, you have to swipe it up to close it.  i think that's much better.

[zezke]

Apparently there will be a new lecture from Adobe on the PlayBook:

February in January: Renaun vs. The Playbook

Event posted Jan 5 by DustyJ 
208 views, 0 comments. 


Title
February in January: Renaun vs. The Playbook 

Date and Time
January 27, 2011 06:30 PM - 08:30 PM (GMT-8 Pacific Time US & Canada)

RSVP 
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Address
801 North 34th Street, Seattle, WA
google map 

Speakers

Renaun Erickson - Adobe Evangelist

Agenda

Renaun will give us an intro/overview of developing for the Playbook and other mobile platforms.  A must-attend meeting for everyone wanting to get a FREE TABLET (because you've submitted an app to the Blackberry Playbook App World)!

 Source

Does anyone know what is meant with "A must-attend meeting for everyone wanting to get a FREE TABLET"? They can't expect me to come to Seattle?

[RottenOgre]

I'm assuming that's just incredibly bad wording and they mean that if you want to learn how to make an app that will net you a free Playbook you should attend.

It's the paranthesed comment that really bugs me because it doesn't really make sense whatever way I read it.

[JRab]

@darkin: i agree that "X" that appeared before bugged me to no end. seemed to pre-production.

@zezke: I believe its something along the lines of "It's a MUST-SEE event!" type of tag lines. so instead they used "MUST-ATTEND" so not really them telling use its "required" just would be super interesting to those waiting for a tablet.

@rottenorgre: i think whats in the parentesis is just them trying to elaborate what you just stated haha! and i do agree terrible wording lol

[flying_ace]

I just read in Gizmodo that Sprint is going to be getting an exclusive deal with RIM on the PlayBook this summer (http://gizmodo.com/5726190/sprint-will-get-a-4g-blackberry-playbook-this-summer).

Am I the only one who recalls a rep from RIM saying something to the effect that they were working with all the major carriers during the "Meet the BlackBerry Playbook" event in NYC back in early December? Given the competition, it hardly seems sensible to limit distribution to one carrier.

[peter9477]

---

flying_ace wrote:

[regarding the Sprint deal]

Am I the only one who recalls a rep from RIM saying something to the effect that they were working with all the major carriers during the "Meet the BlackBerry Playbook" event in NYC back in early December? Given the competition, it hardly seems sensible to limit distribution to one carrier.

---

A few comments on that:

1. In other articles I've seen mention that the initial distribution in Q1 will include the use of their existing channels through carriers, even though it won't initially be on the carriers' networks.
2. That "exclusive" thing could be interpreted as merely "Sprint will be the only one to have it at launch time".  There's nothing there to say how long until others will have it, and I doubt we'll hear an answer on that very quickly.
3. They've also talked about a 3G model, and haven't said that will be exclusive to anyone. 

Given that nobody else has a 4G network as big as Sprint (so I understand), making the initial 4G release exclusive to them doesn't necessarily mean much, especially if it's exclusive only for a time.

[jtegen]

The other way to look at this is that the PB will have blazing fast internet access and not reliant on BB phones for data access.  This is very good news for all.  Since you have to deal with a locked in data plan, this will also likely mean you can get a retail PB for less than the PB normal retail price.

[RottenOgre]

Lots and lots of reviews for the Playbook out there, based on the CES demonstration.

They all seem very pleased with the Playbook, giving it lots of praise.

3 notable issues that have been mentioned are:

1) Size. Some think it's too small (others say they greatly prefer the size).

2) Can't access emal, BBM, calendar etc. unless tethered with BlackBerry. This seems a pretty odd decision to me. Doesn't seem to be any advantage to restricting access to those features unless you're already in the RIM ecosystem.

3) Battery. Nobody's made too much of a fuss about and they all mention that current batterry is for unoptimized beta units but there have been mentions that if it's less than 6 hours that will probably be a dealbreaker. Not too worried about them not hitting the 6 hour mark.

[zezke]

I am not too worried about the Battery time: in the Engadget preview you could see almost 5 hours of battery time remaining (with an almost full battery). If this really is unoptimised, this could be bumped up to the magic 8 hours I guess by enabling cpu hotplugging, DFS...

[peter9477]

@zezke, you've obviously never participated in a trade show event, or been involved in building a version of your pre-release software for demo purposes! Or you just trust too much. :-)

It wouldn't have taken them more than 15 minutes to get some Waterloo co-op to tweak the battery display code to read something like "5h +/- some random number of minutes" each time it was displayed, or something more sophisticated like a gradual decline from 5:59 down to 4:30 or something.