Read Online Losing the Signal: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of BlackBerry by Jacquie McNish, Sean Silcoff - Free Book Online
Authors: Jacquie McNish, Sean Silcoff
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and the bosses wanted to keep staff sharp and hungry for success. Balsillie didn’t want staff “getting sore arms” patting themselves on the back at a time the company’s survival depended on overcoming so many obstacles. Its competitors were bigger, its customers predatory, and cash was in short supply. If RIM didn’t quickly deliver what its customers wanted, the company would not endure. One RIM manager became so obsessed with deadlines he issued an edict requiring engineers to ask permission before leaving at night. Lazaridis reversed the decree, but his company’s aggressive, need-it-yesterday approach fostered what would become a robust cynicism. “It got to the point that when schedules were made up I didn’t bother to read them,” says Wandel. “They were so made up, a fantasy.”
Unrelenting pressure led to increased mischief. Wandel regularly invitedcolleagues into the parking lot to smash faulty prototypes with a sledgehammer. Another recreation was detonating large batteries. One engineer reconfigured a pipe gun, known as a potato cannon, to launch broken components into nearby fields. Others let off steam on local baseball diamonds. The RIM baseball team sported T-shirts with the initials DEM. Alluding to the company’s uncertain fate, the letters were a play on the Latin phrase
Dextera Domini
—the right hand of God.
The South Lawn of the White House was dotted with colorful tents that sagged under a heavy midday sun. It was July 22, 1993. Representatives from technology companies were gathered to show off the latest in mobile communications. President Bill Clinton led an entourage through the tents. Stopping at one, he examined a thick glass tablet and black electronic pen created by Eo Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up. Push the stylus across the surface of the EO Personal Communicator, Clinton was urged, your handwriting will automatically convert into a digital text message, poised to fly across radio waves to the person of your choice. Reflecting on dozens of American victims claimed by recent flooding in Illinois and nearby states, the president moved the stylus across the tablet: “Al, stop the rain in the Midwest. Thanks, Bill.”
Minutes later, Clinton cited the message in a speech to a large gathering on the White House Lawn. Vice President Al Gore, an early wireless technology champion, was there. Joining them were Federal Communications Commission officials, media luminaries, and dozens of technology executives.
“I got to send the vice president that message over there and it’s nice to know he’ll be able to stop the rains in the Midwest within a few moments, remote control,” Clinton said. The wireless note, he explained, was the beginning of a “new era of human communications.” The Internet was taking off, updated federal technology laws were in motion, and a spectrum of radio channels was slated for auction to private companies wanting to build new wireless roadways for portable digital communications. These “information skyways,” Clinton promised, were “a new avenue to send ideas and masses of information to remote locations in ways most of us never would have imagined…. Wireless hand-held computers and phones will deliver the world to our fingertips.”
Clinton was right about the dawn of a new wireless data age. His timing, though, was off by several years. Mobile data ventures of all sizes were founderingbecause portable communicators were too expensive, slow, or complex. In the early 1990s, when less than 5 percent of North Americans owned a cellphone, mobile messaging remained a sci-fi fantasy.
A year after Clinton scratched out his message on the EO Personal Communicator, the device was history. Buyers were turned off by its bulk and its price tag, fully loaded, of $4,000. Bigger players didn’t fare much better. Apple Computer entered the wireless game in 1993 with a personal digital assistant called Newton MessagePad. For $699, consumers got a
Unrelenting pressure led to increased mischief. Wandel regularly invitedcolleagues into the parking lot to smash faulty prototypes with a sledgehammer. Another recreation was detonating large batteries. One engineer reconfigured a pipe gun, known as a potato cannon, to launch broken components into nearby fields. Others let off steam on local baseball diamonds. The RIM baseball team sported T-shirts with the initials DEM. Alluding to the company’s uncertain fate, the letters were a play on the Latin phrase
Dextera Domini
—the right hand of God.
The South Lawn of the White House was dotted with colorful tents that sagged under a heavy midday sun. It was July 22, 1993. Representatives from technology companies were gathered to show off the latest in mobile communications. President Bill Clinton led an entourage through the tents. Stopping at one, he examined a thick glass tablet and black electronic pen created by Eo Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up. Push the stylus across the surface of the EO Personal Communicator, Clinton was urged, your handwriting will automatically convert into a digital text message, poised to fly across radio waves to the person of your choice. Reflecting on dozens of American victims claimed by recent flooding in Illinois and nearby states, the president moved the stylus across the tablet: “Al, stop the rain in the Midwest. Thanks, Bill.”
Minutes later, Clinton cited the message in a speech to a large gathering on the White House Lawn. Vice President Al Gore, an early wireless technology champion, was there. Joining them were Federal Communications Commission officials, media luminaries, and dozens of technology executives.
“I got to send the vice president that message over there and it’s nice to know he’ll be able to stop the rains in the Midwest within a few moments, remote control,” Clinton said. The wireless note, he explained, was the beginning of a “new era of human communications.” The Internet was taking off, updated federal technology laws were in motion, and a spectrum of radio channels was slated for auction to private companies wanting to build new wireless roadways for portable digital communications. These “information skyways,” Clinton promised, were “a new avenue to send ideas and masses of information to remote locations in ways most of us never would have imagined…. Wireless hand-held computers and phones will deliver the world to our fingertips.”
Clinton was right about the dawn of a new wireless data age. His timing, though, was off by several years. Mobile data ventures of all sizes were founderingbecause portable communicators were too expensive, slow, or complex. In the early 1990s, when less than 5 percent of North Americans owned a cellphone, mobile messaging remained a sci-fi fantasy.
A year after Clinton scratched out his message on the EO Personal Communicator, the device was history. Buyers were turned off by its bulk and its price tag, fully loaded, of $4,000. Bigger players didn’t fare much better. Apple Computer entered the wireless game in 1993 with a personal digital assistant called Newton MessagePad. For $699, consumers got a
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