RIM’s Co-CEO Defends PlayBook, But Are Critics Right in Calling The New Tablet a Rushed Product

Submitted by lalit on April 18, 2011 - 12:00pm.

In an interview with Bloomberg (video below), RIM’s Co-CEO Jim Balsillie, defended their new tablet against tough reviews posted by many journalists. Almost all the reviews of BlackBerry PlayBook say that the new tablet lacks many key features and is tied too closely with BlackBerry smartphone, making it impractical for non-BlackBerry users. For every question about the lack of features on PlayBook Jim had the following three answers:

1)    You Get the Whole web, Full Flash compliance, you get all of the web
2)    It securely and for free connects with BlackBerry Smartphones
3)    Over the air updates will bring missing features this summer

Now lets see if the above three reasons are enough to justify PlayBook launch with so many missing features. Almost every tablet supports complete web access, but Apple’s iPad doesn’t support Flash. And hence it has become a differentiating feature that every other tablet maker highlights. However, is flash that big a deal nowadays and is it any good on tablets? Wired’s Mike Isaac wrote this about Flash in his BlackBerry PlayBook review:

Any tablet debuting more than a year after the Apple’s market-dominating iPad needs an edge. For the PlayBook, that edge is support for Adobe Flash, a feature that the iPad is famously lacking. RIM says it took over two years of working with Adobe to bring Flash to its tablet.
Two years may not have been enough. During a round of Plants vs. Zombies, gameplay bogged down whenever the animation got intense. Every time I tried to access a Flash game on Facebook, the browser crashed. Yes, every single time. Say goodbye to your well-tended crops, Farmvillians.

So, basically Flash is a problem on PlayBook rather than a feature that adds functionality. Now the second point, it connects securely with BlackBerry smartphones to bring features like email, calendar and address book, which should have been on the tablet. So, RIM is saying that PlayBook is a $500 accessory for your BlackBerry Smartphone.

And finally, over the air updates will bring some missing features this summer. If features like native email client, calendar, address book and messenger are coming within few weeks than why is RIM releasing an incomplete product? Or is it likely that RIM will announce these new features this summer, but will release them for consumers after say six months.

A delay of six months would have definitely killed RIM’s hope of making its presence felt in the tablet market. Their foray into the tablet game now, especially with a limited featureset just goes to show that the critics are right in calling the Playbook a rushed product.