I have bundled together a good dozen RSS feeds in my Google Reader that get sent to my phone and my computer each morning. An eclectic collection of business and tech news as I like to stay on top of all of this news before it gets to be too much to read in one sitting.
This morning, like every morning for the past two weeks, I had expected to wake up to a wave of negativity surrounding BlackBerry or RIM or both. To my surprise, the first article was on a Charlie Sheen iPhone app…Yes you read it right folks, Charlie Sheen has his own iPhone app. Now I don’t know what it does or why it was made, but I know it exists and so do thousands of people apparently.
I decided to scroll down and see a few more daily trading articles and then a true rare find: I Apologize to my BlackBerry. An article written by Gene Marks over at Forbes commenting on how people don’t understand their BlackBerry enough to hate it, or shouldn’t hate it because they don’t know how to use it. It shares an interesting perspective I’ve never really taken into account because I have known BlackBerry, and everything about BlackBerry, for several years now. I didn’t ever think there would come a time where I would ever switch phones or feel the need for more because my BlackBerry had my entire life on it, so to speak.
The main reason is that, through the years, my BlackBerry has always worked reliably for me. And in the world of technology, that’s no small feat. When it came time to decide on my next smartphone the thought of having to learn a whole new device was making me barf. I have my routine down with the BlackBerry. I use it fast. Why would I want to change that for the sake of a new phone unless that new phone was going to bring something to me, and my business, that would really save me time and money? The iPhone and a Droid are cool. I get it. But for a small business owner, I don’t need cool. I need productivity. I wasn’t seeing enough incremental returns by switching.
It really struck a chord with me. My BlackBerry knows what I’m trying to type. It knows my voice. It knows my habits and my daily schedule. I have never noticed how much I truly rely on my BlackBerry to get me through the day in terms of productivity and because it’s always there, we always seem to take it for granted.
It was a nice way to start my day, I hoped to share it with some of you and see how you interpreted the apology.