Motorola's Xoom and RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook: Giving Flash Memory Firmware-Fueled Product Immaturity A Look
As I mentioned in last Friday’s writeup, I spent last Tuesday afternoon co-moderating (with iFixit’s Kyle Wiens) a teardown of the Nintendo 3DS portable gaming console. For those of you who were unable to be in attendance, I’ll post the video of the event when it’s available (as I did with Kyle and my earlier Microsoft Kinect teardown at DesignCon). To tide you over until then, I’ll pass along one of the snapshots taken during our ESC session, which (for perhaps good reason) didn’t make it into EETimes’ published slideshow set:
Apparently, I felt pretty passionate about whatever I was saying at the time 
A couple of hours before Kyle and I went on stage, I was in the audience at the same ESC Theater location, listening to UBM Techinsights’ Allan Yogasingam’s teardown of RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook (and comparison of it with other currently-shipping tablet form factor products):
I’ve mentioned the PlayBook before, specifically within my recent ARM-vs-x86 cover story where I showcased it as one of the first announced design wins for Texas Instruments’ OMAP 4 SoC. And also showcased in UBM TechInsights’ presentation was the Nvidia Tegra 2-based Motorola Xoom, a tablet with which I’ve had a more intimate hands-on relationship:
Here’s a PDF of Yogasingam’s material, which is excellent and I therefore commend to your inspection. As he went through his pitch, I was struck by the impressive hardware potential of both the PlayBook and the Xoom…as well as by the degree to which the currently available operating system-plus-applications suite for both platforms undershoots that potential.
The PlayBook, for example, has been a subject of spirited-albeit-respectful debate between myself and fellow EDN technical editor Mike Demler since its CES 2011 coming-out party. I long felt that its planned dearth of native email, calendaring, contacts, etc. support (save via a web browser interface, if the service provider offers that access option) on initial product shipment would, by so-tightly subsequently linking the tablet to RIM’s handsets, effectively constrain it to being little more than a Palm Foleo-like device (and we all know how spectacularly the Foleo flopped).
Demler has been more sanguine, noting that RIM’s primary market focus continues to be the enterprise, where the company’s handsets are well entrenched. Yet, as the following commercial shows:
RIM’s definitely targeting consumers with its first tablet. Not only is a generic email client not yet available for the PlayBook, the home screen icons for Gmail, Facebook and Twitter are currently non-functional placeholders. And even for those consumers that do have BlackBerry mobile phones, if they’re AT&T subscribers, they’re still SOL…the cellular carrier’s distaste for unsanctioned tethering has compelled it to reject the BlackBerry Bridge app, thereby blocking the tablet’s access to a handset’s email, calendar and contacts data.
Now consider the Xoom. In my mid-March writeup, I mentioned that (unlike its Android 2.x-based handset and tablet peers), the ‘Honeycomb’ Android 3.0-based Xoom didn’t yet allow use of the microSD slot even for user data, for from enabling optional application installations to external storage. And the Motorola-designed tablet’s shortcomings extend beyond software to hardware; although ‘4G’ LTE cellular data support is planned, devices are still shipping with 3G-only transceivers. And although the 4G upgrade will be free to existing Xoom owners, it’ll require that the tablet be out of a user’s hands for several days-to-weeks while it’s shipped to a Verizon or Motorola service center.
Unfortunately, tablets aren’t the only neutered-feature culprits that I’ve recently come across. Speaking of the Nintendo 3DS, you’ll note in my recent review that its web browser is not yet functional:
Situations like this are especially baffling to me; it’s one thing to not include a particular feature, but to ship a system which includes icons for (or other active references to) non-functional apps is especially consumer-insensitive. More generally, these systems’ designers were likely uncomfortable with the decision to go to production with half-baked products, but their concerns were overrode by upper management’s desires to establish a market presence…in attempting to blunt the momentum of the iPad in the case of the PlayBook and Xoom, and to both complete against smartphones and bolster a sagging corporate bottom line in the case of the 3DS.
Scan through the resultant product reviews (not to mention the sales data), however, and it’s difficult to construct a case that the early-production decision for any of these devices was a good one. Early adopter buzz is a powerful phenomenon, either in a positive or negative direction. And recovering from initial negative press (assuming recovery is possible at all) requires substantially more time, money and effort than launching with a more solid product offering from the get-go.
Sometimes the ship-it-early strategy pans out; consider that the Xbox 360 hit the market a year ahead of the Sony PlayStation 3 and, in spite of Microsoft’s console’s well documented thermal issues, flip-flopped the respective companies’ market positions versus with the prior-generation Xbox and PS2. But more often than not, it’s been my observer experience, a premature-launch decision ends up playing out poorly for the supplier, not to mention the ecosystem. Shipping feature set updates every two weeks is admittedly better than nothing at all, but it’s inferior to waiting a few months and providing a more robust feature set foundation…plus it arrogantly subjects customers to periodic update hassles that they shouldn’t need to be bothered with.
The temptation to launch early is fundamentally fueled, I think, by the upgradeable-software capability enabled by updatable, nonvolatile code storage devices such as HDDs and, more recently, flash memory. This theme is one that I periodically revisit; regular readers may remember, for example, that back in mid-2008 I wrote:
As I survey the technology landscape, I fear that the stability-vs-time-to-market software pendulum has swung too far towards the ship-it-regardless end of the spectrum. Pretty much every electronic gadget you can buy seems to be firmware-upgradeable. And inevitably, pretty much every electronic gadget you buy seems to require at least one firmware upgrade through its useable life in order to deliver on at least some of the feature set promise found in at-launch glossy promotional materials.
Unfortunately, over the past three years the problem seems to have gotten worse, not better. And I’m not sure what, if anything, can be done to start turning these consumer electronics Titanics around in time to dodge the icebergs they seem to keep hitting. So, as I did three years ago, at this point I’ll turn the microphone over to you for your perspectives on the issue, which I’d welcome via comments to this post:
To what degree has flash memory firmware in-system upgrade capability enabled you to create products that you otherwise couldn’t, either at all or in a timeframe that market forces demand? And conversely, to what degree has flash memory successfully tempted you to take hardware and software design shortcuts that you shouldn’t?
p.s…I’m not the only one who has, with dismay, noted this disturbingly accelerating ship-it-unfinished trend. For more perspectives, check out:
MABanak commented:
Your editorial touched a nerve long inflamed by a process that goes deeper than you think.
One week late, the board design isn’t “quite right”. We decide to refine it “on the next pass”, and live with a manual applique (i.e., a bandaid). Production is squeezed to make up time, but the bandaid costs an extra week, and the assembly dept is squeezed to blue-blaze it. The packaging has a glitch, which can be deviated-away, and that costs us another 3 days. meanwhile, the software team is way behind, and secretly celebrating these delays. At the last minute, they want to install a SW upgrade through the upgrade port. They announce further field upgrades (bug fixes) as a matter of “continuing improvement”.
Out of the whole bunch, the software guys seem reasonable. After all, who can deny “improvement”. But everyone before them has their nerves pushed to the shattering point.
It all comes down to commitments we cannot keep, because we never really have all the facts. THAT’S THE PROBLEM!
Edmond Hennessy commented:
Not a rebuttal to the dissatisfied iPad user - just a reference to a different outcome.
Have a client Heartwood that specializes in 3-D Simulation platforms targeted for Defense & Military training applications (real-world stuff). The Mighty iPad was used to host their training app for the Raytheon Patriot Missile Radar Project - and broadcast it thru various, internet-based, platforms. Wow! What a powerful informational/promotional tool. The demonstration on the iPad was not duplicated - anywhere else. Program Managers and Training Specialists love it!
iPAD Rules (for now) - although technology has its odd way of morphing and shifting.
Mike in Maine commented:
I like how the Apple i-Pad is merely mentioned in your write up. I have an i-Pad 2 that I retitled ‘Brick-in-a-Box’ — It doesn’t work right out of the box at all - you must connect it to a computer running that incidious i-Tunes application - there are some viruses I’d rather install over that piece of junk software. How it is Apple couldn’t make a device that could update itself via it’s own WiFi and not have to connect to a host computer is a mystery.
But I appreciate hearing the dirt on the other players - At this point I think I still want a Xoon - anyone care to trade one for my ‘Brick-in-a-Box’?
LB commented:
Harks me back to the adage - "Never buy a NEW car with untested features, wait a couple of years before buying until all the bugs are worked out!" That mantra was spoken lots when cars came out with fuel injection, anti-lock brakes, etc. Seems the same now for tablets! Can't wait until all the bugs and kinks are worked out before I take the plunge to buy a tablet - should be a couple of years as it looks!!! My two kids are still disgruntled they do not have the web capability as promised on Nitendo 3DS and thats a shame!
Brian Dipert commented:
Dear Mike Demler,
Yes, as I said in my writeup, “dearth of native email, calendaring, contacts, etc. support (save via a web browser interface, if the service provider offers that access option) on initial product shipment”. But that’s only a workable workaround for power users, and even then it’s not ideal, versus a POP3/IMAP/SMTP-cognizant dedicated email app (Android provides both this in its Email app, and a dedicated-service Gmail app, the latter for perhaps obvious reasons), a CalDAV- and Exchange-cognizant Calendar app, a Contacts app that auto-syncs with Google Contacts, Exchange and other contacts services, etc.
Mike Demler commented:
You can still use any web-based email on the PlayBook, right? The issue as I understand it is the lack of BlackBerry email, and most consumers use gmail/yahoo/et al. So, yeah it should be there, but I don't think that is the issue that will stop anyone from buying one.
Brian Dipert commented:
Dear Mike Demler,
Thanks for the clarification, though I daresay I suspect I won't be the only one to disagree with your 'nobody buys a tablet for the email' comment...especially since email-enabled tablets from other suppliers already exist at similar-to-lower price points!
Mike Demler commented:
Hey Brian!
By sanguine (re: the PlayBook), I assume that you mean optimistic, and not a shade of blood red that I may occasionally "hue" to?
You may have misinterpreted my comments on RIM's tablet. I think I said that, in my opinion, nobody buys a tablet for the email. The PlayBook commercial actually depicts my thoughts precisely. At the right price, it looked like a killer video player or gaming device when I saw it at CES. From there it comes down to price and apps, and the latter is where RIM is really hurting... whether you look at the BB or QNX OS. It's all about the ecosystem. But hey.. it apparently does a great job with Flash!
In the meantime, Asus & Acer are hitting the lower price points with Honeycomb tablets. It will be interesting to see what comes out of Google I/O starting tomorrow.
-Mike
