Nadie_AZ: QNX? Oh man, I used to tinker with that back when they had the i386 floppy disks to try out. They had the modem and NIC options. A full OS in a floppy. It was pretty cool. I knew it was an embedded OS and hoped it and BeOS would be something more than they were.

Oh well.

I'd expect this to have a faster response time than Droid OS or iOS.

Yep I too remember the "OS on a floppy" from the late 90s. Total flashback. It was super quick and worked well. I remember installing the full OS on a crash box and it worked really well. The problem of course was the lack of applications for it, but I did mess with it quite a bit.

Now I'm thinking of putting this on my old powerbook, just to check it out.

It isn't flashy. But it is literally the OS running the device.

I would only hope that RIM has the drive to become innovative once again. I don't agree with the co-CEO role because Jim is the Steve Ballmer of RIM, and unlike Microsoft, a mistake for RIM adds another big nail to the coffin.

Mike has been innovative, he made people want e-mail on a portable device, like a pager!

QNX really is quite powerful, and its obvious they are currently in the realm of "have an amazing OS, leave the apps to others" mantra going with the embrace of Android apps.

What I like is that they're still trying to adapt and change their development platform. They really do seem to want to have the best hardware, the best OS and great apps built for their overall platform. I'm a little skeptical lately, tho I admit I'm a staunch RIM supporter (27 years, born and raised in Waterloo) but they're a business and they absolutely need to change to be successful once again.

Can't wait to see what's around the bend, I really do hope it is something truly innovative.

After that last outage, RIM is toast. They could put God's own Unix on the thing, and it wouldn't help them.

What it will need:

* Full HTML5 browser.

* Top-shelf hardware, no more of those damned trackpoints on the phones. Full touchscreens are basically expected these days.

* Inspiring, re-designed chassis. Blackberries are as spicy as farina design-wise.

* Tons of integration with either Microsoft or Google's services... or they come up with their own.

* Limited carrier crapware. If it comes with said crapware, it needs to be easily removable, like WP7.

* Smooth-as-silk operation. iOS and Windows Phone 7 have raised the bar on just how smooth phones should be. Blackberry is a single-OEM device maker with complete control over how much BBX is optimized for the hardware. Bugs and lag will be intolerable.

* Consumer-friendly features that will make people drop their iPhones and Androids for something that's not just for business.

* The mindset that this OS will reclaim RIM's top three spot in the geek community's mind share. Currently, it's being replaced by WP7, because Redmond's latest is actually inspiring and doesn't reek of 2008. I'm a volunteer mod over at Engadget, and Blackberries are never, ever held up as a standard for anything there. The big comparisons take place between iOS and Android, with WP7 bringing up the rear.

Anything less and RIM will not regain their mojo.

Here for all the BBW pics. Don't let me down, Fark.

I just found a QNX floppy on the dryer the other day

My first exposure to QNX came in highschool when I used the ICON system. It ran QNX and was my first exposure to a command line environment. I used that even before DOS. Kinda fun back in the day.

/trackball FTW

aerojockey: Here for all the BBW pics. Don't let me down, Fark.

this.

had the headline mentioned redheads or asians it would have already been flooded (not that i'm opposed to either of those)

Good for RIM, I doubt they will be able to survive, but it's nice to at least see them finally starting to put up a fight.

aerojockey: Here for all the BBW pics. Don't let me down, Fark.

This. Sadly, this thread is fail so far.

Nadie_AZ: QNX? Oh man, I used to tinker with that back when they had the i386 floppy disks to try out. They had the modem and NIC options. A full OS in a floppy. It was pretty cool. I knew it was an embedded OS and hoped it and BeOS would be something more than they were.

Oh well.

I'd expect this to have a faster response time than Droid OS or iOS.

Oh yes, I had one of those discs. It was pretty impressive.

Will there be OS upgrades for the current generation of phones? That's what I wanna know.

/typed on a BB 9900.

Uncle Wiggly: Excellent. The V2 rocket of phone OSes.

That is simply beautiful. +1

Yet another RIM OS for app developers to ignore. Hurray.

Unixfreak: Nadie_AZ: QNX? Oh man, I used to tinker with that back when they had the i386 floppy disks to try out. They had the modem and NIC options. A full OS in a floppy. It was pretty cool. I knew it was an embedded OS and hoped it and BeOS would be something more than they were.

Oh well.

I'd expect this to have a faster response time than Droid OS or iOS.

Yep I too remember the "OS on a floppy" from the late 90s. Total flashback. It was super quick and worked well. I remember installing the full OS on a crash box and it worked really well. The problem of course was the lack of applications for it, but I did mess with it quite a bit.

Now I'm thinking of putting this on my old powerbook, just to check it out.

Yeah, well. In the *early* 90s I called'm up, said we were looking for a new embedded OS for our ATE and asked if they had a demo available. Lady on the phone asked what kind of volume I was talking about (10-30 per year), then said "we only provide demos to 10k+ customers. I said "screw you too" and never looked back.

Wow, blast from the past! Used to support a warehouse selecting system that was QNX-based. A bunch of rack mounted 286 and 386 nodes, C-Tree databases, etc. I always had a soft spot for that OS.

authenticryan: Will there be OS upgrades for the current generation of phones? That's what I wanna know.

/typed on a BB 9900.

Possibly the latest generation, which means the 9900 might be in that camp. But I was at their conference last may and after speaking with the engineers, it wasn't a certainty that all of the old phones would be able to run the new QNX-based OS. It seems to hog more memory than their current Java-based OS, and they'd have to rewrite the OS for each older phone, so older phones are probably out.

That said, they gave me a Playbook for free and if they would just release an easy goddamn SDK for the developers to use they would improve their chances dramatically - the hardware is really, really solid. The apps, however, are shiat. I still can't get an SSH client for it.

Right now I mainly use it to stream Amazon Prime videos out to the TV since it is one of the few tablets out there with full 1080p HDMI out (in presentation mode). Since Amazon essentially took the entire hardware design from the Playbook for their Kindle Fire tablet, at this point you're better off just going with the Amazon tablet.

I was expecting a lot of 'WTF is QNX?' comments. I guess on Fark no OS is too obscure....

Man, the ICON (or more affectionately known as the Bionic Beaver - seriously) what a Story!

Link (new window)

I was doing some part time consulting way back when for schools trying to help them figure out what type of systems to buy with their budgets - TRS80, Pet, Apple, etc. The Bionic Beaver to the rescue!

Problem was not being COTS, there was not software, other than a few crappy titles from the Ministry of Ed. Egg Heads in Queens Park, and what the kids wrote in Turing (another great story).

After it was canned they had a warehouse full of them, my sister was a school principal and they wanted to by PCs but the Ministry would not let them until all the Icons were used up.

You young whipper snappers are just going to go out and make all of the same mistakes that the old farts made, generation after generation.

Stay off my lawn.

BBW RIM jobs?

/ewwww

Marine1: What it will need:

* Top-shelf hardware, no more of those damned trackpoints on the phones. Full touchscreens are basically expected these days.

.

So much fail here. Not everybody wants a full touch screen or is it "expected". The keyboard is one of the things that keeps a lot of people coming back to Blackberrys because they havent abandoned it and they make the best keyboards for phones I've ever seen or used. I have a 9900 that has a full keyboard, trackpad, and touch screen and it works perfectly. I even prefer to use the trackpad for the internet instead of trying to touch tiny links with my fingers.

aerojockey: Here for all the BBW pics. Don't let me down, Fark.

M-G: I was expecting a lot of 'WTF is QNX?' comments. I guess on Fark no OS is too obscure....

That was my thought too. I thought I'd be one of a handful who had heard of it. Apparently this place is more geeky than we thought.

Malcolm_Sex: Marine1: What it will need:

* Top-shelf hardware, no more of those damned trackpoints on the phones. Full touchscreens are basically expected these days.

.

So much fail here. Not everybody wants a full touch screen or is it "expected". The keyboard is one of the things that keeps a lot of people coming back to Blackberrys because they havent abandoned it and they make the best keyboards for phones I've ever seen or used. I have a 9900 that has a full keyboard, trackpad, and touch screen and it works perfectly. I even prefer to use the trackpad for the internet instead of trying to touch tiny links with my fingers.

Well, you might not like it, but the phones that sell a lot of units (and thus, enable their manufactuers/OEMs to still exist) tend to have full touch screens. What they're doing now isn't capturing market share, whether RIM's hardcore fans like it or not.

Unixfreak: M-G: I was expecting a lot of 'WTF is QNX?' comments. I guess on Fark no OS is too obscure....

That was my thought too. I thought I'd be one of a handful who had heard of it. Apparently this place is more geeky than we thought.

It's geeks all the way down.

Unixfreak: M-G: I was expecting a lot of 'WTF is QNX?' comments. I guess on Fark no OS is too obscure....

That was my thought too. I thought I'd be one of a handful who had heard of it. Apparently this place is more geeky than we thought.

That's why I keep coming here despite the racists, trolls and racist trolls. Fark does often provide a level of conversation that hasn't been commonly seen online since before Eternal September.

And in this thread in particular I can be pretty confident that you already know what Eternal September is.

Gordon Bennett:
And in this thread in particular I can be pretty confident that you already know what Eternal September is.

It's now late December and a deep freeze has iced the water all over.