Blackberry and now their virtual keyboard

I don't really know why Blackberry owners are such fanatics about these devices. One of the parts of these devices as well as the Palm and others, has been the keyboard which for me is almost useless and for me makes not tense. I don't text. My finders are too big. How do you access the numbers or etc ? Even Sprint did not know how to access the virtual keyboard on my Palm. Go figure. There are other reasons possibly. But the makers saw how popular the iPhone is getting and it is threatening their turf. So one of the things is for a virtual keyboard. It will be interesting to know if iPhone still surges, takes away even more business sales and threatens Blackberries.