I've used a Galaxy Nexus for the last week or so, and my parents have iPhones. E-mails and notifications arrive on the Galaxy relatively quickly, I would say almost on par with the BlackBerry, with a very slight edge given to BlackBerry. To be honest, if RIM wants to maintain their existing BES/BIS infrastructure, they're going to have to give more compelling reasons than just push notifications, because it's a problem that is almost solved on other platforms. However, as a developer, to integrate the notifications into your own app, it's easiest on the BlackBerry, and more powerful. That may be good enough reason, especially for enterprises.

You are correct about one BES/BIS account only being able to be associated with one PIN. Remember, this is something that was developed nearly 10 years ago. They could never have foreseen the day when people would need multiple devices. Remember, 10+ years ago, convergence of devices was all the rage.

That said, it was a bit shameful that they couldn't make that change, but it is somewhat understandable. I think RIM didn't foresee the need for native PIM apps on the PlayBook, because they figured most everyone would just use web-based clients if necessary. I'll be frank, I have a BlackBerry, so I used the Bridge apps, and I continue to use them.

The multiple PIN situation is, I believe, solved. If you look at the SDK documentation, there are numerous references to PPIDs and PINs. Basically, a user has one PPID which is unique to them, but they can have multiple PINs, each representing a different device.

I've tried the Cascades SDK, and I do have a Dev Alpha. The Dev Alpha is just a smaller and faster PlayBook, with a bunch of new APIs added and a cell radio (I'm simplifying of course). It's a great little device that has made development much easier. That said, a lot of us are really looking forward to OS updates as there are a bunch of niggling quirks. It's very alpha...

I've tried the Cascades SDK, but I haven't done much work with it because I've been focusing on PlayBook apps right now using Qt. Actually, Cascades is built on Qt, and it's wonderful to work with. It truly makes development quick, fun, and easy. You can make some beautiful apps.

Actually, a friend and I have just finished porting PySide to the PlayBook, so you can use Qt in Python. Yes, you can write native Python apps on the PlayBook and the Dev Alpha. It is NOT officially supported, but it is there. I've taken advantage of this in my own apps.

This post is already quite long, so I won't get into the advantages of QNX over iOS or Android. To be frank, my RTOS course was over 6 years ago, and I'm by no means an expert. I would likely botch the discussion.

Is there something I'm missing?

FYI, I'm a long time iPhone user.

Switching to an instant messenger isn't always an option if you're in a corporate environment. You don't want your conversations sitting on a third party server.

Little known fact: did you know that BES allows you to access your company's entire address book on your BlackBerry? When I was a co-op, it meant I could e-mail anyone in the company just by looking up their name. Sure, LDAP allows you the same capability, but on most platforms, that means you need to expose it publicly. You could secure by forcing use over a VPN, I suppose, but that's extra overhead as well, which is somewhat precious on a mobile device. It's less relevant nowadays, but it's a really cool feature that RIM has had for nearly a decade now that few consumers even know about.

I would argue that most BlackBerry users do not have they devices setup to take advantage of all of their capabilities. And to be honest, that is a huge failure of RIM's marketing and publicity teams.