BlackBerry's new look: Fresh, sleek, and misguided

From CNET News.com: For all the talk of revolution at Research In Motion's developer conference this week, something about BlackBerry Jam Americas felt rather familiar.

Think of it this way: a once-mighty tech company, elbowed out of the smartphone revolution by Apple and Android, making a new push to get back into the game.

Amid high pressure to deliver, the company puts all its energy toward marketing the user interface -- a slick new way of moving through the operating system, giving users live updates on important events without making them dig through menus.

That describes the scene yesterday in San Jose, Calif. But it also describes Microsoft last year as it unveiled Windows Phone 7.

"Always delightful, wonderfully personal, and will help you get in, out, and back to life" -- that was the pitch for Windows Phone 7 at its launch event, and it's basically the pitch RIM is making for BlackBerry 10.

Microsoft is still plugging away on Windows Phone, and its best days might still lay in front of it. But it hasn't been a smash hit, not least because the revolutionary user interface it touted turned out not to matter much with consumers.

RIM -- which reports earnings later today amid severe doubts among Wall Street analysts -- may be about to learn the same lesson.

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