Blackberry Enterprise Server 5.0 = FAIL

I have ran across some difficult software in my life… teaching myself photoshop & SQL, learning autoCAD at a previous job, or even working with the Crestron proprietary automation software for my home. These are all “Elmo Learns to Read” compared to Blackberry’s latest bastard, BES 5.0.

In a world where most every other mobile device manufacturer has adopted activesync, making most admin’s life easier, Blackberry in their infinite wisdom has stuck with their own method of connecting to RIM devices.

Now I know what you’re saying, activesync can’t do what BES can, and you are right. You can’t lock down the camera, you can’t “brick” the device (wipe yes, but brick, no), you can’t scale your own policy to have the phone to do exactly what you need it to do. But for a non-government, non-research corporation like the one I work for, these features are useless. If it’s not easy to use and easy to administer, people aren’t going to use it. It’s no wonder RIM is losing marketshare to both apple and google-enabled phones at a dramatic rate.

So in our environment of 40 users, I have seen RIM devices fall from 15 total users back in 2008 to 5 in 2010 and now 4 as of this week. The majority of our employees favor both Apple and Android devices and from an administration perspective, make my life much easier. With Exchange 2010 I can manage my wireless users and their company data from the Exchange System Manager (ESM) much like we could with BES 4.x. With the move to Win2008 and Exchange 2010 I had to move our BES to the new 5.0 interface. This has been hell to say the least. In what takes 5 minutes to setup an activesync policy it took nearly 14 hours, 4 installs, and several calls to RIM to setup BES 5.0. This is without getting into the usual steps of BESAdmin Policy Permissions as much of that migrated forward from the previous Exchange2003/BES 4.x environment.

By no means am I a fanboy either. I personally use an iPhone 4 but it’s not God’s phone by any means either. I’m impressed the most the latest Android based phones and love the EVO and the Galaxy S. I advocate what is easy for the user to use, reliably works, and can be folded into our network with ease.

At the end of all of it, I have declared our office a non-RIM zone. We will continue to support our few RIM users remaining but we will no longer add any additional or replacement devices until RIM makes their products easier to use from both the user and the administrator side. Goodbye syncing issues, goodbye resending service books, goodbye goofy ‘sendas’ permissions, goodbye having to wipe a device to re-setup enterprise activation, and finally goodbye terrible trackball devices.

Image courtesy of zazzle

It’s 4:40am and I can’t sleep. Maybe it was that I just had the worst Monday to ever happen or maybe it was those 5 blueberry waffles that I called “dinner” that seem to be fighting back but either way, I’m up. I’ve had this thought on my mind for a while and well, here we go.

Hollywood, this is why I hate you.

Originality… scare.

I know this gets thrown around a lot but are we really out of good ideas or does it just make financial sense to just keep rehashing the same story over and over with reboots and sequels. Let’s take a look at the top movies of 2010 so far shall we?

2010 Top Grossing Films as of 08/31/2010 per Box Office Mojo:

Rank	Title	Grossed	Sequel/Reboot
1	Toy Story 3	$405m	Yes
2	Alice in Wonderland	$334m	Yes
3	Iron Man 2	$312m	Yes
4	The Twilight Saga: Eclipse	$298m	Yes
5	Inception	$271m	No
6	Shrek Forever After	$238m	Yes
7	Despicable Me	$236m	No
8	How to Train Your Dragon	$217m	No
9	The Karate Kid	$176m	Yes
10	Clash of the Titans	$163m	Yes

Now don’t get me wrong, there are some brilliant movies in the list (looking at you Toy Story 3 & Iron Man 2) that are sequels, but really, Inception (quiet possibly one of the better films in the last 30 years) did worse than Twilight? Oh sweet world, why do I bother? I’m not sure who to be more mad at Hollywood or you fools that keep buying tickets to this crap.

Let’s not forget Hollywood’s most recent trick of the last 12 years. I’m talking about making, no marketing, the same movie and material to us again. Is it because we’re just that stupid to keep buying it? Are people really going to go out and see Avatar again because of 8 additional minutes? (you double dipped us here Cameron… same plot as 14 other movies and you feed it to us twice with a theatrical rerelease and are going to issue 3 versions on Blu-Ray. You asshole.) Am I seriously getting ready to buy Star Wars on Blu-Ray… a movie I’ve bought 4 times already from you, Lucas? (VHS, LD, DVD SE, DVD Original cut) You putz. You won’t even give us the version we want because you know you’ll be out of cards to cash in. Plus you won’t even sell them in trilogy form because you know those prequels can’t stand on their own.

Oh yea, and 3D is a gimmick as it was 50 years ago–We all know it so stop trying to push that technology on us again for the sixth time in over 130 years.

So why do we as consumers continue to reward mediocrity?

Overpromise and underdeliver… consistently.

Trailers- They’re like the starlet sex tapes of soon-to-be released movies. Those tiny nuggets of hope that get the masses antsy enough to go out and spend 10-12 bucks on a movie ticket and overpriced concessions. Whoever edits these things should get a damn medal (or be shot) because if you can build up a piece of crap like ”Paranormal Activity,” or “Grown Ups,” or “Couples’ Retreat” and make it look oscar-bound, well, you’re a better business man than I.

The marketing machine that that fuels this industry is unbelievable to say the least. The trailers with quick smash cuts of the film’s best, if not only, moments with a few catch phrases sprinkled in like “The year’s best >insert genre here<” or “Laugh Out Loud Funny.” Really? The year’s best? I saw this used on a movie in January… a little bold, if not presumtuous, don’t you say?

Then they have thrown in a little viral marketing because all the kids are doing it. It’s a solid way to get people buzzing about something when really, it’s nothing. “Paranormal Activity” and “The Blair Witch Project” did this well when the soon-to-be disappointed fans started sputtering out of control on the interwebs about how these films were real… which further propagated the hype. It’s like a ball of shit rolling down a snowy hill and we all bought it as a happy plaything, but once we decided to parch our lips on the pretty orb we found the feces-filled center. Agash with our new found experience with human waste, instead of feeling rage, we shrug and accept that we’ve been swindeled… again.

Foolish Movie Delivery… always.

This may seem an outlandish statement and I really do think people are going to call me an idiot, but I expect it, even welcome it. Movie Theaters days are numbered. In a world of hustle and bustle it’s just too difficult to sit in a movie theater let alone sit in a theater that smells of urine, eating food we should have snuck in, and having to listen to the kid 3 rows back talk about god knows what to his girlfriend on a brightly lit cell phone. Then we get to watch what seems like 22 minutes of trailers and advertisements before the feature starts. There will come a day when digital delivery of first run flicks can be watched in the comfort of your own home when and with whomever you want. I wouldn’t mind paying 2-3 times the ticket price to access a current run film if I can watch it from my couch or in my own home theater at 3 in the morning.

Then comes the issue with home delivery. You’ve finally got quality down and honestly, I don’t mind paying for it in the way of Blu-Ray disc. But why, why do I have to watch commercial ABOUT Blu-Ray and how awesome it is ON a Blu-Ray. A little rudundant isn’t it? And why we’re on the subject of discs we own is it not enough that I have to pay you 20-30 dollars for a movie but then you get to shove 4-6 trailers for then-current-but-soon-to-be-out-of-date movies. Step 1: Remove head from ass. This makes perfect sense for a rental disc (which you’ve brilliantly stripped all of the bonus features off of) as I understand you need to recapture every little bit of extra revenue that you can but really, did you not get enough of me when I bought the disc? It’s no wonder people are ripping your movies, even when they own them.

Conclusion

Hollywood, you’re like a husband that batters their wife. You keep punching your consumers in the gut, shouting through your toothless smile about how you’re only doing this out of love, and why we should make you peanut butter pancakes every morning. You ask us to keep your terrible performance in the sack from our friends, but as you strangle us on the kitchen floor you demand we keep coming back for more. Yes, you’re that low. We know you’re a profiteering piece of shit, but we keep seeing glimpses of hope that maybe, just someday, you’ll change to the industry of imagination we once loved and enjoyed spending a few hard-earned bucks on.

Signed,

Your bruised and battered faithful

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