The book was great, and the movie was pretty great too
Actually, no, they weren't....at least they weren't accurate. Mike re-wrote history when they interviewed him. And Mike was NEVER a visionary!
Research in Motion originally created film editing equipment - and won an Emmy for it. The RIM logo was meant to represent a projector streaming a film to a screen. The "Motion" was referring to motion pictures.
Doug Fregin was the hardware guy. Doug designed the SMS boards for the servers, then came up with the idea of doing a two-way pager and built it. RIM originally hosted SMS servers for the North American carriers. After the two-way pager, the first Mobitex device brought email to the handheld....and Pin-to-Pin.
Allan Lewis wrote the BlackBerry software initially (he was the VP that hired me in 2004). People loved "PIN to PIN" - aka BlackBerry Messenger because it got around the SMS charges that the carriers charged back then (and it was encrypted and guaranteed delivery). Allan continued to lead our infrastructure software development until the writing was on the wall and we started to lay people off. Can't imagine how big the package was that they would have offered him. He was already rich because of his stock. Allan's passion is racing his BMWs.
Allan actually came to RIM because he met Mike at the Univerity of Waterloo. Mike dropped out after / in first year. Allan stayed and finished his Computer Science degree.
I think a lot of people didn't realize that SMS was (is) "fire it and forget it"
Edit: Oh....and Jim Balsillie is SUPER-creepy! As in - you wouldn't leave your kids alone with this guy. He would hit on the co-op students.

Jim was having an affair with one of his secretaries. Heh. He thought he was so smart. His pre-nup with his wife had a set amount for a settlement. When the stock cratered, he was left virtually penniless.
