David Pogue: BlackBerry Storm 'by far the worst product RIM has ever produced'

Harsh words from Mr. Pogue-O-Matic himself at the New York Times.

A letter from tech god David Pogue appeared yesterday that spelled out not why he had problems with the Storm's concept, clicky touch screen, speed, and bugs (which the company refused to acknowledge, he says). That's in his review.

Instead, it detailed the anger of the roughly 100 readers who wrote to say that they had bought the Storm and now regretted it.

Ouch.

A few select entries:

"It has been an absolute nightmare. As soon as I return to New York, I will take advantage of Verizon's 30-day return policy and get rid of this monstrosity."

"My Storm was like something from a Stephen King novel: possessed of its own mind. Touching or selecting on the screen highlighted something totally unrelated. The lag in switching from horizontal to vertical almost made it seem that the screen was deciding its own when to shift."

"Where do I begin? The address book is a joke. Can't go straight to any given letter, so must scroll all the way through every time. Everything's slow: Scrolling, screen rotating, selecting apps, search... everything. It has crashed several times just trying to play movies. When you press the screen, it jumps over and "clicks" the key next to what you wanted... this is maddeningly frustrating. The bottom line: BlackBerry has created the Zune of touchscreen phones."

...and the list goes on. Looks like the Storm has become a bit of a public relations nightmare, er, storm for RIM.

Pogue seems to have learned a lesson, too: That the new oppressed minority in town isn't Apple fanatics, it's BlackBerry fanatics.

For years, tech critics like me have occasionally endured abuse from the Cult of Mac. If you write anything that even hints at a less-than-perfect Apple effort (like my reviews of, for example, the original Apple TV, iMovie '08 or MobileMe), the backlash is swift, vitriolic and heated. We're talking insults, vulgarities and even threats. I've always thought that that vocal sub-population of Mac fans make up the world's most watchful, most hostile grass-roots lobbying arm.

But now I see that I was wrong. There's an even nastier one: the BlackBerry nuts.

What do you think, readers? Is the Storm really that despicable a device, or does it just fall short of high expectations?

And are you BlackBerry fans truly crazed? Tell us in TalkBack.