Excellent post, donlevy. You raise a buncha questions in a fairly even-handed way that have crossed my mind (and filled many of my posts as well) for a long time. A year or two ago, RIM sported a "Mac User" link directly on its home page (before it redesigned its site) and seemed to be courting the small-but-deeply loyal Mac market, sort of positioning BB ala the Mac, i.e. stylish hardware bearing innovative software for "think different" individuals, even if its general-consumer marketshare was small. (This was before RIM starting outselling Palm...) I found this disingenuous, however, because RIM never actually delivered anything to make our BB experience better.

Turning to third-party apps, I selected PM and paid for it, but soon realized it was a 50-percent solution, i.e., better than nothing, but still missing half of the functionality I desired. And at least half of my inquiries to IAA about software glitches received e-mailed assurances that they were working on an update that would address it, which would be out "in a few weeks." I'm still dealing with many of those...

When RIM and IAA announced their partnership (offering PM for free), I got my hopes up again, thinking that RIM might bring the needed vision and "urgency" to PM and issue a retooled program that featured some genuine upgraded functionality for Mac users. Many of the rumors about PM 4.0 seem to promise that, but the clock has been ticking for sooooo long... I'll believe it when I see it.

It's easy to read into this lack of movement on the part of RIM/IAA and wonder if the union soured somehow. And the fact that IAA seems to be confirming that 4.0 won't include the ability to upgrade the BB OS surely makes me question its app-loading capability all together. Frankly, my hopes are not high that PM will at last morph into the program it should have been all along, and I consider the advice of "keeping a PC around" in order to make up for PM's shortcomings ridiculous.

Now, I know it was my choice to switch from Palm to BB, and I did so with eyes wide open, knowing about the latter's lack of Mac/BB connectivity, so it's easy to dismiss complaints of this nature by saying, "It's your fault for selecting BB when you're a Mac user." That was a valid response at one time, but not anymore. Once RIM formed this partnership, the onus shifted from IAA to RIM, and every month that passes reflects poorly on the sincerity of RIM's interest in the Mac OS and its many fanatically loyal users like me.

Fortunately, the truly innovative company in this equation - Apple - has offered a real solution almost my accident now that Intel Macs can run Windows natively. To me, this is the solution that holds the most promise.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go check under my couch cushions for loose change so I can buy a MacBook