Jeff Devine

One of BlackBerry’s primary talking points for its Playbook is that multitasking is its major iPad-killing feature. For the average enterprise and home user, I don’t understand how this is a feature that anyone would care about.

Every demo BlackBerry gives usually goes something like this:

1. Launch Movie, play it
2. Launch eBook Store
3. Launch Calculator
4. Launch Web Browser
5. Switch between the applications to show that they are still running

Without fail, they say something along the lines of “this is true multitasking, we aren’t just freezing the applications in the background.” This, of course, differentiates the Playbook from iOS devices since Apple’s implementation of multitasking will freeze all background applications (save for a few functions such as GPS, music, incoming voip calls, etc).

So the PlayBook user can have a calculator and web browser actively running in the background while they buy a book? This offers nothing more than strain on resources, specifically the battery.

Any company who thinks it can innovate the tablet space by replicating a PC experience has already failed. Microsoft tried this for almost a decade and failed miserably. BlackBerry is on course to repeat history.

Thanks to the wonders of aggregation and Last.fm, this is my list of the top 10 records of 2010 (or at least those I listened to the most):

1. The New Pornographers – Together
2. Beach House – Teen Dream
3. Janelle Monáe – The ArchAndroid
4. Vampire Weekend – Contra
5. She & Him – Volume Two
6. Local Natives – Gorilla Manor
7. Hot Chip – One Life Stand
8. Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse – Dark Night of the Soul
9. The Divine Comedy – Baing Goes the Knighthood
10. LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening

The following five also made the list, but were made before 2010:

1. Passion Pit – Manners
2. Mayer Hawthorne – A Strange Arrangement
3. Theophilus London – Jam!
4. Lee Fields & The Expressions – My World
5. Menahan Street Band – Make the Road by Walking