You Don’t Need an App for the Web


This week a number of comments on the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook tablet have popped up. The authors agree the PlayBook comes to market as a product only half - finished. Hardware - complete and software - work in progress. Hard to disagree. RIM is rushing the product out, promising the updated software for the Summer. I wander if they could wait. True, after the Motorola Xoom / Android Honeycomb fiasco, Apple is building another year of advantage, selling the hardly upgraded iPad 2 to the crowds. But the Xoom story should teach RIM something. Do not rush. Complete your product. Customers today are demanding. And you do not need a bad press to start with.

But let us look more closely what the reviewers point to as missing on the PlayBook. One thing is the lack of on-board 3G modem. It is disputable, some want it some do not, especially as I know this is considered a plus by many. Today almost any high end mobile phone can act as a hotspot and the PlayBook can connect over Bluetooth to any BlackBerry phone too.

And the other thing is the lack of applications. Which is true on one hand, but not a problem on the other. Steve Jobs has taught us we need "an app" for anything. For YouTube for example. Hey! Who uses a dedicated YouTube app on a desktop (be it MacOS or Windows)? Hmmmm? We all use web, right? And following Apple like Lemmings we have been sure mobile Web on a tablet cannot handle YouTube. But to quote Om Malik:

Browser: RIM has been making a lot of noise about the PlayBook’s Webkit-based browser — and specifically its ability to run Flash. I can see why –- the browser is Playback’s single best feature.

You can hardly tell the difference between a desktop browsing experience and the Playbook. I have been watching YouTube videos off the YouTube website on the Playbook without much of a problem. There is no doubt that Adobe and Blackberry have spent a lot of energy on getting this right — even though Flash does start sucking down the battery pretty fast.


Aha... So a tablet can have a powerful browser, right?

Then the reviewers complain about the lack of an email app. Geez... I have been living with GMail in my browser for all my life. I use GMail on my iPad, but only within the browser. I have no idea why people would want to use an app for mail... Probably because there is one on the iPad... The story goes on and on... "There is no Pandora radio ob the PlayBook" cries David Pogue. Really? How about just going to http://www.pandora.com?


Listen, people. "You Don't Need and App for the Web" says Jim Balsillie. Provided the Web is done right. Like on the PlayBook. Not even half a million apps in the Apple Store will balance for the lack of a good browser. Consider this when making your decision of which tablet to choose.

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