[chrislgrigg]

I remember when the Storm came out. I was doing IT work for small businesses in the area and many of my clients, the Blackberry Faithful, would get their latest phones whenever possible. From the consumer side, it was every bit of the disaster this describes. The keyboard was an unbelievable disaster, it was horribly slow, crashes constantly, but they kept buying them. The Storm 2 was a relief, mostly because its improvements made my job so much easier.

What was always really interesting to me about Blackberry/RIM was how they managed to create some loyal fans who would happily follow their march into the sea. For years, even as iPhone and Android market share grew, there were (and probably still are) some power users who refused to even consider switching. These were exclusively owners or execs at small businesses, mostly companies with in-house Exchange servers that needed Blackberry Enterprise Servers. The BES always added an extra layer of pain for everyone, since we never got good enough with it to be anything more than a hornets' nest. Still, the Blackberry fans couldn't be swayed, called iPhones "toys," and insisted that their products were the magic to their productivity.