The iPad was released 3 months after it was announced. The Playbook, just announced, is not scheduled to ship until 2011 sometime. So it's clear that RIM is not at the same production level Apple was when they announced the iPad. This is likely why no one was allowed to play with it (it's not done yet).
I up-voted you, but I don’t believe the author is making a claim any different than your own. The title may be hyperbole, but the point is that RIM shouldn’t announce a device if it isn’t done. As many others have noted in previous threads of this discussion, RIM seems desperate, and they (along with the customers they are clearly trying to keep from adopting iPads) have a good deal to lose if the final version doesn’t live up to the hype based on such limited details.
Pretenders don’t quite understand that design is born of constraints. Real-life constraints, be they tangible or cognitive...
Concept products are like essays, musings in 3D. They are incomplete promises. Shipping products, by contrast, are brutally honest deliveries. You get what’s delivered. They live and die by their own design constraints. To the extent they are successful, they do advance the art and science of design and manufacturing by exposing the balance between fantasy and capability."
> the point is that RIM shouldn’t announce a device if it isn’t done
Great idea. They would, then, launch a new product without a single software title written for it. Until now, I think most products written for QNX have more to deal with heavy machinery than with cell phones.
They are moving their entire line to QNX. They need to get developers started right now and letting them know they will have to target it is a very good start.
The next step would be to release SDKs that include emulators. That should happen before they show final hardware.
I find it amusing that your idea of a company being desperate must lie somewhere between Apple announcing the iPhone six months before release and RIM announcing the Playbook nine months before release.
IIRC, Apple had real iPhones already working at that date, they just needed to clear FCC regulations, which took 6 months. Since they were going to submit a public application to the FCC anyway, it made sense to announce the iPhone first.
