Peter,
I think your post gives us all an idea why Blackberry is rapidly heading
towards becoming the Norwegian Blue of hand-held devices.
As for transferring the licence from a Blackberry version to that for another
OS, I wish you luck. It would be rather like buying a book title in Swahili and
some time down the track, asking the publishers for a version in English :-)
Cheers,
Carl Clifford
Sent from my iPad
On 03/06/2012, at 9:38, Peter Shute <> wrote:
> It'll be interesting to see how long Blackberry can hold on. They were once
> the default smart phone for businesses, but there's open revolt among users,
> with many insisting on something else (usually an iPhone) to the point where
> many are opting to buy their own rather than take a company supplied
> Blackberry. Very unusual.
>
> Equally unusual is an app developer fulfilling their promise of "Blackberry
> version coming soon". Well, in this case it didn't come soon, but it did
> come, and I never expected it to happen. Perhaps this is only to be expected
> from the author of what I consider to be the most progressive of Australian
> field guides in terms of usability. First we had text with pictures, a quick
> index and a built in bookmark ribbon, now we have a Blackberry app!
>
> Despite the likelihood that, after 7 years as a Blackberry user, I will end
> up with an iPhone in a year or so when this contract runs out, I bought and
> installed the Morcombe app on my 9800 via Blackberry App World last night
> without waiting for a response from the authors asking if the licence can be
> later transferred to a different type of phone.
>
> I easily paid by Paypal. The download process wasn't straightforward, mainly
> because my home WiFi is dodgy, but it eventually installed the 2MB program.
> Now for the 300MB of data. This is where the programmers revealed their
> inexperience developing for Blackberries. The precise instructions it showed
> when I ran the app said I should now click either the Install button to
> download wirelessly, or the Exit button if I wanted to download the data
> files on a PC. But there were no buttons.
>
> What it should have said was to press the (physical) Blackberry button and
> choose one of those options from the popup menu. This is where, for an
> app-weary Blackberry veteran, it gets funnier. You can't click on the menu
> options either! It took me a while to think to try tapping the touch screen
> instead, and that worked. Blackberry is still coming to terms with the touch
> screen, and developers unused to devices with a touch screen, trackpad and a
> physical keyboard are forgetting to check that all the input methods work.
>
> But Blackberry apps that don't work properly have been a fact of life for a
> long time, and I've seen worse than this so I persisted.
>
> I chose the option to download the data files wirelessly, just to see what
> happened. It failed a few times, but managed to get about 30MB of them before
> I gave up. With more reliable WiFi, wireless download might be feasible. The
> fact that there are many small files and doesn't retry those it already has
> is good design that will get you there eventually.
>
> I instead followed the instruction to use a computer to browse to the
> download site to download them. The URL given in the instructions results in
> this browser message:
> "HTTP Error 403.14 - Forbidden. The Web server is configured to not list the
> contents of this directory." I browsed around the site and found the right
> place to download them. They need to fix those instructions.
>
> The download on the PC was done with a browser Java app that showed the
> download progress, once I'd told it which part of the phone memory I wanted
> it in. When it reached 100%, it just sat there, appearing to do nothing. I
> expected that it would then show me the progress of loading the files to the
> phone, which I'd already connected via USB. Had it already done it? Instead
> of assuming it had, I browsed around the phone's memory and found where it
> was putting them. It hadn't finished - I could see new files appearing all
> the time.
>
> I kept refreshing the screen until no more files appeared, and disconnected
> the phone. The Java app still just sat there, giving no indication that it
> was all finished. They should fix that, or people will end up corrupting
> their phone memory by disconnecting before it's done. This kind of install is
> normally done via the Blackberry Desktop Manager, which I don't like, and I'm
> grateful for an alternative method.
>
> Then I started the app on the phone, and it checked for missing files and
> started up. Not the smoothest Blackberry app install I've done, but far from
> the worst.
>
> The app itself is riddled with interface inconsistencies, with some buttons
> requiring screen touches, and some requiring trackpad clicks, even with
> mixtures on the same screen. All typical Blackberry app stuff, and nothing to
> faze the experienced Blackberry user.
>
> I haven't used it enough to comment much on the content, other than it seems
> to have roughly the same stuff my compact Morcombe has in it, plus the nest
> and egg illustrations. I can find species, look at the pictures, zoom in on
> them, scroll between species variations, read the text and listen to the
> calls. I was pleased to see that the calls for each species are divided into
> types, unlike the BOCA calls, which I assume are more complete but are all
> lumped into the one track for each species.
>
> I don't know if there's a trick to it, but I can't get the search function to
> come up with any results at all. Surely there is at least one mostly black
> and white land species found in Victoria? Does this work for you iPhone
> users? I'm not that fussed about this, but I'd like to get it working.
>
> Obviously a few glitches in this app, but I'm looking forward to always
> having a field guide with me, and I'd recommend it to other Blackberry users.
>
> Peter Shute
>
> Sent: Saturday, 2 June 2012 2:11 PM
> To: Murray Lord
> Cc:
> Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] Updated Morcombe app
>
> Strange choice given that Blackberry is apparently only the 6th best
> selling OS (depending on which website you look at!) and that it may not be
> around much longer. I would have though Android would be a better bet and
> then some of the others.
>
> On 2 June 2012 13:49, Murray Lord <> wrote:
>
>>
>> For any iPad owners out there I see that the Morcombe field guide app has
>> just been updated, and it will now display properly on an iPad as well as
>> an iPod touch or iPhone. In other words it doesn't just look like a
>> stretched version of the iPhone app on an iPad any more.
>>
>> There was a warning that the update can delete your bird lists if you
>> haven't backed them up beforehand.
>>
>> I understand a blackberry version is now available too.
>>
>> Murray
> ===============================
>
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
> send the message:
> unsubscribe
> (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
> to:
>
> http://birding-aus.org
> ===============================
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
http://birding-aus.org
===============================
|
