Back in 2012, BlackBerry Playbook owners were pleased to hear that the company’s BlackBerry 10 operating system will be making its way onto their tablet. Unfortunately it turned out to be a pipe dream as BlackBerry ultimately decided against it, meaning that Playbook owners were left with a somewhat dated operating system running on some pretty old hardware. Hardly the way to keep customers satisfied, especially considering that BlackBerry’s rivals such as Apple have been supporting legacy devices for as long as they can.Speaking with the folks at CrackBerry, BlackBerry’s CEO Thorsten Heins revealed that cancelled BlackBerry 10 for the Playbook was the toughest decision he had to make. “That was a very tough decision to make. I could have done it, but you would have loads of comments on your site – ‘How can Thorsten allow such a crappy product to be launched?’ … It was one of the toughest decisions I had to make because I knew I would break a commitment, but I also made a commitment to quality before that. … I can’t take the hardware back and provide them with 2 GB hardware. I can’t exchange the part – there’s no way to do this… I stand by the decision, as tough as it is. I apologize to the users that I couldn’t get it done. What I did I did because I want them to have a quality experience with BlackBerry 10.”
Ultimately Heins believed that the experience would not be up to par and that users could end up wanting to downgrade back to the older OS because of that. The good news is that it seems that the company is currently working on some sort of reward to help appease Playbook owners and keep them loyal. When and what exactly this is remains to be seen, but Playbook owners out there, what could BlackBerry do for you to keep you happy?
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