The "free" to which you refer has nothing to do with price. Think of "free" as in "freedom".

The Ribbon compared to a traditional menu system is much like comparing a McDonald's register to a regular cash register: A significantly simplified interface with pictures / icons instead of textual menus.

Read into that what you will. For some of us, it's a tear-your-hair-out, dumbed-down experience. For someone else it's nirvana because they are clickers, not typers and reading that many words hurts their brain. As someone who's been using office software since it was created -- think GEM desktop and others -- and who has used many many systems, this change is unwelcome and feels wrong. It's slow to use and takes up too much room.

If you want to have the same skills as everyone else, go clickie at the pictures. And now it's much harder for you to use any other system because your "hamburger" button isn't there.

Yes, this is a point I don't see a lot of people making. The help features in OS X apps are pretty nice. I especially like search-as-you-type in help, showing menu items in a separate group; hovering over them results in an animated arrow showing you exactly where that particular menu option is located. Very user-friendly and quick.

My father was a Mason but was very secretive about it. He wanted a Masonic funeral when he died. The Masons showed up and basically unnerved everyone with their weird chanting, hand gestures, and phrasing. I almost left in the middle of the service. Creepy and religious was what I got out of it. The addition of the almost-shame and secrecy was enough to tell me I don't want to be a part of that group.

You still need people to program, to come up with new ideas, to push the technology forward. Or it will eventually collapse on itself as the ones who know retire and die out, leaving the shiny to people who don't understand how it works or how to even repair it.

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. You can get infected using Windows simply by visiting Google, seeing ads on mainstream sites etc. It's happened to us during setting up new installs. It's not too hard to do. We no longer search for drivers until the AV is installed; previously drivers came first.

There's an upside and downside to marshalling objects. Some of us have been around since DCOM and COM were prevalent, and the additional security and overhead isn't always worth it. "More powerful" is an oversimplification; it all depends on what you're doing and whether that's the most efficient way of doing it. With objects there's a minimum overhead that you can't code around. Text streams, pointers to objects / inodes / etc all have their uses.

In the Windows world, until recently, text stream support was extremely weak so they pushed some of these other methods instead. It's still catching up, and a large part of that is because Windows developers were encouraged by Microsoft to throw objects around in memory even when other more simple and scalable approaches existed. The API -- the "objects" -- are part of the lock-in of developers to the Windows model, so Microsoft can't totally be blamed for that.

You are right at least in part. The reasons people didn't like it were (in no particular order): Internet capabilities / pages not showing properly; Intranet pages not showing properly or functions not working; SharePoint pages not showing properly or not working or too slow; Can't navigate with the little roller ball; Fingers too big for the little keys; Can't connect to our VPN; No terminal emulation; Lack of business-related apps for monitoring servers, troubleshooting wifi, checking MySQL servers for data etc; Can't print emails to network printers (very handy in meetings); No voice control (hands-free dialing is recommended); Email attachments often can't be opened / viewed; Smaller screen; Lack of accessories; not as easy to keep clean so they can look pretty grungy after a short while (and the symbols on the keys wear off)...

Those are just the ones off the top of my head that I remember. The only thing it did better was sending replies for meeting invites, and I think that's largely resolved with the Exchange upgrade.

As for the email capability of at least iPhones -- I rotate the screen sideways and type away. I don't have any problems with the touch screen, but I guess it's a big deal for some people. If it was a big deal I'd buy a Bluetooth keyboard such as this: http://www.hdaccessory.com/servlet/the-9956/iphone-4s-naztech-sliding/Detail . I'm sure there are cheaper ones too.

Doesn't work that way in our environment. There are very few of us (5 not including our dept head who is a VP) and no room for playing games like that. Because there are only a few of us, the "escalation team" is already on the phone or can be found nearby. Like I said, it's quick and efficient in our environment.

RIM is a zombie company. The vultures are just deciding which pieces they'll devour first.

• Stock-wise, they're at 6.61 right now with a 52-week range of 6.56 to 32.48. They're scraping the bottom of their 52-week range, and are 20% of the value from their 52-week high. Trend is flat to downwards. It seems the market doesn't like them.
• Technology-wise, they have old, tired products and their biggest asset is the corporate customers who haven't already migrated away.
• Marketshare is dropping steadily.
• Apps: They don't participate in the apps trend that both Android and iPhone enjoy. Not the best decision, but with such a tiny marketshare they won't get the mindshare from developers who need to target the big guys. So that's a big negative too.

So... what bright future do you see for RIMM? I see none.

Our department works under the premise that if more than a couple of emails go back and forth over a topic, we get on the phone. Especially if it's sensitive or urgent. We've found this to be very efficient. Of course, not all positions or environments are conducive to this.

My fingers tend to be too large for physical phone keyboards. The iPhone keyboard works very well. But 50 emails a day? I think that's more the sales or marketing department, not applications / DB development where I reside.

Anecdotal remark...
All members of our department were given or offered BlackBerry Bold 9000-series phones... 3 of us tried to use them but gave them back, 1 didn't accept it to begin with, 1 was the dept head and he's sick of it and waiting for the iPhone 5. Only one person kept their BlackBerry, and that person is the BES admin... and he's consistently frustrated with it.

So, in our world you have:

• 1 with a BlackBerry Bold 9000 (or newer): Not very happy but can hardly switch since he recommended the BES setup.
• 1 with a BlackBerry Bold 9000 (or newer), hates it, waiting for the iPhone 5
• 1 with an iPhone 3GS, waiting for the iPhone 5
• 1 with an iPhone 3GS, not sure if / when he will upgrade
• 2 with different Android models

In addition, we have more than 50 salespeople and managers which were offered BlackBerries, and many have chosen either to turn it in or decline the offer with a BYOD instead. We are seeing lots of Androids and iPhones, so far I don't think any of the BYOD's are Blackberries.

What made all the difference for us was upgrading from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2010. The iPhones and Androids no longer have to use IMAP; the calendaring functions are available now and the sync is very fast. There are fewer and fewer reasons to want to use the BlackBerry anymore for us. Remote wipe is one of them, although that does get murky with BYOD's and our relatively generous policies. With more critical mass on iPhone we will probably implement policies; I've tested adding VPN setup and alpha passcodes along with some other options and although it was a little cumbersome, the end result was easy to implement. Of course Android requires a different setup...

You'd think this would be obvious... but it's good to see someone stand up and take notice. Of course having the source is extremely beneficial, especially if you have the inclination and skills to interact with it (or can pay someone who does possess these qualities). I hope this gets lots of coverage. Maybe with more eyes and more review, people can spend more of their time creating and trying new things and less time recreating the wheel. Open source is an excellent way to help achieve that goal.

Very insightful. Give them the means to help themselves, and assist them along the way. Make the process reward achievement and effort.

The alternative is to destroy hope, drop benefits quickly, punish initiative and keep them chained to the system. With no hope, crime soars and lives are wasted in a socioeconomic limbo.