About a week ago, a group of protesters rallied outside of an Apple store in downtown Sydney, Australia, clad in black T-shirts and holding signs that read “Wake Up.” Their message was simple: the cult-like customers of Apple follow the company like sheep, and if only the brainwashed masses could see the error of their ways they would wake up and the company would quickly falter. Except it wasn’t their message. It was the opinion of Research in Motion, the company that makes BlackBerry devices, who hired the protesters in an attempt to make their corporate attitude appear grassroots driven. Predictably, the PR stunt backfired and perfectly illustrates the sad desperateness which is now common for this once-great technology giant. Apple completely changed phones in 2007, and if you think that’s hyperbole, look at pictures of Google’s Android operating system before the iPhone. It looks much more like Research in Motion’s BlackBerry and much less like an iPhone than it does currently. Google was quick to see and adapt to the changes the iPhone created, but RIM was not. RIM’s slow reflexes have proven especially costly given how these platforms have become entire technological ecosystems with valuable network effects. Developer support has been strongest with Apple. Android has carved out a niche, but even calling BlackBerry’s momentum with developers lackluster would be optimistic. It’s not just RIM’s slow reactions that have put the company where it is today, though those have hurt. It’s more a sense that the company has its collective head in the sand and won’t even listen to what customers want or even demand. The biggest problem with BlackBerry phones is that they still epitomize the pre-iPhone idea of what a smartphone is. A BlackBerry can do some of the things that you would do on your computer, but not all of them. This was acceptable back when the technology wasn’t there for phone-sized computers (which, coincidentally, is when BlackBerry’s dominated) but now we can have better and we know it. The post-iPhone world of smartphones rejects such limitations on mobile computing. While apps certainly need to be customized for mobile, customers now expect them to pack the entire functionality of a personal computer. Somehow, RIM is still convinced their phones, which paved the road to mobile Internet access, are superior. And according to RIM, people just need to ‘wake up’ and realize it.