Goodbye iPhone, Hello (Again) BlackBerry

I am now a reverse switcher - I switched from a BlackBerry to an iPhone about six months ago, and now am switching back again. Why? Basically it comes down to the fact that the iPhone is really good at the stuff I do 10% of the time, but pretty poor at the stuff I do 90% of the time. This is not to bash the iPhone. It has been a transformative device in the wireless industry, and forced everyone else to up their game. It has shuffled the power structure between device makers, service providers, developers, and the broader ecosystem. But such a sophisticated device is a very personal choice and people have very different priorities for something they use and carry around with them almost every waking hour. My phone is provided by and for work, and I primarily use it for work purposes, and for that I find a BlackBerry much, much more efficient. Now after having a BlackBerry Bold for a week, I realize how much I was fighting with the iPhone the whole time trying to get it to do what I wanted, at the speed I wanted.

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Buy this book: Designing for the Digital Age

click to enlargeMy colleague Celine Pering just picked up this book by Kim Goodwin of Cooper, and it’s a stunner. A real tome at 700+ pages, it covers a huge swath of the design research and development process for complex digital products, with an unsurprising emphasis on Cooper’s persona process. It’s well organized, with a nice balance of theory and practical advice, and highly visual. For a comprehensive hands-on guide with lots of examples, this is the best I’ve yet seen. Kudos to Kim, this must have been a big undertaking.

Buy it on Amazon >