BlackBerry's Thorsten Heins: iPhone is dated, left behind
Speaking to The Australian Financial Review, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins is expectedly upbeat about BlackBerry OS and exceedingly negative towards the iPhone. Heins recognized Apple's contribution to the smartphone market, but said the company is falling behind.
"Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market ... They did a fantastic job with the user interface, they are a design icon. There is a reason why they were so successful, and we actually have to admit this and respect that." Heins added, "History repeats itself again I guess ... the rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don't innovate at that speed, you can be replaced pretty quickly. The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now 5 years old.
Heins then goes on to discuss multi-tasking and how BlackBerry OS outshines iOS in this area. Inherent in BlackBerry OS 10 is the ability to keep up with multiple apps running at the same time and use the Peek and Flow features to switch between apps. Apple takes a different approach and uses fast app switching that saves the state of an app when you exit it and lets you switch back to it quickly. In theory it's not multi-tasking, but to the average user, the difference between true multi-tasking and fast app switching is not really noticeable.
Apple is expected to introduce iOS 7 at WWDC in June. Hopefully, the upcoming changes will preserve the reliability of the iOS that we know and love, while introducing a few new "wow" features that silence the critics.
