Snippet: BlackBerry CEO Basically Calls Apple Stale ☇

Paul Smith reports on BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins for The Australian Financial Review (via MacRumors):

“Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market … They did a fantastic job with the user interface, they are a design icon. There is a reason why they were so successful, and we actually have to admit this and respect that,” Mr Heins said.

“History repeats itself again I guess … the rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don’t innovate at that speed you can be replaced pretty quickly. The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old.”

If anyone is in no position to criticize Apple, it’s RIM BlackBerry. I know most of their problems were under prior leadership, and the Z10 looks like a pretty decent product, but there is something to be said about incremental updates and consistency, and unless Apple starts hemorrhaging users and developers, iOS can probably get by with some feature additions and minor changes, rather than a major interface overhaul.