I don't understand blackberrys

[GuillotinedMaryLacey]

I have an iPhone. The software is on the phone, the data is brought to me by Vodafone . The combination of the two is enough to deliver my emails and texts to me in good order.

Why are Blackberrys different? What was the outage all about? I can't make sense of it.

iPhones connect directly to your email provider to send and receive mail, BlackBerries connect to RIM's (Research In Motion) servers which in turn connect to your email provider.

Although RIM are being very cagey about the outage it was apparently due to (part of) their network breaking so it couldn't connect to email providers or pass messages on to peoples BBs.