Just a few hours after the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2 download became available, I had the chance this morning to get some interview time with one of the hardworking Product Managers on the PlayBook team, Research In Motion's Michael Clewley. Instead of doing the standard 'ole over the phone stuff, we kicked things up a notch and connected Waterloo to 'Peg City (aka Winnipeg) via the newly-updated Video Chat app on the PlayBook.
Above you can watch the 26 minute interview (written follow-up summary to come) in its entirety. I was going to edit this down shorter, but I know our CrackBerry Podcast fans would be mad if I did. We go through a lot of OS 2 topics during this one, starting off with the 5am EST launch time. i thought RIM just wanted to get me out of bed early this morning but it turns out they picked that time so they could launch globally on the same date. Smart.
From there we walk through some of the new features hitting the PlayBook in OS 2. We get some clarification on where PlayBook OS 2 sits along the road in the migration to BlackBerry 10. We talk about closing the app gap and the Android app experience on PlayBook OS 2. We get into PlayBook in the enterprise and we also talk about content on the PlayBook. We cover a lot, so sit back, relax and enjoy the show... err.. video chat!
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OS 2 Launch Day Video Chat Interview w/ BlackBerry PlayBook Product Manager Michael Clewley
The audio was breaking up a bit but did I hear Michael say that new codecs were included in 2.0 that will support .MKV files? It was around 21:35 in the video.
I'm sure I read a post in the forum that claimed .MKV still wouldn't work in the native video player.
Kevin, the next time you get an opportunity, please ask Michael why they can't change the time-out settings so we can go more than 5 minutes without our PlayBooks going into standby if that is what we choose? I thought something this minor would have made it into the 2.0 release, but it looks like it was overlookded.
I feel duped by RIM- the Android player everybody thought we were gonna get- we DIDN'T get and what's more...there aren't ANY decent Android apps in app world they all suck! I thought we were gonna get the Android that ACTUALLY plays ANDROID and we can open and download Android apps from the Android Market but NOPE! There isn't ANY IM Apps still- Skype, Yahoo Messenger, OoVoO or anything just the sucky video app that belongs to RIM and which I can't use cause nobody I know has a PlayBook! Then there's the books, I'm going to college and Kobo doens't have crap of the ones I need so I figured with Android we would get Amazon, Kindle, etc... NOPE! Not even a decent Navigation App... we didn't get anything, as far as I can tell we got duped...again! I've been so caught up in the bridge remote that the more I've been thinking about it the more I get pissed. Another thing the email didn't work for me either, it won't let me setup Yahoo Mail! So still, what can I use my PlayBook for...surfing the web! TOTALLY USELESS!!!
Everybody knew how android is implemented. People have been running the PB OS 2 dev beta for a while.
Does not matter if your favorite Android apps are not available in the app world, search around and there are Android bar files (a boat load of them) available, so you can easily install IM+, Kindle etc.
I have yahoo email setup and working, if you are not able to do so, please ask for help in the forums.
First search result on google "yahoo imap settings".
To set up IMAP on your mobile device please use these settings:
- Incoming Server - imap.mail.yahoo.com
- Outgoing Server - smtp.mail.yahoo.com
- Incoming Port - 993 (requires SSL)
- Outgoing Port - 465 (requires SSL/TLS)
- Username: full email address (for example, bill@yahoo.com or bill@rocketmail.com)
- Password: the password you login to Yahoo! with.
Great video!
Since 2.0 my bbm on the playbook has become buggy every time I attempt to load it up it crashes??? Iv rebooted playbook and installed the new bbm to my phone but no success. Anyone else havin the same problem?
OK so at the 9 min mark... when Michael was talking about the great reception to bridge..... It really sounds like he was reading my forum thread :
http://forums.crackberry.com/blackberry-playbook-f222/wow-i-seriously-un...
I wonder if they'd like to send a camera crew down here and film a playbook commercial :)
I just tried out Video Chat for the first time today. Totally blown away by it! I can't believe you don't even have to have the app running to receive a call. Just amazing! Now I just wish more of my friends had the Playbook.
how do you establish contact? email? bridged BBM? Bridged email? phonecall? other?
All you need is the person in your contacts with an email address. If they have a PlayBook you will be able to initiate a video chat. Not sure if it needs to be their bbid email or if it works with any email address they've added to their playbook accounts. In fact you can filter your contact list to show only video chat contacts.
if RIM's network and servers know which users have PB and filters them, call me impressed.....
I can't get any of the contacs from my 9900 into my playbook, and it dosent seem to access bridge contacts. Therefore, no simple video chat.
Are your contacts on 9900 synced to outlook etc? If not you can sync them up once to gmail and then do a sync from gmail to PB.
ive never tried video chat on PB. can anyone explain me how these two guys contacted each other? in the vide it looks like an incoming call. did the call each other through their bb phones and converted to video chat? or through their bridged BBM? or did they send each other an email msg asking tovideo chat?
thx
You can manually add PIN or blackberryid of your friend in video chat app.
Now with OS 2.0, it will automatically identify email address that are blackberryids with video chat available. Within the video chat app you can set your status as available (either with video or just audio) or set to not available. You do not need to have video chat app open, when someone tries to contact you, it will show a notice, so no need to email/call etc before starting video chat. If the other person is marked as available, just click to call and he will get the popup to answer or ignore etc.
Can't express how cool that interview was. Michael was so personable and you were very prepared. Using video chat like that made it a very personal experience.
All the while I'm turning on bluetooth on playbook flipping around looking to see what apps I have, the audio is seamless and the video as well as the browser goes in and out of being the focal point.
Totally impressed by the accomplishments of this launch and all the new features!
'Peg City! Wooo! lol
10,000 Playbook apps.
I was so busy playing with my PlayBook that I didn't even notice the youtube app is gone. I have the music store and some accessory store icon.
How does one go about getting the youtube app back?
Kevin loves to take it easy on these guys. You dont have to appear like one of these trolls on the forums but damm man grow some and ask tuff questions. Kevin you skipped right by the skype question with some rubbish you mentioned talking about waiting till the end of the year. How bout hey when can we get a cross platform video chat? Geeze i'll take tango and ovoo right now since we cant get skype. Kevin you made me mad just know but im calm and i love you again.
Lol. Mel.. I already know the answer on Skype. And I know he's not going to answer it /address it in an interview like this. Asking on that is just going to kill the flow of a nicely flowing interview. Plus, the person to ask that question to during an interview is Marty Mallick on the content acquisition team. Ya gotta do your homework. Love you too. K
Kevin PLEASE ask about getting a REAL Voice Navigation App, Android Market has millions of them and many free! Also, about book stores, we need more other than Kobo and finally as mentioned above...about getting some IM Apps. I could care less about Skype already cause they been giving us the middle finger for the longest time but I really want Yahoo Messenger, OoVoO, MSN Messenger etc... All these nice new features are nice but if we don't have functionality on the PB, all we have is a nice little email/web surfing and media tablet.
I wish videos were arranged into folders. Apart from that, good update.
Very cool!
WTH im missing the youtube app, video chat, music store and video store. Anyone know whats going on... I'm in Canada
There is a small (<30MB) secondary update that installs some of these apps. I believe the small update is region specific.
It should have started automatically after the initial OS 2.0 update.
I installed OS 2.0 from DM. As soon as I connect the Playbook to WiFi it installed the smaller update.
I suggest you connect your Playbook to Blackberry Desktop Manager (DM) and look for updates.
Great interview. I agree with Michael and don't use any software to manage my music. Great OS update!
Anybody have a step by step for connecting my blackberry to a laptop direct without the playbook. Some of us who cant afford it yet still want a bit of that blackberry goodness ya know!
At work can't view this anything about Cross platform video chat service? This is a big deal I am not sure why this can't be handled native or Android port?
Message to people before they ask in the comments "why didn't you ask when this is coming or that is coming?".... remember, you can't get answers to forward looking statements. :)
It isn't true that you can't get answers to forward looking questions. RIM employees have answered these kinds of questions repeatedly over the years. The problem is that the answers were sometimes not very accurate and the answers didn't have any wiggle room. These kinds of "bad" answers can be trouble (either legally or just in the media). So, RIM may have instructed its employees not to answer these kinds of questions but there is no legal obstacle in answering them. If I ran RIM, I wouldn't say anything about release schedules until those schedules were FIRM.
This is awesome :D #Twosday BlackBerry4Life baby!
#TeamBlackberry