I walked into a meeting at a Silicon Valley startup and heard nothing but finger taps.

This was around the fall of 2006, or almost exactly ten years ago this week. I remember the meeting because I was covering a company that makes a projection system for virtual meetings, and it was odd to see everyone so focused on their BlackBerry devices. I had a new model in my pocket called the Pearl, and I was intent on testing it during my business trip.

Around that time, BlackBerry had a corner on business communication. People would tap out quick messages and hit send like they were on a pager. The most popular device at the time was the 8700, which has the iconic QWERTY keyboard. Really, it’s the one that defined BlackBerry and used the same basic shape as the original pager models from 4-5 years before then.

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