Yesterday I switched my phone number from a Palm Pre Plus to a BlackBerry Curve through the Verizon website. This was a pretty painless process, but only because I had a friend who had done it before and because I had some technical knowledge that made it trivial to track down the necessary information.

I then spent about an hour setting up a custom notifications profile, tweaking options to my liking (enabling keyboard shortcuts for faster navigation, etc.). I set up my email accounts and was able to sidestep some annoying error messages that initially had me blocked from doing so. I also configured the BlackBerry to sync with Google Calendar, my desktop for contacts and downloaded a handful of useful apps – mostly directly from the provider’s (Google, WordPress, etc.) own websites; URLs I typed from memory. There was one application I installed using BlackBerry App World (their app store), but really I was able to get everything situated based on several years of prior knowledge.

When I hear that people don’t care for the BlackBerry, I have to remind myself that my experience with the device, applications, OS and associated tools is probably very different from theirs. While I was very pleased that I could get everything done right from my desk, it was a good reminder of how difficult the process would have been had I not spent several years building that base of knowledge.

It’s hard to step back from what we know and look at things in a fresh light. Hard, but very important – especially for creators.