Hold the phone. David Pogue has news.
Apple’s iPhone has done so well in the market that it’s no longer the underdog.
“There’s a new oppressed minority in town,” writes Pogue, a widely read tech columnist for The New York Times.
And who might be in that minority?
None other than BlackBerry owners, brand-loyal users who won’t abide any trash talking about BlackBerry products, even BlackBerry products they haven’t used.
Pogue incurred the wrath of this minority - he calls them “BlackBerry nuts” - when he wrote a negative review of the BlackBerry Storm, a new touch-screen smartphone from Research in Motion that went on sale last month.
“I’ve got a better name for it: the BlackBerry Dud,” Pogue wrote before listing why he was not taken by the Storm. (Clunky keyboards, confusing menu system, no Wi-Fi.)
The bad didn’t balance the good (expandable storage, voice dialing, good camera) in Pogue’s mind. Hence the dud.
In a blog item posted a few days after his review ran, Pogue noted that many purchasers of the Storm wrote to report that they, too, discovered faults in the phone.
“My Storm was like something from a Stephen King novel, possessed of its own mind,” wrote one new Storm owner.
Pogue then went on to quote some of the negative reaction to his review of the Storm.
“Having you comment on technology is like having Tom Cruise comment on religion,” wrote one e-mailer.
“May the Devil find out you’re dead immediately after you’re gone,” wrote another.
Pogue is used to this sort of outrage from members of what he calls “the Cult of Mac.”
“If you write anything that even hints at a less-than-perfect Apple effort (like my reviews of, for example, the original Apple TV, iMovie ‘08 of MobileMe), the backlash is swift, vitriolic and heated,” he writes.
But the BlackBerry Nation response seems to have taken him by surprise.
Of course, the roles could reverse again.
BlackBerry products had outsold the iPhone until the third quarter of 2008, when iPhone took the lead.
The Apple surge was in part due to the introduction of the 3G version of the iPhone in June.
BlackBerry fans have been waiting longer not only for the Storm, but also for the BlackBerry Bold, an upgrade of the BlackBerry Curve that also went on sale last month.
The Bold, which does not have a touch pad, came to the market six months late, but it has received good reviews.
If BlackBerry regains the sales lead from iPhone, it will find itself the top dog again. Presumably, BlackBerry Nuts will then write Pogue to say they told him so.
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