Rim’s Tyler Lessard responds to Jamie Murai
p2pnet view P2P:- Yesterday, we ran an open letter from Jamie Murai (right), a disenchanted (to considerably understate the situation) would-be developer of apps for the RIM PlayBook.
His missive put the cat among the pigeons in a way we’ve never seen before at p2pnet.
In the space of six hours, the post had more than 10,000 hits and scores of angry rebuttals by way of Reader’s Writes.
Now Tyler Lessard (left), the man who heads up RIM’s BlackBerry Developer Relations and Developer Programs team, responds with an open, and friendly, letter of his own.
“Hi everyone”, he posts on the Blackberry Developer’s blog. “I wanted to take a moment to provide some updates on our PlayBook developer tools, app submission process, and address some concerns that were raised in a blog post by mobile app developer Jamie Murai”, he says, going on >>>
Jamie’s posting on Friday raised a number of challenges that he faced while getting started with development for the BlackBerry PlayBook and while registering to become a BlackBerry App World vendor. First off, I’d like to thank Jamie for his candid feedback. Suggestions like his are critical in helping us improve our products and processes. I want you to know that we are absolutely listening.
Our development teams here at RIM have been working hard to get our tools ready for PlayBook launch. While we’ve come a long way for a pre-release product, we know that we have a lot of work left to do to ensure that our developers can build and distribute apps without any hindering costs or painful download processes.
Jamie’s post covered various topics, including the process for registering for downloads, managing the install and configuration procedures on a Mac, and using the simulator tools. The concerns he described were completely fair – in fact, they include some of the priority items that we’ve been working to improve prior to our final gold release. So we’ve taken this feedback, along with other information we’re collecting from our dev community, and are prioritizing it as we continue to refine the platform and development process leading up to launch. One example that directly relates to Jamie’s feedback is that if you register an account on our Developer Zone web site, you can sign in with that account and download all of our tools without needing to re-enter your information several times. However, we’re going to work on improving the download steps for those of you who just want to get at the tools without registering an account. I apologize that this was overlooked up until now.
February 27th, 2011 at 6:19 pm
Seems sincere.
February 27th, 2011 at 7:10 pm
Whether Jamie’s assessment was totally correct, or completely misguided, putting it out there is what *should* be done. Companies need the honest feedback, and the reaction you get from these companies helps everyone judge for themselves whether they should continue dealing with them.
If a company has any brains behind it, the attention will keep the developers on their toes, and cause a useful response, which may very well have happened here.
February 27th, 2011 at 9:07 pm
Hello p2pnet writers and readers!
I have to say, I’m a little confused, but mostly entertained by what you’ve been writing about me. I wrote this rant because I was frustrated, and honestly had no intention of posting it, but when I read it back I thought it was pretty hilarious so I posted it hoping whoever read it would be entertained. But for some reason, you’re making it seem like I’m out raging in the street or something. Tyler and I got together for coffee today, and he actually thought it was good because it lit a metaphorical fire under them to get some stuff done that’s been queued up for a while, and also brought some stuff to their attention that they hadn’t known about. Also, I think he would agree that I’m not really disenchanted at all.
February 27th, 2011 at 10:52 pm
@Jamie
“you’re making it seem like I’m out raging in the street or something.”
I didn’t read your post that way. Not at all. I didn’t get that from what Jon wrote here either.
However, I do see it in the comment posts. It appears to have ticked off some people.
In any account, i’m glad you wrote what you did. It opened eyes and also made the RIM mouth piece move. However, actions will speak louder than words in the end. Time will tell is RIM will live up to it’s words and also get rid of its’ horrendous process (and notarized BS).
February 27th, 2011 at 11:26 pm
There is a comment below the post that is worth reading:
“So let me get this straight – if you send feedback via Beta programs and in the BB forums, you get ignored?
But if you decide to write a whiney blog post that sarcastically outlines what others have said elsewhere then you get all the attention and told that it’s being sorted?
I’m all for improving the tools and having a dialogue with developers, but I can’t help but feel somewhat let down by this random knee-jerk reaction.”
February 27th, 2011 at 11:45 pm
BTW, who is Tyler? Is is anyone important enough that RIM would listen to him? Or is this a guy who would lose his job for standing up for what is right?