BlackBerry boss: "You're tired of being told what to think by Apple"
RIM, creator of the BlackBerry, has responded to Steve Jobs and his tirade against his rivals over tablets and smart phone operability.
It's turning into the tech EastEnders. After Apple boss Steve Jobs and Android genius Andy Rubin had a bit of a barney, BlackBerry maker RIM co-boss Jim Balsillie has waded in, screeching the geek equivalent of, "Leave it! 'E's not wurf it!"
Balsille fired back at Jobs' claim that 7-inch tablets were too small for your fat fingers, in an official statement published by CrackBerry. The RIM co-chief argued that slates such as the BlackBerry PlayBook and the Samsung Galaxy Tab "will actually be a big portion of the market".
He went on to say Adobe Flash support was important for a real Web experience, a blast at the way Apple has been notoriously reluctant to allow anything to do with Flash on its platform. He also had a dig at the way Apple has kept a tight ship with app developers.
"We also know that while Apple's attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple," Balsille said, "developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of websites that use Flash.
"We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple." Reports that Balsille then smashed his pint of lager on the floor and stormed out of the Queen Vic are unconfirmed.
Iain Dodsworth, developer of Twitter client TweetDeck, joined the Jobs-bashing. In his earnings call rant, Jobs used the creation of the Android TweetDeck app as an example of fragmentation, with more than 100 different versions of Android software on 244 different handsets to deal with.
But Dodsworth, perhaps irked that Jobs referred to his app as Twitter Deck, said it was a positive thing. He fired back in a tweet, "We only have two guys developing on Android TweetDeck so that shows how small an issue fragmentation is."
El Jobso knows, of course, the tech world hangs on his every word, and a full-scale blast against some of Apple's biggest rivals was never going to go down well.
It shows the real pressures the smart phone kings are putting on each other, and it's a fantastic show. Here's hoping Steve Ballmer or a mad Finn from Nokia piles in. Whose side are you on?