"They’re Selling a Screen With a Giant Calculator Attached to It. It’s Not a Cool Device Anymore."

Jonathan Geller at BGR posted an excellent article about the inside working of RIM based on interviews with current and former employees at the company:

RIM was hoping to blow through the 500,000 units and have carriers take orders for millions of additional PlayBooks, but that has not happened yet. Mike Lazaridis looks at it as, why aren’t people buying this tablet when it has the most powerful engine with respect to multitasking, and supports Flash? But consumers have spoken pretty loudly a number of times, and Mike unfortunately leads the product side and continues to miss the mark with the masses, a former RIM executive told me. “I don’t even see anyone in Waterloo walking around with a PlayBook that doesn’t work for RIM,” another former RIM employee said. One of the better quotes from the piece, as highlighted by John Gruber: They’re selling a screen with a giant calculator attached to it. It’s not a cool device anymore.