WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.799 I want you to take a moment and just look at 00:00:02.799 --> 00:00:04.419 your smartphone. It's probably sitting right 00:00:04.419 --> 00:00:06.139 there on the desk next to you. Or maybe you're 00:00:06.139 --> 00:00:08.939 even holding it right now. It's this seamless 00:00:08.939 --> 00:00:13.599 slab of glass. It's a portal to everything. Your 00:00:13.599 --> 00:00:16.000 bank, your TV, your maps, your camera. It's your 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:18.500 entire life in your hand. It is. For all intents 00:00:18.500 --> 00:00:21.079 and purposes, it's a magic wand. But I want to 00:00:21.079 --> 00:00:24.500 take you back to a very specific moment not that 00:00:24.500 --> 00:00:28.199 long ago, really. A moment where the ancestor 00:00:28.199 --> 00:00:31.460 of that device. The machine that kind of kicked 00:00:31.460 --> 00:00:34.539 off this whole mobile revolution. It didn't just 00:00:34.539 --> 00:00:37.500 become obsolete. It essentially died. And when 00:00:37.500 --> 00:00:40.119 we say died, we're not being metaphorical here 00:00:40.119 --> 00:00:42.600 like, oh, people stopped buying it. We are talking 00:00:42.600 --> 00:00:46.079 about a functional, definitive. Hard stop death. 00:00:46.420 --> 00:00:48.320 Exactly. The kind where the screen just goes 00:00:48.320 --> 00:00:50.479 dark and that little red light never blinks again. 00:00:50.600 --> 00:00:53.479 The date was January 4th, 2022. It sounds so 00:00:53.479 --> 00:00:55.359 recent, doesn't it? But that was the day the 00:00:55.359 --> 00:00:57.759 servers went cold. That was the official decommissioning 00:00:57.759 --> 00:01:00.299 date for all BlackBerry legacy services. The 00:01:00.299 --> 00:01:02.700 end of an era. And I think for a lot of people, 00:01:02.840 --> 00:01:04.760 you know, that news blip just came and went. 00:01:04.819 --> 00:01:06.599 But if you really unpack what happened on that 00:01:06.599 --> 00:01:10.239 day, it's... It's just wild. Not just no more 00:01:10.239 --> 00:01:12.319 software updates. No, this was BlackBerry Limited, 00:01:12.500 --> 00:01:14.659 the company, literally flipping the off switch 00:01:14.659 --> 00:01:16.900 on the entire infrastructure that powered devices 00:01:16.900 --> 00:01:20.359 running BlackBerry 7 .1 OS and earlier and BlackBerry 00:01:20.359 --> 00:01:23.159 10. Right. So if you are one of those diehard 00:01:23.159 --> 00:01:26.760 fans still clinging to a BlackBerry Classic or 00:01:26.760 --> 00:01:29.920 a Bold, in early 2022, you woke up that morning 00:01:29.920 --> 00:01:32.200 and your phone was, for all intents and purposes, 00:01:32.420 --> 00:01:34.560 a paperweight. We're talking no data connection, 00:01:34.799 --> 00:01:38.129 sure. That's a given. No SMS text messages. But 00:01:38.129 --> 00:01:40.469 the kicker, and this is the part that gets me, 00:01:40.590 --> 00:01:44.370 is no ability to even dial 911. That is the part 00:01:44.370 --> 00:01:46.390 that blows my mind. A phone that cannot call 00:01:46.390 --> 00:01:48.790 emergency services is no longer a phone. It's 00:01:48.790 --> 00:01:51.989 not. It's just a nostalgic brick of plastic and 00:01:51.989 --> 00:01:54.590 silicon. It's the ultimate form of obsolescence, 00:01:54.609 --> 00:01:57.230 really. Usually, old tech just gets slow. You 00:01:57.230 --> 00:01:59.250 know, it stops getting updates. The apps don't 00:01:59.250 --> 00:02:01.280 work. But it doesn't lose its most fundamental 00:02:01.280 --> 00:02:04.379 utility, the ability to maybe save your life. 00:02:04.540 --> 00:02:07.879 This shutdown marked the true functional death 00:02:07.879 --> 00:02:10.460 of the classic BlackBerry. And it really serves 00:02:10.460 --> 00:02:13.439 as the final, final period at the end of a very 00:02:13.439 --> 00:02:16.539 long, very dramatic sentence. And that right 00:02:16.539 --> 00:02:19.759 there is our mission for this deep dive. We aren't 00:02:19.759 --> 00:02:22.020 just here to eulogize a gadget. We're going to 00:02:22.020 --> 00:02:24.840 unpack the entire saga of research in motion. 00:02:25.859 --> 00:02:28.939 This is a story about a small Canadian company 00:02:28.939 --> 00:02:32.240 that went from like soldering circuit boards 00:02:32.240 --> 00:02:35.900 for pagers to creating a global medical condition. 00:02:36.219 --> 00:02:38.020 I mean, we literally called it an addiction and 00:02:38.020 --> 00:02:41.460 then just spiraling into near total irrelevance 00:02:41.460 --> 00:02:44.080 in the hardware market. It is arguably one of 00:02:44.080 --> 00:02:46.879 the most dramatic rise and fall stories in the 00:02:46.879 --> 00:02:48.580 history of modern technology. I mean, you've 00:02:48.580 --> 00:02:50.819 got brilliant engineering. You have what looks 00:02:50.819 --> 00:02:52.379 like corporate espionage. You have international 00:02:52.379 --> 00:02:54.580 diplomatic incidents. And you have a cultural 00:02:54.580 --> 00:02:56.020 phenomenon. phenomenon that just fundamentally 00:02:56.020 --> 00:02:59.060 rewired the human brain. Absolutely. But before 00:02:59.060 --> 00:03:00.939 we get into the nuts and bolts of the hardware 00:03:00.939 --> 00:03:03.379 and the servers, we have to talk about that rewiring. 00:03:03.439 --> 00:03:05.599 We have to talk about the crackberry. The crackberry. 00:03:06.259 --> 00:03:08.439 It's one of those terms that if you weren't there, 00:03:08.560 --> 00:03:10.780 it probably sounds like some kind of, you know, 00:03:10.780 --> 00:03:13.759 crazy hyperbole. But it wasn't. It really wasn't. 00:03:13.759 --> 00:03:17.870 No, it was literal. I mean, get this. Webster's 00:03:17.870 --> 00:03:20.810 New World College Dictionary formally recognized 00:03:20.810 --> 00:03:25.009 the word Crackberry in 2006. Wow. Think about 00:03:25.009 --> 00:03:27.810 the cultural saturation you need for a dictionary 00:03:27.810 --> 00:03:30.930 to basically say, yes, this specific brand of 00:03:30.930 --> 00:03:33.349 phone is now synonymous with a dependency disorder. 00:03:33.669 --> 00:03:36.550 It really speaks to the sheer behavioral shift 00:03:36.550 --> 00:03:39.250 it caused. You have to remember the context of 00:03:39.250 --> 00:03:43.009 the late 90s and early 2000s. Before Blackberry, 00:03:43.150 --> 00:03:47.270 email was. It was a destination. Right. You went 00:03:47.270 --> 00:03:49.250 to check your email. You sat down at a desk. 00:03:49.270 --> 00:03:51.370 You booted up a PC. You listened to that awful 00:03:51.370 --> 00:03:53.189 modem screen. The dial -up sound. Oh, my God. 00:03:53.270 --> 00:03:55.509 Exactly. And you waited. You were tethered to 00:03:55.509 --> 00:03:57.189 a physical place. It was the whole you've got 00:03:57.189 --> 00:03:59.689 mail era. It was an event. You planned it. Precisely. 00:03:59.909 --> 00:04:02.449 And BlackBerry just severed that tether. It created 00:04:02.449 --> 00:04:05.550 the always -on culture we now live in. Suddenly, 00:04:05.590 --> 00:04:07.729 the inbox was in your pocket. You could be in 00:04:07.729 --> 00:04:10.759 a taxi. at a dinner party, or in bed, which was 00:04:10.759 --> 00:04:13.400 the source of so many arguments back then. And 00:04:13.400 --> 00:04:15.099 you were connected. It didn't just change how 00:04:15.099 --> 00:04:17.459 we worked. It completely changed the expectations 00:04:17.459 --> 00:04:19.899 of availability. It just collapsed that boundary 00:04:19.899 --> 00:04:22.439 between work time and lifetime and the numbers. 00:04:22.879 --> 00:04:25.660 The numbers really reflect that obsession. I 00:04:25.660 --> 00:04:27.439 was looking at the subscriber stats in our source 00:04:27.439 --> 00:04:30.459 material, and the growth curve is practically 00:04:30.459 --> 00:04:33.019 a vertical wall. It's incredible. At its absolute 00:04:33.019 --> 00:04:37.779 peak, September 2011, there were 85 million BlackBerry 00:04:37.779 --> 00:04:40.189 subscribers. subscribers worldwide. 85 million. 00:04:40.350 --> 00:04:42.589 And you have to put that in the context of 2011. 00:04:42.870 --> 00:04:45.250 That is a massive, massive global footprint. 00:04:45.449 --> 00:04:47.589 But what's even more fascinating to me is the 00:04:47.589 --> 00:04:49.790 speed of the collapse that followed. The drop 00:04:49.790 --> 00:04:52.709 off is it's terrifying from a business perspective. 00:04:53.050 --> 00:04:55.870 By March 2016, so less than five years later, 00:04:55.970 --> 00:04:58.449 that number had plummeted from 85 million down 00:04:58.449 --> 00:05:01.029 to 23 million. A huge drop. And by the fourth 00:05:01.029 --> 00:05:03.550 quarter of 2016, just a few months later, the 00:05:03.550 --> 00:05:06.550 global market share was effectively 0 .0 percent. 00:05:06.970 --> 00:05:10.870 0 .0. From owning half the market to a rounding 00:05:10.870 --> 00:05:14.170 error in five years. That is what we need to 00:05:14.170 --> 00:05:17.970 dissect. How on earth do you lose 85 million 00:05:17.970 --> 00:05:20.689 people that quickly? Well, to understand the 00:05:20.689 --> 00:05:22.550 fall, you really have to understand why they 00:05:22.550 --> 00:05:25.110 rose so high in the first place. And that story 00:05:25.110 --> 00:05:27.810 doesn't start in Silicon Valley. It starts in 00:05:27.810 --> 00:05:30.389 Waterloo, Ontario. The Silicon Valley of the 00:05:30.389 --> 00:05:33.110 North, as they called it. Exactly. This is the 00:05:33.110 --> 00:05:36.850 home of Research in Motion. RIM, founded by Mike 00:05:36.850 --> 00:05:40.230 Lizaritis. And Lizaritis is such a key character 00:05:40.230 --> 00:05:42.430 in all of this because he wasn't one of those 00:05:42.430 --> 00:05:45.649 move fast and break things software guys. No. 00:05:45.790 --> 00:05:48.389 He was an engineer's engineer. He was completely 00:05:48.389 --> 00:05:51.560 obsessed with radio frequencies. battery efficiency, 00:05:51.819 --> 00:05:54.060 the physics of data transmission. They didn't 00:05:54.060 --> 00:05:55.779 start with phones, did they? They started with 00:05:55.779 --> 00:05:57.560 pagers. That's right. And again, for some of 00:05:57.560 --> 00:05:59.459 our younger listeners, a pager was usually just 00:05:59.459 --> 00:06:01.259 a little black box that beeped and showed you 00:06:01.259 --> 00:06:02.980 a phone number, and then you had to go find a 00:06:02.980 --> 00:06:04.839 payphone to call the person back. A one -way 00:06:04.839 --> 00:06:07.930 street. But RIM wasn't making those dumb pagers, 00:06:07.970 --> 00:06:10.470 were they? No. RIM was already pushing the envelope 00:06:10.470 --> 00:06:12.850 with two -way paging. They launched the Inter 00:06:12.850 --> 00:06:16.410 at Active Pager 900 way back in 1996. It was 00:06:16.410 --> 00:06:19.230 a clamshell device, so it flipped open, and it 00:06:19.230 --> 00:06:21.250 had this tiny little keyboard. You could actually 00:06:21.250 --> 00:06:23.569 type a reply. That's the breakthrough right there, 00:06:23.670 --> 00:06:26.490 closing the loop. Right. Then came the 950 in 00:06:26.490 --> 00:06:28.829 1998, which was about the size of a bar of soap. 00:06:29.370 --> 00:06:31.430 But the real inflection point, the device that 00:06:31.430 --> 00:06:33.430 we can point to and say, that's the one, that's 00:06:33.430 --> 00:06:36.189 the start, was the BlackBerry 850. It was released 00:06:36.189 --> 00:06:39.709 on January 19th, 1999. Let's just pause on the 00:06:39.709 --> 00:06:42.189 branding for a second. Because BlackBerry is 00:06:42.189 --> 00:06:44.670 such a perfect name. It's organic. It's friendly. 00:06:44.889 --> 00:06:48.089 It's memorable. It stands out so much against 00:06:48.089 --> 00:06:51.230 these like technical names like Interactive Pager 00:06:51.230 --> 00:06:54.529 or Palm Pilot. Where did that come from? It was 00:06:54.529 --> 00:06:56.459 no accident. They actually hired a professional 00:06:56.459 --> 00:06:59.060 firm called Lexicon Branding. These are the pros 00:06:59.060 --> 00:07:01.060 who name things like the Pentium chip. Oh, wow. 00:07:01.319 --> 00:07:03.259 And the story goes that the branding experts 00:07:03.259 --> 00:07:05.860 were examining the device, specifically looking 00:07:05.860 --> 00:07:08.240 at that little keyboard. The tiny clicky buttons. 00:07:08.480 --> 00:07:11.019 Right. And someone in the room remarked that 00:07:11.019 --> 00:07:13.920 the keys look like the droplets of a fruit. Droplets. 00:07:14.519 --> 00:07:16.800 Is that a real word? It's the botanical term, 00:07:16.899 --> 00:07:19.720 apparently, for the little individual bumps that 00:07:19.720 --> 00:07:22.199 make up a berry, like on a raspberry or a blackberry. 00:07:22.399 --> 00:07:25.560 Huh. I learned something today. So they started 00:07:25.560 --> 00:07:28.879 brainstorming fruit names. They apparently considered 00:07:28.879 --> 00:07:32.180 strawberry, melon, even some vegetables. Just 00:07:32.180 --> 00:07:34.339 shoot me a message on my melon. It doesn't quite 00:07:34.339 --> 00:07:36.139 have the same ring to it. It really doesn't. 00:07:36.279 --> 00:07:39.279 And they felt strawberries sounded too slow, 00:07:39.339 --> 00:07:40.959 like you stroll through a strawberry field. I 00:07:40.959 --> 00:07:43.160 don't know the logic. But blackberry just felt 00:07:43.160 --> 00:07:46.019 snappy. The device was black. The keys looked 00:07:46.019 --> 00:07:49.170 like the fruit. It just clicked and it beat out 00:07:49.170 --> 00:07:51.250 something like 40 other names to become the winner. 00:07:51.329 --> 00:07:53.569 And it was brilliant because it totally softened 00:07:53.569 --> 00:07:56.089 the technology. It made this high tech business 00:07:56.089 --> 00:07:59.730 communication tool feel approachable. But here's 00:07:59.730 --> 00:08:03.310 the thing. The 850 was still at its heart a pager. 00:08:03.329 --> 00:08:06.629 It did email, but it wasn't a phone. When did 00:08:06.629 --> 00:08:08.589 voice actually enter the picture? This is where 00:08:08.589 --> 00:08:11.310 the evolution gets a little clunky. The first 00:08:11.310 --> 00:08:13.870 device that was technically a phone was the BlackBerry 00:08:13.870 --> 00:08:16.949 5810, which came out in 2002. But it had this 00:08:16.949 --> 00:08:20.089 one fatal flaw that is just hilarious in hindsight. 00:08:20.470 --> 00:08:22.670 Oh, I know this one. It's the headset requirement, 00:08:22.949 --> 00:08:25.350 isn't it? It is baffling to think about now. 00:08:25.589 --> 00:08:28.870 The device had no internal microphone and no 00:08:28.870 --> 00:08:31.949 ear speaker. So if you wanted to make or receive 00:08:31.949 --> 00:08:35.220 a phone call, you had to physically plug in a 00:08:35.220 --> 00:08:38.080 wired headset. Just imagine the scene. You're 00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:41.240 this high -powered executive in 2002, your fancy 00:08:41.240 --> 00:08:43.460 new BlackBerry rings, and you're frantically 00:08:43.460 --> 00:08:46.259 untangling a wire from your pocket just to answer, 00:08:46.379 --> 00:08:50.000 hello? It's absurd. It effectively meant you 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:52.240 couldn't use it as a spontaneous phone. It was 00:08:52.240 --> 00:08:54.600 a data device that could do voice if you were 00:08:54.600 --> 00:08:56.700 prepared for it. But here's the crucial insight. 00:08:57.230 --> 00:08:59.409 It didn't matter. Why not? That seems like a 00:08:59.409 --> 00:09:01.809 huge deal. Because voice wasn't the killer app. 00:09:01.990 --> 00:09:04.570 The killer app was push email. Okay, we need 00:09:04.570 --> 00:09:07.169 to go deep on this because today push notifications 00:09:07.169 --> 00:09:09.690 are just standard. Everything is pushed to our 00:09:09.690 --> 00:09:12.049 phones. But back then, this was absolutely revolutionary. 00:09:12.289 --> 00:09:14.990 Explain the difference between polling and push 00:09:14.990 --> 00:09:17.950 in a way that shows why RIM was so far ahead 00:09:17.950 --> 00:09:20.629 of everyone. Sure. So in the pre -BlackBerry 00:09:20.629 --> 00:09:23.230 era, if you had a mobile device like a Palm Pilot 00:09:23.230 --> 00:09:25.009 with a modem attachment or something, you used 00:09:25.009 --> 00:09:26.899 a system called polling. Think of polling like 00:09:26.899 --> 00:09:29.039 you walking out to your physical mailbox at the 00:09:29.039 --> 00:09:31.100 end of the driveway. You walk out, you open the 00:09:31.100 --> 00:09:33.259 box, you check inside, it's empty, you walk back 00:09:33.259 --> 00:09:35.720 to the house. Ten minutes later, you're curious, 00:09:35.899 --> 00:09:38.580 so you walk out again, check again. Still empty. 00:09:38.759 --> 00:09:41.419 It's active. You are doing all the work. Your 00:09:41.419 --> 00:09:43.940 device is doing the work. Exactly. And in computing 00:09:43.940 --> 00:09:46.559 terms, that work costs battery life and data. 00:09:46.779 --> 00:09:49.240 Every time it polls, your device has to wake 00:09:49.240 --> 00:09:51.259 up its radio, establish a connection with the 00:09:51.259 --> 00:09:54.179 server, handshake, ask, is there any mail for 00:09:54.179 --> 00:09:57.639 me? Mm -hmm. get a no, and then shut the radio 00:09:57.639 --> 00:10:00.919 down again. Doing that constantly just drains 00:10:00.919 --> 00:10:04.019 the battery incredibly fast. So what did BlackBerry 00:10:04.019 --> 00:10:07.000 do that was so different? They completely reversed 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:09.059 the flow. They introduced the NOC, the Network 00:10:09.059 --> 00:10:10.679 Operations Center. This was their centralized 00:10:10.679 --> 00:10:13.259 fortress of servers in Waterloo. Right. So when 00:10:13.259 --> 00:10:15.340 an email hit your corporate exchange server at 00:10:15.340 --> 00:10:17.679 your office, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, 00:10:17.840 --> 00:10:20.700 or BES, would... grab it, compress it, encrypt 00:10:20.700 --> 00:10:23.080 it, and fire it instantly to the NOC. So the 00:10:23.080 --> 00:10:26.399 NOC is like the central traffic cop for all BlackBerry 00:10:26.399 --> 00:10:30.019 data. Exactly. And the NOC maintains a constant 00:10:30.019 --> 00:10:33.259 but very, very low -energy heartbeat connection 00:10:33.259 --> 00:10:36.179 with your device out in the field. It's just 00:10:36.179 --> 00:10:38.600 this tiny trickle of data. The moment the NOC 00:10:38.600 --> 00:10:41.360 gets that email, it pushes it down that always 00:10:41.360 --> 00:10:44.279 -on pipe to your device. To use your analogy, 00:10:44.480 --> 00:10:46.460 instead of me walking to the mailbox every 10 00:10:46.460 --> 00:10:48.580 minutes, the mailman literally walks into my 00:10:48.580 --> 00:10:51.179 house and hands me the letter the second it arrives. 00:10:51.519 --> 00:10:53.799 That's a perfect way to put it. And because of 00:10:53.799 --> 00:10:55.899 the incredible compression they used, I mean, 00:10:55.899 --> 00:10:57.919 they were stripping out all the heavy HTML code, 00:10:58.120 --> 00:11:00.000 the big headers just sitting in the raw text. 00:11:00.279 --> 00:11:03.379 It was ridiculously efficient. A BlackBerry could 00:11:03.379 --> 00:11:05.720 last three or four days on a single charge because 00:11:05.720 --> 00:11:08.220 its radio wasn't constantly screaming for a connection. 00:11:08.460 --> 00:11:11.159 It was just listening quietly. That battery life 00:11:11.159 --> 00:11:13.049 was a huge part of the addiction. didn't have 00:11:13.049 --> 00:11:14.789 to think about it. But the other part of the 00:11:14.789 --> 00:11:17.570 addiction was the input method, the keyboard. 00:11:17.789 --> 00:11:21.149 A glorious, cruddy keyboard. It really popularized 00:11:21.149 --> 00:11:23.769 thumb typing. Before this, people were either 00:11:23.769 --> 00:11:26.460 using a stylus on a Palm Pilot. trying to write 00:11:26.460 --> 00:11:29.320 in that weird graffiti shorthand, or they were 00:11:29.320 --> 00:11:32.299 using T9 on a number pad, hitting the number 00:11:32.299 --> 00:11:35.179 seven four times just to get the letter S. It 00:11:35.179 --> 00:11:38.139 was painful. BlackBerry just said, no, we are 00:11:38.139 --> 00:11:40.399 giving you a miniature typewriter for your thumbs. 00:11:40.960 --> 00:11:43.899 And the tactile feedback of that click was so 00:11:43.899 --> 00:11:46.379 essential. The click was a confirmation. You 00:11:46.379 --> 00:11:48.169 didn't even have to look at the screen. people 00:11:48.169 --> 00:11:50.470 became masters at typing under the conference 00:11:50.470 --> 00:11:53.129 room table. The blind type. That was the ultimate 00:11:53.129 --> 00:11:55.269 power move, wasn't it? Maintaining perfect eye 00:11:55.269 --> 00:11:57.169 contact with your boss while you're secretly 00:11:57.169 --> 00:11:59.470 emailing your spouse about what to pick up for 00:11:59.470 --> 00:12:02.970 dinner. It was. And we can't forget the navigation, 00:12:03.230 --> 00:12:06.649 which was just as genius. The side -mounted scroll 00:12:06.649 --> 00:12:08.850 wheel. Oh, the wheel. That click, click, click 00:12:08.850 --> 00:12:10.970 was so satisfying. It was a fidget toy before 00:12:10.970 --> 00:12:12.750 fidget toys were a thing. You could just scroll 00:12:12.750 --> 00:12:14.350 through endless emails with just your thumb. 00:12:15.169 --> 00:12:17.710 Later, they moved to the Pearl trackball. which 00:12:17.710 --> 00:12:20.789 was amazing until it got full of pocket lint. 00:12:20.889 --> 00:12:23.149 And then the optical trackpad, which finally 00:12:23.149 --> 00:12:26.370 solved the lint problem. But that perfect combination, 00:12:26.690 --> 00:12:29.490 the push email for speed, the keyboard for input, 00:12:29.549 --> 00:12:31.870 and the wheel for navigation, it created this 00:12:31.870 --> 00:12:35.450 loop of efficiency that was just intoxicating. 00:12:35.710 --> 00:12:38.070 But there was one more layer to this ecosystem, 00:12:38.309 --> 00:12:41.750 a kind of digital velvet rope that kept you locked 00:12:41.750 --> 00:12:43.889 in and made you feel part of an exclusive club. 00:12:44.169 --> 00:12:46.899 BBM. BlackBerry Messenger. This is really where 00:12:46.899 --> 00:12:49.779 the story shifts from just being a business tool 00:12:49.779 --> 00:12:52.559 to becoming a social lifeline. I mean before 00:12:52.559 --> 00:12:55.240 WhatsApp, before iMessage, before Instagram DMs, 00:12:55.240 --> 00:12:58.980 there was BBM. BBM was the original mobile instant 00:12:58.980 --> 00:13:01.509 messenger. And it was exclusive. It didn't use 00:13:01.509 --> 00:13:04.529 your phone number. It relied on the PIN. PIN. 00:13:04.529 --> 00:13:06.269 That eight character code. Mine was something 00:13:06.269 --> 00:13:08.990 like 20F3A99. It looked like a license plate 00:13:08.990 --> 00:13:11.389 or a secret code. It was hexadecimal. Yeah. And 00:13:11.389 --> 00:13:13.230 unlike a phone number, which you can port to 00:13:13.230 --> 00:13:15.490 a new carrier or a username that you can change, 00:13:15.590 --> 00:13:18.529 the PIN was hard -coded to the silicon of that 00:13:18.529 --> 00:13:20.970 specific device. So your identity was physically, 00:13:21.110 --> 00:13:23.710 inextricably tied to the hardware in your hand. 00:13:23.889 --> 00:13:28.450 Yes. And to message someone... You had to exchange 00:13:28.450 --> 00:13:31.269 pins. It became this whole ritual. What's your 00:13:31.269 --> 00:13:34.629 pin was the ultimate pickup line in a bar in 00:13:34.629 --> 00:13:38.309 2005. It was a completely closed loop. If you 00:13:38.309 --> 00:13:39.970 didn't have a Blackberry, you weren't invited 00:13:39.970 --> 00:13:41.950 to the party. And it introduced features that 00:13:41.950 --> 00:13:44.350 completely changed social anxiety forever. I'm 00:13:44.350 --> 00:13:46.330 talking about the D and the R. Delivered and 00:13:46.330 --> 00:13:49.309 read. The original blue ticks from iMessage. 00:13:49.429 --> 00:13:52.629 The R, the absolute trauma of the R. Seeing that 00:13:52.629 --> 00:13:54.429 someone had read your message and was actively 00:13:54.429 --> 00:13:57.470 choosing not to reply, BlackBerry literally engineered 00:13:57.470 --> 00:14:00.009 that specific brand of modern anxiety. They did. 00:14:00.350 --> 00:14:02.970 But there was also a very practical economic 00:14:02.970 --> 00:14:06.149 reason for BBM's dominance, especially in markets 00:14:06.149 --> 00:14:07.929 outside of North America. It was the cost, right? 00:14:08.029 --> 00:14:10.029 It was a huge factor. You have to remember, in 00:14:10.029 --> 00:14:12.990 the mid -2000s, SMS text messages cost money. 00:14:13.340 --> 00:14:15.820 You paid 10 cents, 20 cents per message, or maybe 00:14:15.820 --> 00:14:18.139 you had a monthly plan with a bucket of 100 texts. 00:14:18.340 --> 00:14:20.799 I vividly remember going over my text limit as 00:14:20.799 --> 00:14:23.899 a teenager and my dad absolutely losing his mind 00:14:23.899 --> 00:14:26.960 at the bill. We all do. BVM, on the other hand, 00:14:27.019 --> 00:14:29.600 used data. And because the data packets were 00:14:29.600 --> 00:14:32.240 so tiny and compressed, it was virtually free 00:14:32.240 --> 00:14:35.250 if you had even the most basic data plan. You 00:14:35.250 --> 00:14:38.830 could send 10 ,000 BBMs for the cost of zero 00:14:38.830 --> 00:14:41.789 SMS messages. In markets like Indonesia, South 00:14:41.789 --> 00:14:44.730 Africa, and the UK, this made BlackBerry the 00:14:44.730 --> 00:14:47.570 default phone for teenagers. It wasn't a business 00:14:47.570 --> 00:14:49.919 tool there. It was a chat machine. We should 00:14:49.919 --> 00:14:51.759 circle back to Indonesia later because that's 00:14:51.759 --> 00:14:54.019 a whole fascinating subplot in itself. But I 00:14:54.019 --> 00:14:56.759 want to pivot from the teenagers to the complete 00:14:56.759 --> 00:14:58.960 other end of the spectrum, the spies and the 00:14:58.960 --> 00:15:01.740 presidents, because the other massive selling 00:15:01.740 --> 00:15:04.929 point of the whole PI system was security. This 00:15:04.929 --> 00:15:07.230 is where BlackBerry just completely dominated 00:15:07.230 --> 00:15:09.029 the enterprise world. They had the BlackBerry 00:15:09.029 --> 00:15:11.830 Enterprise Server, the BES. This allowed a company's 00:15:11.830 --> 00:15:14.350 IT department to have total granular control 00:15:14.350 --> 00:15:17.070 over their fleet of devices. They could remotely 00:15:17.070 --> 00:15:19.809 wipe a phone if an employee lost it. They could 00:15:19.809 --> 00:15:22.330 enforce password policies. It was the CIO's dream. 00:15:22.549 --> 00:15:24.990 And the encryption. End -to -end encryption between 00:15:24.990 --> 00:15:28.210 the device and the corporate server. Initially, 00:15:28.210 --> 00:15:30.669 it was triple DES. Later, it was upgraded to 00:15:30.669 --> 00:15:33.970 AES. For years, it was considered the Fort Knox. 00:15:34.120 --> 00:15:36.879 of mobile communications. It was so secure that 00:15:36.879 --> 00:15:38.980 the U .S. government was their single biggest 00:15:38.980 --> 00:15:41.559 customer. And of course, we have to talk about 00:15:41.559 --> 00:15:44.639 the most famous user of all time, Barack Obama. 00:15:44.820 --> 00:15:47.159 The first BlackBerry president. When he won the 00:15:47.159 --> 00:15:49.279 election in 2008, there was this legitimate battle 00:15:49.279 --> 00:15:51.620 between him and the Secret Service. There was. 00:15:51.960 --> 00:15:55.139 The standard protocol was no outside devices. 00:15:55.639 --> 00:15:57.559 The president of the United States does not carry 00:15:57.559 --> 00:15:59.820 a personal cell phone. It's a security risk. 00:15:59.919 --> 00:16:03.090 It's a tracker. But Obama was an addict. He fought 00:16:03.090 --> 00:16:05.250 for it. He said he needed it to stay connected 00:16:05.250 --> 00:16:07.429 to the real world, to escape the White House 00:16:07.429 --> 00:16:09.110 bubble. So they had to come to a compromise. 00:16:09.370 --> 00:16:11.610 They did. The NSA actually had to custom build 00:16:11.610 --> 00:16:14.490 him a device. They took a BlackBerry 8830 World 00:16:14.490 --> 00:16:17.110 Edition and they strip mined it. They removed 00:16:17.110 --> 00:16:19.610 the camera, the microphone, the GPS, basically 00:16:19.610 --> 00:16:21.769 everything fun. And then they loaded it with 00:16:21.769 --> 00:16:24.350 their own custom hardened encryption software. 00:16:24.649 --> 00:16:26.990 It could only communicate with a tiny handful 00:16:26.990 --> 00:16:29.710 of whitelisted people. like his chief of staff 00:16:29.710 --> 00:16:32.570 and his family. But he got to keep it. And marketing 00:16:32.570 --> 00:16:34.929 experts at the time estimated that that single 00:16:34.929 --> 00:16:37.330 image, the president of the United States looking 00:16:37.330 --> 00:16:40.649 down at his BlackBerry, was worth somewhere between 00:16:40.649 --> 00:16:45.009 $25 and $50 million in free advertising. It completely 00:16:45.009 --> 00:16:48.090 solidified the brand's identity as the serious 00:16:48.090 --> 00:16:51.750 choice. The message was... If it's secure enough 00:16:51.750 --> 00:16:54.250 for the nuclear codes, it's secure enough for 00:16:54.250 --> 00:16:56.350 your quarterly earnings spreadsheet. And it wasn't 00:16:56.350 --> 00:16:58.950 just him. Hillary Clinton famously used one as 00:16:58.950 --> 00:17:01.409 Secretary of State, which, well, we all know 00:17:01.409 --> 00:17:03.769 that led to some email server controversies down 00:17:03.769 --> 00:17:06.470 the line. But it proves the point about its prevalence 00:17:06.470 --> 00:17:09.529 in government. And the source material also mentions 00:17:09.529 --> 00:17:11.789 police forces. Yeah, the West Yorkshire police 00:17:11.789 --> 00:17:14.329 in the UK, police forces in India. The logic 00:17:14.329 --> 00:17:17.150 was all about efficiency. If an officer can run 00:17:17.150 --> 00:17:19.549 a license plate or file a report right from the 00:17:19.549 --> 00:17:21.769 street on their Blackberry, they don't have to 00:17:21.769 --> 00:17:23.450 drive all the way back to the station to use 00:17:23.450 --> 00:17:26.650 a desktop. It kept cops on the beat longer. So 00:17:26.650 --> 00:17:29.750 if we paint the picture, we have this image of 00:17:29.750 --> 00:17:33.410 absolute total dominance. The corporate world 00:17:33.410 --> 00:17:35.809 is locked in through the BES. The government 00:17:35.809 --> 00:17:38.309 is locked in through security. The teenagers 00:17:38.309 --> 00:17:40.809 are locked in through the free messaging on BBM. 00:17:41.029 --> 00:17:44.309 It just feels... Unbreakable. It certainly must 00:17:44.309 --> 00:17:47.029 have felt that way to them in say 2009. But they 00:17:47.029 --> 00:17:51.089 got greedy. Or maybe ambitious is the kinder 00:17:51.089 --> 00:17:53.210 word. They weren't content with just the suits 00:17:53.210 --> 00:17:55.650 and the spies. They wanted the regular consumer 00:17:55.650 --> 00:17:58.579 too. The big consumer pivot. This is where we 00:17:58.579 --> 00:18:00.579 see the launch of the BlackBerry Pearl back in 00:18:00.579 --> 00:18:03.079 2006. The Pearl was a totally different device. 00:18:03.319 --> 00:18:05.779 It was skinny. It came in different colors. It 00:18:05.779 --> 00:18:08.619 had a camera. It had a media player. It was explicitly 00:18:08.619 --> 00:18:11.279 designed to look good in a purse or a pocket, 00:18:11.339 --> 00:18:13.440 not just hang off a belt clip and a leather holster. 00:18:13.519 --> 00:18:15.779 Yeah. And you know what? It worked. This is when 00:18:15.779 --> 00:18:17.579 the celebrity culture around BlackBerry just 00:18:17.579 --> 00:18:20.420 exploded. The list of users is a complete who's 00:18:20.420 --> 00:18:23.460 who of the 2000s. You have Kim Kardashian. A 00:18:23.460 --> 00:18:26.170 self -confessed addict. She was famous for saying 00:18:26.170 --> 00:18:29.630 she stockpiled old BlackBerry Bold models that 00:18:29.630 --> 00:18:32.950 she bought on eBay just to have backups because 00:18:32.950 --> 00:18:34.769 she was terrified they would stop making them. 00:18:34.849 --> 00:18:37.450 She needed that physical keyboard for her typing 00:18:37.450 --> 00:18:40.250 speed. Jay -Z, Beyonce. And here's a stat from 00:18:40.250 --> 00:18:42.670 the source that just blew my mind. Eminem. Marshall 00:18:42.670 --> 00:18:44.509 Mathers, yeah. The source material says that 00:18:44.509 --> 00:18:47.569 as of 2024, he reportedly still uses a BlackBerry 00:18:47.569 --> 00:18:50.690 OS phone. Talk about brand loyalty. But you can 00:18:50.690 --> 00:18:52.869 kind of see why, right? He's a famously private 00:18:52.869 --> 00:18:55.799 person. He probably wants a tool that just does 00:18:55.799 --> 00:18:58.319 communication, not a distraction machine with 00:18:58.319 --> 00:19:00.299 a million apps. So hit us with the peak numbers. 00:19:00.460 --> 00:19:03.059 When was RIM officially on top of the world? 00:19:03.240 --> 00:19:07.160 The year was 2009. At that point, RIM held 56 00:19:07.160 --> 00:19:10.720 % of the entire U .S. smartphone market. Fortune 00:19:10.720 --> 00:19:12.819 magazine ranked them the number one fastest growing 00:19:12.819 --> 00:19:14.279 company in the world. They were just printing 00:19:14.279 --> 00:19:17.319 money. 56%. That is basically a monopoly. And 00:19:17.319 --> 00:19:19.789 yet, and this is... the real tragedy of the story. 00:19:19.930 --> 00:19:22.910 By 2009, the seeds of their destruction had already 00:19:22.910 --> 00:19:24.650 been planted and had been growing for two full 00:19:24.650 --> 00:19:28.089 years. January 9, 2007, the Mac World Expo in 00:19:28.089 --> 00:19:30.529 San Francisco. Steve Jobs. He walks out on stage 00:19:30.529 --> 00:19:33.710 and introduces the iPhone. And the mythology 00:19:33.710 --> 00:19:36.450 around this event is often that the executives 00:19:36.450 --> 00:19:38.549 at BlackBerry just ignored it, that they laughed 00:19:38.549 --> 00:19:41.170 at it. Is that true? Did they laugh at it? Not 00:19:41.170 --> 00:19:44.170 exactly. They did see it, but they just fundamentally 00:19:44.170 --> 00:19:47.059 misunderstood what it was. And to be fair to 00:19:47.059 --> 00:19:50.160 them, from their very specific engineering -focused 00:19:50.160 --> 00:19:53.079 perspective, the original iPhone was a disaster. 00:19:53.359 --> 00:19:56.480 It kind of was. It ran on the slow 2G network, 00:19:56.619 --> 00:19:59.519 not 3G. It had no copy -paste, no MMS messaging. 00:19:59.940 --> 00:20:02.359 The battery life was atrocious compared to a 00:20:02.359 --> 00:20:04.299 BlackBerry. And the keyboard, I mean, trying 00:20:04.299 --> 00:20:06.460 to type on glass felt like tapping on a table. 00:20:06.519 --> 00:20:08.839 It was awful. Right. Mike Lazaridis, the founder, 00:20:08.980 --> 00:20:11.099 looked at the iPhone. He said, basically, this 00:20:11.099 --> 00:20:13.579 is a toy. It consumes a massive amount of data, 00:20:13.619 --> 00:20:15.640 the battery won't last a day, and you can't type 00:20:15.640 --> 00:20:18.079 on it. No serious lawyer or banker will ever 00:20:18.079 --> 00:20:19.839 give up their physical keyboard for a sheet of 00:20:19.839 --> 00:20:21.579 glass. He viewed the phone as a productivity 00:20:21.579 --> 00:20:24.099 tool, an email and messaging machine. Exactly. 00:20:24.359 --> 00:20:27.099 RIM was optimizing for production, for writing 00:20:27.099 --> 00:20:29.519 words, for sending messages. Apple was optimizing 00:20:29.519 --> 00:20:32.140 for consumption, for browsing the real web, looking 00:20:32.140 --> 00:20:34.900 at photos, watching videos. And RIM completely 00:20:34.900 --> 00:20:37.180 missed the fact that even serious business people 00:20:37.180 --> 00:20:39.960 like to have fun sometimes. Precisely. There's 00:20:39.960 --> 00:20:42.059 a story in one of the books about Blackberry 00:20:42.059 --> 00:20:44.940 that when RIMS engineers first got an iPhone 00:20:44.940 --> 00:20:47.759 and tore it down, they thought it was fake. They 00:20:47.759 --> 00:20:49.339 looked at the size of the screen and the speed 00:20:49.339 --> 00:20:51.619 of the processor and said, this is impossible. 00:20:51.859 --> 00:20:53.900 The battery logic doesn't work. It must be some 00:20:53.900 --> 00:20:56.980 kind of trick. They were so entrenched in their 00:20:56.980 --> 00:20:59.480 own engineering constraints, you know, bandwidth 00:20:59.480 --> 00:21:02.579 conservation, battery efficiency, that they couldn't 00:21:02.579 --> 00:21:04.660 imagine a world where people would just accept 00:21:04.660 --> 00:21:07.019 charging their phone every single night. And 00:21:07.019 --> 00:21:09.339 that mindset, that sort of engineering hubris 00:21:09.339 --> 00:21:11.859 that we know better than the user, is what started 00:21:11.859 --> 00:21:16.220 the slide. By 2010, the iPhone 3GS had overtaken 00:21:16.220 --> 00:21:18.660 the BlackBerry curve as the best -selling device 00:21:18.660 --> 00:21:22.859 in the U .S. Android was rising fast, and BlackBerry 00:21:22.859 --> 00:21:24.960 started to panic. And from that panic came the 00:21:24.960 --> 00:21:27.920 BlackBerry storm. Oh, the storm. 2008. This is 00:21:27.920 --> 00:21:30.000 their big, rushed answer to the iPhone. And it 00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:32.440 was. It was so weird. It was. It was a touchscreen. 00:21:32.559 --> 00:21:34.599 But because they were so obsessed with the idea 00:21:34.599 --> 00:21:38.140 of tactile feedback, the click of a keyboard, 00:21:38.420 --> 00:21:41.359 they made the entire screen one big mechanical 00:21:41.359 --> 00:21:44.460 button. The whole glass panel physically moved 00:21:44.460 --> 00:21:47.140 down and clicked when you pressed it. Sure press, 00:21:47.359 --> 00:21:49.400 they called it. It was a complete disaster. The 00:21:49.400 --> 00:21:51.759 mechanics failed all the time. The software was 00:21:51.759 --> 00:21:54.980 rushed and incredibly buggy. It was slow. It 00:21:54.980 --> 00:21:56.859 was the first time that loyal BlackBerry users 00:21:56.859 --> 00:21:59.200 picked up a new device from the company and said, 00:21:59.279 --> 00:22:02.839 wait, this is garbage. It really damaged the 00:22:02.839 --> 00:22:05.619 brand's reputation for quality. But even if the 00:22:05.619 --> 00:22:08.019 hardware had been perfect, they had a much, much 00:22:08.019 --> 00:22:11.059 bigger problem looming. The app gap. This was 00:22:11.059 --> 00:22:14.349 the true killer. The real Trojan horse. Apple 00:22:14.349 --> 00:22:17.009 had the App Store. Google had what was then the 00:22:17.009 --> 00:22:19.549 Android market. Developers were flocking to these 00:22:19.549 --> 00:22:21.589 new platforms because the tools were great and 00:22:21.589 --> 00:22:23.430 there was a hungry audience of millions. And 00:22:23.430 --> 00:22:26.170 Blackberry. Blackberry OS was built on an old, 00:22:26.250 --> 00:22:29.049 clunky, Java -based platform. It was designed 00:22:29.049 --> 00:22:31.630 for security and efficiency, not for playing 00:22:31.630 --> 00:22:33.890 Angry Birds or scrolling through Instagram or 00:22:33.890 --> 00:22:36.329 hailing an Uber. So while your friends with iPhones 00:22:36.329 --> 00:22:39.170 are hailing a cab with an app, you're stuck trying 00:22:39.170 --> 00:22:42.670 to look up a local taxi number on a slow, clunky 00:22:42.670 --> 00:22:45.609 web browser on your Blackberry. That's exactly 00:22:45.609 --> 00:22:47.849 the problem. They tried to fix it. They released 00:22:47.849 --> 00:22:50.269 the Playbook tablet in 2011, which was actually 00:22:50.269 --> 00:22:52.430 a pretty nice piece of hardware. And they built 00:22:52.430 --> 00:22:55.269 an Android player into it, which was supposed 00:22:55.269 --> 00:22:58.049 to let you run Android apps on a BlackBerry device. 00:22:58.599 --> 00:23:01.079 But emulation is never as good as the real thing, 00:23:01.220 --> 00:23:03.880 is it? Never. It was buggy. It was slow. It was 00:23:03.880 --> 00:23:05.980 a complicated process for developers. It was 00:23:05.980 --> 00:23:09.019 like putting a small Band -Aid on a massive gaping 00:23:09.019 --> 00:23:11.279 wound. And then, as if the fierce competition 00:23:11.279 --> 00:23:13.660 wasn't enough, the one thing BlackBerry had left, 00:23:13.759 --> 00:23:15.900 their rock -solid reputation for reliability, 00:23:16.380 --> 00:23:19.779 it just imploded. The great crash of 2011. We 00:23:19.779 --> 00:23:21.779 talked about the NOC earlier, that centralized 00:23:21.779 --> 00:23:24.400 fortress that made everything so efficient. Well, 00:23:24.420 --> 00:23:26.180 the major downside of a centralized fortress 00:23:26.180 --> 00:23:28.819 is that it's a single point of failure. If the 00:23:28.819 --> 00:23:32.240 NOC goes down, everyone goes down. And in October 00:23:32.240 --> 00:23:36.000 of 2011, it went down hard. A core switch failed 00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:39.019 at their data center in Slough in England. And 00:23:39.019 --> 00:23:41.279 for reasons that are still kind of murky, the 00:23:41.279 --> 00:23:44.559 backup system failed to kick in properly. The 00:23:44.559 --> 00:23:46.839 backlog of messages started to cascade and spiral 00:23:46.839 --> 00:23:49.880 out of control. For days, I mean literally for 00:23:49.880 --> 00:23:53.039 days, millions of users across Europe, the Middle 00:23:53.039 --> 00:23:55.619 East, Africa, and eventually North America had 00:23:55.619 --> 00:23:58.920 nothing. No email, no BBM. Just imagine the business 00:23:58.920 --> 00:24:02.390 chaos, deals being missed. Critical communications 00:24:02.390 --> 00:24:05.009 just cut off. It was a nightmare. It cost the 00:24:05.009 --> 00:24:07.730 company an estimated $50 million in service credits 00:24:07.730 --> 00:24:10.450 they had to give to carriers. But the reputational 00:24:10.450 --> 00:24:12.910 damage was incalculable. It broke the trust. 00:24:13.170 --> 00:24:14.950 People all over the world suddenly realized, 00:24:15.109 --> 00:24:17.670 wait a minute. If this one server room and again 00:24:17.670 --> 00:24:20.250 breaks, my phone is completely useless. Why am 00:24:20.250 --> 00:24:22.309 I paying a premium for this? So the walls are 00:24:22.309 --> 00:24:24.390 just closing in from all sides. But before we 00:24:24.390 --> 00:24:26.349 get to the final financial collapse, we need 00:24:26.349 --> 00:24:29.529 to talk about a massive legal battle that almost 00:24:29.529 --> 00:24:32.000 killed the company way. Way, way before the iPhone 00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:35.339 was even a glimmer in Steve Jobs' eye. Because 00:24:35.339 --> 00:24:37.140 this is a part of the story people often forget. 00:24:37.339 --> 00:24:40.220 The NTP lawsuit. This is a legal thriller that 00:24:40.220 --> 00:24:43.180 honestly deserves its own movie. So who or what 00:24:43.180 --> 00:24:47.480 was NTP? NTP Inc. was a patent holding company 00:24:47.480 --> 00:24:50.519 based in Virginia. Now, critics would call them 00:24:50.519 --> 00:24:52.960 a patent troll. They didn't make any products. 00:24:53.000 --> 00:24:55.079 They didn't have a factory or employees in that 00:24:55.079 --> 00:24:58.369 sense. They just held patents. And one of those 00:24:58.369 --> 00:25:00.549 patents, they claimed, covered the fundamental 00:25:00.549 --> 00:25:03.890 concept of wireless email. The concept. That 00:25:03.890 --> 00:25:06.630 seems incredibly broad. It was. They sued RIM 00:25:06.630 --> 00:25:09.630 way back in 2000. And RIM, being this group of 00:25:09.630 --> 00:25:12.089 proud Canadian engineers, largely just dismissed 00:25:12.089 --> 00:25:14.390 it. They thought, this is absurd. We invented 00:25:14.390 --> 00:25:16.849 this technology from scratch. These guys are 00:25:16.849 --> 00:25:19.109 nobodies. The court will obviously see that. 00:25:19.250 --> 00:25:22.130 A classic case of engineering hubris in the courtroom. 00:25:22.430 --> 00:25:25.339 A fatal case of hubris. The jury didn't understand 00:25:25.339 --> 00:25:27.420 all the technical nuance. They looked at the 00:25:27.420 --> 00:25:29.019 broad language of the patent. They looked at 00:25:29.019 --> 00:25:30.599 what BlackBerry did and they said, yep, that 00:25:30.599 --> 00:25:33.619 looks the same to us. They found RIM guilty of 00:25:33.619 --> 00:25:36.259 infringement, but not just infringement, willful 00:25:36.259 --> 00:25:38.759 infringement. Willful. That is a very scary word 00:25:38.759 --> 00:25:41.099 in patent law. It is because it means the judge 00:25:41.099 --> 00:25:44.160 has the discretion to triple the damages. But 00:25:44.160 --> 00:25:46.180 the money wasn't even the real threat. The real 00:25:46.180 --> 00:25:48.259 threat was the injunction. Explain what that 00:25:48.259 --> 00:25:51.369 means. A judge, a man named James Spencer. was 00:25:51.369 --> 00:25:54.210 reportedly just fed up with RIM's arrogant attitude 00:25:54.210 --> 00:25:56.869 throughout the trial. He was on the verge of 00:25:56.869 --> 00:25:59.349 signing a court order that would have legally 00:25:59.349 --> 00:26:02.430 forced RIM to shut down the entire BlackBerry 00:26:02.430 --> 00:26:04.390 network in the United States. Just turn it off. 00:26:04.589 --> 00:26:06.910 Turn it off. Every BlackBerry in Washington, 00:26:07.109 --> 00:26:10.410 D .C., every lawyer in New York, every doctor 00:26:10.410 --> 00:26:13.150 on call dead. Instantly. That sounds like a legitimate 00:26:13.150 --> 00:26:15.589 national security crisis waiting to happen. It 00:26:15.589 --> 00:26:18.440 was. The situation got so dire. that the U .S. 00:26:18.440 --> 00:26:20.220 Department of Justice and the Department of Defense 00:26:20.220 --> 00:26:23.200 actually had to intervene. They filed official 00:26:23.200 --> 00:26:25.839 briefs with the court saying effectively, Your 00:26:25.839 --> 00:26:28.380 Honor, please do not turn this service off. The 00:26:28.380 --> 00:26:30.259 United States government cannot function without 00:26:30.259 --> 00:26:33.279 BlackBerry. That is just wild. The government 00:26:33.279 --> 00:26:35.180 basically had to admit they were too addicted 00:26:35.180 --> 00:26:37.460 to the product to allow the normal legal process 00:26:37.460 --> 00:26:40.259 to take its course. That intense pressure is 00:26:40.259 --> 00:26:43.269 what finally forced RIM to settle. In 2006, they 00:26:43.269 --> 00:26:47.430 wrote a check to NTP for $612 .5 million. Over 00:26:47.430 --> 00:26:50.089 half a billion dollars. It was a painful, painful 00:26:50.089 --> 00:26:52.789 check to write, but it kept the lights on. And 00:26:52.789 --> 00:26:54.849 it bought them the time they needed to enjoy 00:26:54.849 --> 00:26:57.450 that 2009 peak we talked about earlier. But the 00:26:57.450 --> 00:26:59.430 government's relationship with BlackBerry wasn't 00:26:59.430 --> 00:27:01.349 always so supportive, was it? We talked about 00:27:01.349 --> 00:27:04.069 security before, about how unbreakable the encryption 00:27:04.069 --> 00:27:07.230 was. But there's a darker chapter here when it 00:27:07.230 --> 00:27:09.849 comes to privacy. The Great Privacy Paradox. 00:27:10.750 --> 00:27:13.109 BlackBerry's biggest selling point was that it 00:27:13.109 --> 00:27:16.369 was unhackable. But the problem is, if you are 00:27:16.369 --> 00:27:20.049 truly unhackable, authoritarian governments really, 00:27:20.150 --> 00:27:22.569 really hate you. I'm seeing notes here about 00:27:22.569 --> 00:27:25.369 the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and India all threatening 00:27:25.369 --> 00:27:29.160 to ban the service. Right. Around 2010... These 00:27:29.160 --> 00:27:32.039 countries and others issued ultimatums. They 00:27:32.039 --> 00:27:34.079 said terrorists and criminals are using BBM to 00:27:34.079 --> 00:27:36.519 communicate because we can't monitor it. You 00:27:36.519 --> 00:27:38.180 need to give our law enforcement agencies the 00:27:38.180 --> 00:27:40.220 encryption keys or we are banning BlackBerry 00:27:40.220 --> 00:27:42.619 service in our country. So open a back door for 00:27:42.619 --> 00:27:44.859 us or get out. That's exactly what it was. And 00:27:44.859 --> 00:27:47.299 RIM was in a terrible bind. If they said no, 00:27:47.480 --> 00:27:49.660 they lose access to these massive, fast -growing 00:27:49.660 --> 00:27:52.920 markets. If they said yes, they completely destroy 00:27:52.920 --> 00:27:55.480 their global reputation for security. So what 00:27:55.480 --> 00:27:57.900 did they do? For the most part, they blinked. 00:27:58.140 --> 00:28:00.779 In most of those cases, they established servers 00:28:00.779 --> 00:28:03.680 within those countries that would allow for what's 00:28:03.680 --> 00:28:06.319 called lawful interception. They gave the governments 00:28:06.319 --> 00:28:08.839 a way in. So the unbreakable shield definitely 00:28:08.839 --> 00:28:11.519 had some cracks in it. And those cracks got a 00:28:11.519 --> 00:28:14.359 whole lot wider in 2013 with the Edward Snowden 00:28:14.359 --> 00:28:17.910 leaks. Oh, boy. The NSA files. The documents 00:28:17.910 --> 00:28:20.369 that came out were pretty damning. They revealed 00:28:20.369 --> 00:28:23.349 that the NSA and their British counterpart, GCHQ, 00:28:23.569 --> 00:28:26.609 had been successfully compromising BlackBerry 00:28:26.609 --> 00:28:29.470 data for years. What specifically could they 00:28:29.470 --> 00:28:32.490 do? The leaked documents suggested the NSA could 00:28:32.490 --> 00:28:35.930 read SMS traffic on BlackBerry devices and had 00:28:35.930 --> 00:28:38.309 found ways to decrypt some BlackBerry emails. 00:28:38.630 --> 00:28:41.730 But the British GCHQ had a program with the most 00:28:41.730 --> 00:28:44.930 incredible name. Scrap Heap Challenge. Scrap 00:28:44.930 --> 00:28:47.329 Heap Challenge? That sounds like a monster truck 00:28:47.329 --> 00:28:49.829 rally. It was a spoofing tool. It allowed British 00:28:49.829 --> 00:28:52.470 intelligence agents to send emails that looked 00:28:52.470 --> 00:28:54.269 like they came from a target's BlackBerry device. 00:28:54.450 --> 00:28:56.529 So they could impersonate you in an email. Yes. 00:28:57.130 --> 00:29:00.329 And perhaps the most technical but also most 00:29:00.329 --> 00:29:03.869 concerning revelation was about a specific encryption 00:29:03.869 --> 00:29:08.069 algorithm called Dual ECDRBG. That's a mouthful. 00:29:08.250 --> 00:29:10.509 It's a random number generator that's used to 00:29:10.509 --> 00:29:13.690 create encryption keys. The U .S. National Institute 00:29:13.690 --> 00:29:17.029 of Standards and Technology, or NIST, eventually 00:29:17.029 --> 00:29:19.549 had to warn people not to use it because it very 00:29:19.549 --> 00:29:21.970 likely contained a mathematical backdoor that 00:29:21.970 --> 00:29:24.049 had been put there by the NSA. And BlackBerry 00:29:24.049 --> 00:29:26.509 was using it. BlackBerry Software supported this 00:29:26.509 --> 00:29:29.369 flawed algorithm long after these security concerns 00:29:29.369 --> 00:29:31.230 had been raised, and they didn't seem to issue 00:29:31.230 --> 00:29:33.650 any advisory to their customers about it. So 00:29:33.650 --> 00:29:35.690 while they were selling military -grade security 00:29:35.690 --> 00:29:38.440 to you and me, The big intelligence agencies 00:29:38.440 --> 00:29:40.660 potentially had a skeleton key the whole time. 00:29:40.779 --> 00:29:43.099 It certainly complicates the whole security legacy. 00:29:43.279 --> 00:29:46.099 They were secure against maybe a corporate rival 00:29:46.099 --> 00:29:48.660 or a hacker, but not against the state. That 00:29:48.660 --> 00:29:50.759 seems to be the case. Okay, let's fast forward 00:29:50.759 --> 00:29:52.180 to the endgame. We're talking about the years 00:29:52.180 --> 00:29:55.500 2013 to 2016. This is the era of the Hail Mary 00:29:55.500 --> 00:29:58.180 passes. It's the tragic final phase, really. 00:29:58.480 --> 00:30:00.960 The company knows it's bleeding users and money. 00:30:01.059 --> 00:30:04.279 They finally replaced the co -CEOs, Michael Azuritis 00:30:04.279 --> 00:30:07.500 and Jim Bolsillier out. A new guy, Thorsten Heinz, 00:30:07.500 --> 00:30:10.319 comes in, and then later John Chen. And they 00:30:10.319 --> 00:30:12.640 bet the entire company on one last roll of the 00:30:12.640 --> 00:30:15.700 dice, BlackBerry 10. I remember BlackBerry 10. 00:30:15.880 --> 00:30:19.240 The Z10, which was all touchscreen, and the Q10, 00:30:19.480 --> 00:30:22.480 which had the keyboard. And you know what? The 00:30:22.480 --> 00:30:24.500 OS itself was actually pretty good. It had this 00:30:24.500 --> 00:30:27.240 feature called the hub that aggregated all... 00:30:27.579 --> 00:30:29.839 Your messages, email, Twitter, Facebook, everything 00:30:29.839 --> 00:30:33.339 into one single beautiful stream. It had a flow 00:30:33.339 --> 00:30:35.680 interface that was all based on gestures. I remember 00:30:35.680 --> 00:30:38.339 trying a Z10 in a store. It felt modern. It felt 00:30:38.339 --> 00:30:41.500 fluid. But it also felt empty. It was a ghost 00:30:41.500 --> 00:30:43.849 town. The app problem was never solved. Instagram 00:30:43.849 --> 00:30:46.190 wasn't there. Snapchat wasn't there. All the 00:30:46.190 --> 00:30:48.170 big games weren't there. And by 2013, if you 00:30:48.170 --> 00:30:49.849 didn't have the apps, you didn't have a viable 00:30:49.849 --> 00:30:52.250 smartphone, you just had a really nice pager 00:30:52.250 --> 00:30:55.029 with a web browser. The classic case of too little, 00:30:55.130 --> 00:30:58.750 too late. Exactly. The sales were abysmal. They 00:30:58.750 --> 00:31:02.170 produced millions of Z10s that just sat in warehouses. 00:31:02.329 --> 00:31:04.650 They had to take a massive inventory write -down 00:31:04.650 --> 00:31:06.950 of nearly a billion dollars on unsold phones. 00:31:07.519 --> 00:31:10.220 It was over. So in a final act of desperation, 00:31:10.599 --> 00:31:14.059 they did the unthinkable. They surrendered to 00:31:14.059 --> 00:31:16.559 the enemy. They adopted Android. The BlackBerry 00:31:16.559 --> 00:31:20.500 Priv. 2015. The name Priv was supposed to stand 00:31:20.500 --> 00:31:23.640 for privacy and privilege. It was a slider phone. 00:31:23.880 --> 00:31:26.299 It looked like a normal Android slab, but the 00:31:26.299 --> 00:31:28.880 whole screen could slide up to reveal a classic 00:31:28.880 --> 00:31:32.240 physical BlackBerry keyboard underneath. A Frankenstein's 00:31:32.240 --> 00:31:34.700 monster of a device. It was actually kind of 00:31:34.700 --> 00:31:36.619 cool. I know people who loved it. But it was 00:31:36.619 --> 00:31:38.640 very expensive. And by that point, the brand 00:31:38.640 --> 00:31:40.539 was just cold. The magic was gone. People had 00:31:40.539 --> 00:31:42.940 moved on to Samsung and Apple. And that leads 00:31:42.940 --> 00:31:45.680 us to what I call the zombie brand era, September 00:31:45.680 --> 00:31:48.640 2016. That's the date BlackBerry officially announced 00:31:48.640 --> 00:31:50.720 they would no longer design or manufacture their 00:31:50.720 --> 00:31:53.099 own hardware. They were completely out of the 00:31:53.099 --> 00:31:54.619 phone business. Oh, wait a minute. I definitely 00:31:54.619 --> 00:31:57.180 saw new BlackBerry phones for sale after 2016. 00:31:57.619 --> 00:32:00.519 You did. But they weren't made by BlackBerry 00:32:00.519 --> 00:32:02.700 in Waterloo. They were just licensing the name. 00:32:03.039 --> 00:32:05.920 A big Chinese electronics company called TCL 00:32:05.920 --> 00:32:08.779 picked up the global license. They're the ones 00:32:08.779 --> 00:32:11.140 who made the BlackBerry Key 1 and Key 2. So it 00:32:11.140 --> 00:32:14.180 was just outsourced nostalgia. Pretty much. And 00:32:14.180 --> 00:32:15.720 they were actually pretty solid phones. They 00:32:15.720 --> 00:32:18.119 ran Android. They had good keyboards and amazing 00:32:18.119 --> 00:32:21.079 battery life. For the few remaining diehards, 00:32:21.200 --> 00:32:23.799 they were a lifeline. But even TCL eventually 00:32:23.799 --> 00:32:26.940 gave up the license in 2020. Then a small American 00:32:26.940 --> 00:32:29.759 startup called Onward Mobility promised a new 00:32:29.759 --> 00:32:33.160 5G BlackBerry. The vaporware era. They promised 00:32:33.160 --> 00:32:36.400 it for years. And then in early 2022, they quietly 00:32:36.400 --> 00:32:38.599 announced they were shutting down without ever 00:32:38.599 --> 00:32:41.339 shipping a single unit. That was the final, final 00:32:41.339 --> 00:32:43.819 nail in the hardware coffin. But, and this is 00:32:43.819 --> 00:32:46.119 a huge and important distinction we need to make, 00:32:46.299 --> 00:32:49.160 the company BlackBerry Limited is not dead. No, 00:32:49.259 --> 00:32:51.900 not at all. They're very much alive and in some 00:32:51.900 --> 00:32:54.240 ways quite successful. They just pivoted completely. 00:32:54.400 --> 00:32:56.960 They went back to their original roots. Security, 00:32:57.039 --> 00:32:59.819 software, and enterprise data. So if you drive 00:32:59.819 --> 00:33:01.660 a modern car, there's a pretty good chance you're 00:33:01.660 --> 00:33:03.579 interacting with BlackBerry software right now. 00:33:03.740 --> 00:33:06.539 Very likely. Their software division called QNX 00:33:06.539 --> 00:33:09.619 is the underlying operating system for the infotainment 00:33:09.619 --> 00:33:12.240 and safety systems in millions and millions of 00:33:12.240 --> 00:33:15.400 cars. Ford, Jaguar Land Rover, BMW, Mercedes, 00:33:15.779 --> 00:33:19.160 they all use it. It's real -time, it's incredibly 00:33:19.160 --> 00:33:21.599 secure, and it's crash -proof, which is what 00:33:21.599 --> 00:33:23.549 you want in a car. So they went from being the 00:33:23.549 --> 00:33:25.410 phone in your pocket to being the hidden brain 00:33:25.410 --> 00:33:27.930 in your car's dashboard. And they became a major 00:33:27.930 --> 00:33:30.509 cybersecurity consulting firm. And let's be honest, 00:33:30.690 --> 00:33:32.990 a bit of a patent troll themselves. Right. I 00:33:32.990 --> 00:33:35.710 remember they sued Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. 00:33:35.990 --> 00:33:37.990 They did. They basically argued, hey, that timeline 00:33:37.990 --> 00:33:40.089 interface you have, that messaging architecture 00:33:40.089 --> 00:33:42.130 with read receipts, we invented a lot of that. 00:33:42.410 --> 00:33:44.829 And they settled with Facebook for an undisclosed 00:33:44.829 --> 00:33:48.049 but likely very large sum of money. It was their 00:33:48.049 --> 00:33:50.069 way of collecting rent on the revolution they 00:33:50.069 --> 00:33:52.839 started but couldn't finish. So to bring it all 00:33:52.839 --> 00:33:55.400 back home, we started this deep dive with the 00:33:55.400 --> 00:33:58.920 server decommissioning on January 4, 2022, the 00:33:58.920 --> 00:34:02.039 literal death of the hardware. But the legacy 00:34:02.039 --> 00:34:05.819 is just, it's everywhere. It is. You absolutely 00:34:05.819 --> 00:34:08.440 cannot tell the story of the 21st century without 00:34:08.440 --> 00:34:10.559 talking about BlackBerry. So what do you think 00:34:10.559 --> 00:34:13.139 is the lasting DNA? What did they leave behind? 00:34:13.500 --> 00:34:16.000 I think it's two main things. First, the always 00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:19.019 -on expectation. The idea that your boss can 00:34:19.019 --> 00:34:22.550 email you at 8 p .m. and expect a reply. BlackBerry 00:34:22.550 --> 00:34:25.010 normalized that, the feeling of a phantom vibration 00:34:25.010 --> 00:34:27.230 in your pocket even when your phone isn't there. 00:34:27.949 --> 00:34:29.829 BlackBerry started that. And the second thing. 00:34:30.010 --> 00:34:33.730 Messaging. BBM proved that people craved instant, 00:34:33.909 --> 00:34:36.030 data -based, receipt -verified conversations 00:34:36.030 --> 00:34:38.849 on their phones. WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, 00:34:39.130 --> 00:34:43.130 iMessage. They are all, at their core, just spiritual 00:34:43.130 --> 00:34:45.980 successors. to blackberry messenger it's such 00:34:45.980 --> 00:34:48.159 a bittersweet legacy isn't it they built the 00:34:48.159 --> 00:34:49.760 world we all live in now but they didn't get 00:34:49.760 --> 00:34:51.840 to live in it themselves they built the train 00:34:51.840 --> 00:34:55.199 tracks but the iphone and android were the slick 00:34:55.199 --> 00:34:57.599 fast trains that everyone actually wanted to 00:34:57.599 --> 00:34:59.280 ride on i want to leave our listeners with a 00:34:59.280 --> 00:35:02.179 final provocative thought blackberry died because 00:35:02.179 --> 00:35:05.280 they perfected a very specific paradigm the physical 00:35:05.280 --> 00:35:08.260 keyboard on a communication device and they refused 00:35:08.260 --> 00:35:10.760 to let go of it when the world shifted to a sheet 00:35:10.760 --> 00:35:13.159 of glass It's the classic innovator's dilemma. 00:35:13.500 --> 00:35:15.619 They were just too good at the old thing to be 00:35:15.619 --> 00:35:17.659 the ones to invent the new thing. So look at 00:35:17.659 --> 00:35:20.179 your phone today. That perfect slab of glass. 00:35:20.360 --> 00:35:22.460 It feels permanent, doesn't it? It feels like 00:35:22.460 --> 00:35:24.760 this is the final, ultimate form of the phone. 00:35:25.340 --> 00:35:28.079 But is it? History would suggest probably not. 00:35:28.239 --> 00:35:31.420 Is there a tech giant today that is holding on 00:35:31.420 --> 00:35:34.300 too tightly to their own... physical keyboard? 00:35:34.619 --> 00:35:37.920 Are we just one big breakthrough away? Maybe 00:35:37.920 --> 00:35:41.559 it's AI pins, maybe it's augmented reality glasses, 00:35:41.760 --> 00:35:44.219 maybe it's neural interfaces. From looking at 00:35:44.219 --> 00:35:46.639 the iPhone the same way we now look at a BlackBerry 00:35:46.639 --> 00:35:49.480 5810 with its clumsy headset. You mean you had 00:35:49.480 --> 00:35:51.179 to actually hold it in your hand and touch it 00:35:51.179 --> 00:35:54.139 with your fingers? How primitive. Exactly. The 00:35:54.139 --> 00:35:56.260 cycle continues. History doesn't repeat itself. 00:35:56.730 --> 00:35:59.150 but it sure does rhyme. It does indeed. Next 00:35:59.150 --> 00:36:00.929 time you're watching those three little dots 00:36:00.929 --> 00:36:03.030 appear when someone is typing a message to you, 00:36:03.150 --> 00:36:06.170 just take a second and remember, you have a small 00:36:06.170 --> 00:36:08.610 Canadian pager company to thank for that specific 00:36:08.610 --> 00:36:12.289 brand of digital anticipation. Thanks for listening 00:36:12.289 --> 00:36:14.150 to The Deep Dive. See you next time.