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Support a struggling artist: purchase the immortal quality wearware masterpiece from friend of waffle Phil Nelson.

(See: “Research In Motion Names Thorsten Heins President and CEO“)

• Board Acts on Recommendation of Co-CEOs to Implement Succession Plan
• Mike Lazaridis Named Vice Chair of the Board
• Jim Balsillie Remains a Director
• Barbara Stymiest Named Independent Board Chair
• Prem Watsa Named Independent Director

RIM Rearranges Deck Chairs on the Titanic.

The Board of Directors of BlackBerry® maker Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) today announced that, acting on the recommendation of its Co-Chief Executive Officers to implement the succession plan they previously submitted to the Board, it has unanimously named Thorsten Heins as President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Heins was also appointed to RIM’s Board. The Board acted after conducting its own due diligence. Both appointments are effective immediately.

The Board of Directors of Research In Motion tossed out its two Co-CEOs after years of declining performance and wants you to know that they were tossed out far and swiftly.

Mike Lazaridis, former Co-Chair and Co-CEO, has become Vice Chair of RIM’s Board and Chair of the Board’s new Innovation Committee.

On second thought, former Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis is a man of sauve sophistication.

Mr. Lazaridis is a staunch believer in the applicability of redundancy beyond just technical apparatus. Mr. Lazaridis also places strong value in committees being the source of innovations, given the number of redundant letters their name entails.

Mr. Lazaridis said that he decided to move from Co-Chair to Vice Chair of the Board in order to return the public’s focus to what is most important: “the great company we have built, its iconic products, global brand and its talented employees.”

Mr. Lazaridis said that thanks to him, there’s nowhere to go but up.

Mr. Heins said he believes that RIM has tremendous potential.

Mr. Heins is as high as a kite.

[Mr. Heins] continued, “RIM earned its reputation by focusing relentlessly on the customer and delivering unique mobile communications solutions. We intend to build on this heritage to expand BlackBerry’s leadership position.”

Mr. Heins intends to build on BlackBerry’s unique mobile communications solution of providing a redundant layering of email servers, accidentally effectively taking down the mail systems of customers worldwide, as well as intentionally exposing access to sensitive information to sundry regimes.

“No one else is doing this,” Mr. Heins added, incredulously.

“Going forward, we will continue to focus both on short-term and long-term growth, strategic planning, a customer- and market-based product approach, and flawless execution. We are in the process of recruiting a new Chief Marketing Officer to work closely with our product and sales teams to deliver the most compelling products and services.”

Our legal team is now hiring patent and IP law experts.

As part of a long-term ongoing discussion, Michael Tsai linked to another article on the lack of an iOS documents filing system.

I’ve long mulled over Apple’s specific behavior in this field.

First, Steve Jobs didn’t like file systems. Reading the biography (which was the first book I read about Apple or Steve Jobs ever if you exclude the Folklore stories that became Revolution in the Valley) has been illuminating on many levels, not the least that Steve was more critical than I knew about customer control over the things they owned. He was relentless against distractions and if something could be tied to tradition, it would have to make its case twice as hard to make the cut. He didn’t see Mac Spotlight and iOS as potential improvements or as new tools in the toolbox, but as replacements. I am told that Scott Forstall hold most of Steve’s ideas dear, so I think this may still be a factor.

I am more out of my depth here, but just applying the output to what we know of the process, I think the iOS group sees files as something you are under pressure to manage. In particular, it sees files for everything as a generic solution, and by applying Apple philosophy, it thinks that most of the problems that can be solved using files and applications are instead better solved in a task-specific way for each task. They want for there to be an app for that instead.

The problem is that the theory doesn’t hold perfectly. Even if it works partially, it can’t possibly scale up to every scenario. But in particular, it doesn’t hold for the things that people really miss having a file system-like documents and folders system for.

• Having a file system as its own cross-environmental entity let you mix a bunch of related materials for the same subject, but that are completely different type of media. You can’t have one app for all of that; “app-thought” forbids it and even if it didn’t, it’s horribly impractical. There’s no good solution for this right now except Dropbox integration. iCloud doesn’t change anything in this regard; it just eliminates having to copy things around in some apps.

• Having real folders means being able to nest them. Deep hierarchies that you are forced to use are complex, but hierarchies that you maintain yourself can be a secret to efficiency and productivity, and may make being really productive with many documents possible in the first place. Look at the opening screens of the iWork apps, or of GarageBand or iMovie. There’s no list view and you are discouraged from keeping many things around. When you cross a certain number of items, it’s harder to scan for something there than in a folder you control on a traditional file system, from a traditional file manager (like the Finder). You are still under pressure to manage these files in some ways to avoid drowning in them (and with everything of that kind in one place, even more so), you just aren’t given adequate tools for doing so efficiently.

  Or for that matter, look at your home screens. I have condensed mine down to three screens by tossing everything into folders, but I am limited to so few items and they won’t nest that it’s not surprising that I use Spotlight to find some of the seldom-used apps anyway. Search is a good complement to deliberate arrangement, but when it’s a cop-out for the rest of the experience, you’re doing something wrong. Springboard is the new Program Manager.

• The current system of having everyone implement the fundamentals isn’t holding up very well. Everyone has to solve the same set of problems and not everyone are equipped to do that or will make odd workarounds. Even the good workarounds will need to be learned on an app-by-app basis and the assumed inherited complexity of file systems has been replaced by other complexity, both for the developers and the users of the app.

• Having folders might not be the end-all solution for everything, but it is a sound foundation. Add tags to reduce the reliance on nesting as the sole organizational method, add colored labels as in Mac OS X and HFS+, fix the problems with filename restrictions (as long as they don’t have to escape from iOS), require participating document formats to generate previews and provide the right kind of metadata and you’re miles better than before, even if you don’t even count being shielded from the files and folders that constitute the system’s inner workings as a feature.

I am less and less so as time passes, but I remain hopeful that Apple will finally receive enough feedback that they change their minds and turn one of their biggest liabilities into one of their biggest strengths. If iOS 3 was Copy and Paste, maybe iOS 6 is New Folder.

Disgusting:

When I make something myself, no matter what software I use to make it, then — assuming it doesn’t infringe any copyrights — it’s my right to distribute it however I want, in whatever format I choose, for free or not. I don’t lose the right to publish my novel if Microsoft determines that I wrote it using a pirated copy of Word. Would I lose that right if I tried to sell my iBook outside of the iBookstore and Apple got wind of it? I don’t know; we’re in uncharted waters here. Or how about this: for a moment I’ll stipulate that Apple’s EULA is valid and I’ve agreed to it implicitly by using the software. Now suppose I create an iBook and give it to someone else who has never downloaded iBooks Author and is not party to the EULA, and that person sells it on their own website. What happens now?