Alex Curelea’s Dev Log

Just got back from a pretty good presentation for Mobile Monday Toronto by RIM’s Tyler Lessard. The first half of the presentation was about RIM and BlackBerry phones, the second was a demo of the PlayBook. The Q&A session was much longer than it usually is at these events, and quite enjoyable.

I jotted down a few quick notes of things I found interesting. I didn’t write down the usual stats slides, I’m assuming those are pretty easy to find online. This is more or less a brain dump.

• Monetization - payment through carriers, including in-app purchase
• 80% of users on OS 5 and 6
• App World - 3 million downloads / day
• “Super Apps” - explained what RIM calls Super Apps, which are apps with deep integration in the system, multiple entry points, used every day, etc.
• Integration with OS - integrate with menu items; send items directly to inbox
• WebWorks - near-parity with Java API.

• blackberry.com/developers/paymentservice
• blackberry.com/developers/adservice (developers get 60% - of what? Is it just an AdWhirl that takes 40%?)

• pushing BBM Social Platform. BBM SDK beta available.
• embed chat with friends in app
• use BBM to invite friends to an app / game (oh god.. Mob Wars?)
• peer-to-peer streaming and content sharing
• add data to user profiles (high scores / achievements)
• blackberry.com/developers/bbm

My first thought when hearing about BBM Social Platform was that it will enable some of the worst behavior seen on FaceBook and iPhone (invite spam, newsfeed spam, etc.) Some of the features do sound pretty cool - in terms of gaming, it sounds a lot like Steam, but it can of course be used for non-gaming apps as well.

PlayBook

• showing off multitasking - turned on front-facing camera, started Need for Speed, has both running on simultaneously on the screen. Pretty cool, I don’t think the audience was as awed as he was hoping.
• more showing off multitasking - playing YouTube video in a browser window, showing other apps on the screen, camera app is still running

From the demo, the PlayBook does look very solid.

Tablet OS

• Built on QNX
• WebKit / HTML5 and BlackBerry WebWorks
• Adobe AIR SDK
• “Later this year”:
• Native C/C++
• Java “App Players” for Android 2.3 and BlackBerry 6

• Alliance Program - consumer / enterprise / managed services
• www.blackberry.com/partners

The Q&A session was quite good, the answers were usually more detailed and engaging than my summary (which is not what Tyler said verbatim).

• Will we be able to run iOS apps?
  “Not that I’m aware of, no. We’re excited about Android.”

• What kind of apps would you not develop in WebWorks?
  “High performance, high-end gaming, media experience. Very specialized look & feel. Heavy amount of local storage. Advantage of WebWorks - target Playbook, OS 5 and 6 in one platform”

• Player app for non-native apps - how seamless?
  “Can’t answer all the details yet, announcements to come. As seamless as possible for the developer - repackage and submit to storefront. Seen alongside Air, Webworks apps - seamless. If user doesn’t have player, they’ll be prompted to download it.”

• Can download files locally, like on PC?
  “Not sure.”
  Can I download and store files as part of app?
  “Absolutely, there’s a private file system.”

• Suggestion: be the first in the world to let developers submit video promos with their apps.
  “Great idea, we’ve talked about it in the past”

• Are you ever going to upgrade your JDKs? Sick of using 1.4.
  “Good question, don’t know”.
  Please know soon! (laughter)
  

• Any limitations developing for Playbook? Can we do everything RIM programmers do?
  “Did a good job opening up smartphone, still some left to open up. On Playbook, version 1, so just started adding extensions - initially there will be restraints, a lot more flexibility once we introduce native C++, and enable higher level platforms to call down to native interfaces / components”

• Payment - Paypal, CC, carrier - are they all 30%?
  “Carrier payments are live with AT&T and Telus in US and Canada, working on more. 70/30 everywhere.”

• BB Bridge - can I use phone browser from playbook?
  “Tethering is part of Bridge.”
  Can we use browser to see cache pushed to BB?
  “No.”
  Not like an external screen?
  “No.”

• Enterprise server?
  “Basic policies - does Playbook need password, etc. Bringing 4G this summer.”
  Can you push to Playbook at some point?
  “I would fully expect so.”

• Is PayPal just for buying apps, or are there APIs?
  “We don’t provide specific PayPal integration APIs.”
  Selling physical goods, PayPal site not mobile friendly -
  “Have to do that yourself today.”

• WebWorks vs Air?
  “Seeing both in apps so far, great community of Flash developers who quickly ported their existing apps, seeing a lot more WebWorks now that web developers had some time to ramp up, seeing a good split. A lot of Flash-based games.”

• Are you going going to give examples of low-level code for web works?
  “We’ll take note of that” (tells other RIM guys to write it down)

• Adaptive bit rate streaming support?
  “Trying to remember… can’t remember if we’re supporting at launch. We support adaptive bit rate, no http-encapsulated(?) protocol”.
  Will newer handsets support it?
  “Not supported in 6.0, no near-term advancements to do it”

• Will devs have access to Bridge API?
  “Initially no, something we’re considering”

• Ebook support - can you elaborate?
  “Kobo eBook reader and store will be preloaded. We expect to see third-party stores and readers.”

• Battery performance - Steve Jobs says don’t support Flash because kills battery. How is it on Playbook, and how does use correlate with battery life?
  “Anything high performance will kill battery. Close partnership with Adobe and QNX, one of the advantages was building Flash at low level in OS. Hardware acceleration for Flash videos, lots of optimizations. We’re not concerned about Flash being a significant hog, we’re happy with the performance. Battery life will be consistent and competitive with other tablets”

• AppWorld - updates tedious, also reboots annoying.
  “Would you like an Update All button? What a great idea!” “It’s quite possible that we might be working on that.” (laughter) “Reboots may still be necessary in some cases.”

• Video calling / chat app in Playbook?
  “We expect to do that, also talking to partners who will do that”

• Remote wipe for Playbook?
  “Not sure. Part of why invested so much in Bridge, because emails, etc. will not be stored on Playbook - so you shouldn’t need to wipe. If apps store sensitive data, they’ll have to use access control. We focused on not needing a wipe early on.”

• Does tethering avoid the need for the extra $10 data share plan?
  “Depends on the carrier.”