Wow. When I wrote my previous post about my frustrating experience with the Blackberry Playbook SDK, I honestly had no idea it would go viral in the way it did. I think I need to start by thanking all the people who took the time to read it and spread it around. A special thanks to all the users at HN who took the time to offer both praise and criticism. I was pretty worried that I was gonna take a beating in the comments, and was pleasantly surprised when they were almost unanimously supportive. Also, thanks to everyone who tweeted, and emailed me directly.

As I write this, roughly 70,000 people have read my post in the last 3 days, and it’s been linked to on Daring Fireball, Slashdot, Business Insider, and countless others.

For starters, I want to talk about why I think my post got so much attention. Again, when I wrote it, I wasn’t expecting it to go viral. I decided to write a simple Playbook app because I kept hearing how nice it was (they’ve been demoing it at select placed around the UW campus), and obviously because the free Playbook offer made it fairly attractive. I’ve been accused (by RIM supporters) of posting inaccurate statements. This is completely false. Everything I wrote was absolutely true, and this fact has been confirmed by many other Blackberry developers, as well as RIM itself. I did, however, put a decent layer of sarcasm on it, because I wanted it to be funny, and I think the comedy was one of the main reasons it got so much attention.

Another reason is that there hasn’t really been a canonical rant about RIM. There have been tens or hundreds of rants about Apple and Google from journalists, pundits, and bloggers alike, but RIM has kind of been flying under the radar. That’s not to say that many people haven’t been having bad experiences, but just that they haven’t written about them in the same accessible and funny way that I did. Even my technologically illiterate friends thought it was hilarious, without really being able to understand what it was about.

Finally, timing obviously played a big factor. We’re currently right at the beginning of RIM’s marketing push for the Playbook, and they’ve recently been doing some demos, tech sites have been getting some hands-on reviews, and the pundits are starting to actually give it some attention. This is clearly a bad time for a post like this to gain traction, but it’s also one of the reasons that it did.

Now I want to address some of the criticism. First off, as I mentioned above, the “inaccuracy” argument has been proven false already. Another common criticism was to take each complaint, point by point, and explain how it wasn’t really a big deal. This argument is completely valid, but you need to remember that the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts. Each individual point is just a small hurdle (with the possible exception of the notary requirement), and by no means a show stopper. What these people have failed to understand though, is that a large number of little hurdles add up to a big hurdle. Maybe not for them, developers who have already committed to this platform and have a stake in it, but it matters to developers just arriving at the Blackberry platform. It’s also worth noting that the characteristics of the average developer have changed quite a bit from what they used to be. We’ve all seen the news items about the 12 year old iPhone developer, the homemaker turned iPhone developer, etc. For these developers, who have complete freedom to choose between Blackberry, Android, or iOS, all these little hurdles result in them choosing a different platform. Imagine going to a certain grocery store for the first time, and finding a single pricing error. Not a big deal, and one that you can easily forget. But then imagine going to the grocery store and finding a pricing error on almost every product you put in your cart. At that point, you’d probably assume the grocery store is incompetent and never shop there again. Now, if you’re an employee of that store, maybe you know of some legitimate reason for those pricing errors, but if you are new to the store the only information you have is that almost all your products were priced wrong. The point is that this rant has almost no relevance to veteran Blackberry developers. However, if RIM wants to succeed in the consumer space with regards to tablets and smartphones, they are going to need a ton of new developers, and are going to have to lure a lot of those developers away from other platforms. This will be the first time those new developers shop at the RIM grocery store, and if RIM wants to keep them, they’d better check their prices before opening the doors.

Another frequent criticism, which was directed more at RIM rather than myself, was that it took a frustrated blog post from a new developer going viral to get RIM to respond to these criticisms, when according to many, they had been expressed numerous times in the Blackberry developer forums, and through emails to RIM. This sentiment is completely understandable and I would feel the exact same way if I were on the other end of the situation. When I met with Tyler Lessard, head of the developer relations program at RIM, he did communicate to me that they absolutely care about the problems their existing developers are having, and even though it sometimes might not seem like action is being taken, these problems are being addressed. As I don’t work for RIM, I have no clue as to the accuracy of this. I’m just passing on what I was told, so please don’t shoot the messenger :)

The rest of the criticisms were mainly just ad hominem attacks, which really don’t need to be addressed. Obviously when you put yourself out there, there are going to be people who don’t like what you have to say. That’s just the nature of the game though, and I’m not really bothered by it at all.

I have to commend Tyler for taking action very quickly. The very next morning after the post started to gain traction, he emailed me to thank me for the criticism, and to offer to get together for coffee with me to chat about it. We met on Sunday, and talked for a couple hours, mainly about the points I had made, but also just about developer relations in general. I was really impressed with him. He clearly understands the problems that RIM is facing with respect to attracting new developers, and knows what needs to be done to solve them. In speaking with some reporters who cover RIM, and who know Tyler, it seems like that’s the general consensus as well. In my opinion, it’s going to come down to execution, and as they say, the proof is in the pudding.

As for me, I’m going to give the Playbook platform another shot. I’d like to give it a fair shake, and I’m not going to lie, a free Playbook is a pretty nice incentive to keep going. I’m also going to try out Windows Phone 7 development as well. After reading my post, Brandon Watson, head of Windows Phone developer experience, reached out to me to offer me some help getting started with WP7 development. Again, a really great reaction by someone who knows how to take advantage of this kind of press.

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to read or respond, and thanks to my friends who work at RIM for still taking my calls :)