While I'm as happy as the next person to see old versions go away, perhaps something else should be considered when making these decisions: country usage may not reflect global averages.
For example, I recently was in discussion with some folks in a large Asia country regarding iOS 4.3. Apparently iOS 4.3 is much more widely used there than in North America / Europe, it's not a rounding error. As it was explained to me, it is common for users to not upgrade the OS on their phones there to the latest & greatest, it's part of the user behavior / culture. So the relavant question I'd ask is how popular is BB7 in someplace like Canada? According to http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-CA-monthly-201305-201305-bar the total BB usage looks to currently be around 10%. It's unclear what portion is BB6 vs BB7 vs BB10. Are we OK with dropping that population? Our 5% threshold may be hiding some of the story when we look only at a single global number. -- Marcel Kinard On May 9, 2013, at 4:32 PM, Filip Maj <f...@adobe.com> wrote: > +1 sunsetting BB7 > > On 5/8/13 8:58 AM, "Don Coleman" <don.cole...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> I'd be happy to see BB7 go away. It seems like 3.0 could drop support, >> especially if BlackBerry is concentrating on 10 and not releasing webworks >> updates. >> >> I have a client asking for support BB7 along with Android and iOS. This >> probably means that I have a cordova-cli project and a separate BB7 build >> and keep BB7 on PhoneGap 2.x. >> >> >> On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Bryan Higgins >> <bhigg...@blackberry.com>wrote: >> >>> It is fair to say that our team is focused solely on BB10. The WebWorks >>> SDK >>> for BBOS itself has no future planned releases. >>> >>> One point I should clear up is the new blackberry10 platform code we're >>> introducing does not cover PlayBook as well. The PlayBook runs TabletOS, >>> which while built on qnx does not as of yet have binary compatibility >>> with >>> BB10. Our CEO has said BB10 for PlayBook is in development, but there >>> have >>> been no official announcements regarding a release. >>> >>> >>> On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 10:27 AM, Lorin Beer <lorin.beer....@gmail.com >>>> wrote: >>> >>>> Don's question regarding a BB7 roadmap yesterday made me realize that >>> we >>>> don't have one. Concentrating on BB10/Playbook has caused us ignore >>> BB7. >>>> >>>> A little while ago, BB7 was discussed in terms of sending her off to >>> the >>>> farm/attic/(silicon afterlife). The decision was reached that we >>> should >>>> keep up support. >>>> >>>> I believe BlackBerry's stance is that they are not interested in >>>> maintaining the BB7 Cordova implementation. Ken, Bryan, jump in here >>> and >>>> correct me if I'm wrong. >>>> >>>> There is a lot of work involved in getting BB7 to the 3.0.0 cli stage, >>> and >>>> if the plan is to drop support for the platform entirely within the >>> next >>> 6 >>>> months, I don't see that this work is justified. >>>> >>>> Deprecation policy is 3 releases now, which means 3.1.0 is the >>> soonest we >>>> can drop it. >>>> >>>> Given that : >>>> - Brett on PhoneGap build has described the BB7 usage statistic as >>> "noise" >>>> - no new jira tickets are submitted for BB7 unless it's by our team >>>> >>>> I propose that we : >>>> >>>> 1. keep BB7 pre-cli maintenance mode regardless of how many releases >>> it >>>> sticks around for >>>> >>>> 2. announce BB7 deprecation and drop BB7 before the 3.0.0 release >>>> >>>> The reasoning for 2 is to not pollute the 3.0 release with legacy code >>>> which is not CLI compliant. I realize that this contravenes our >>> deprecation >>>> policy, but I think the level of interest in BB7 may let us get away >>> with >>>> it. >>>> >>>> - Lorin >>>> >>> >
