Windows Phone 7 Part Deux - Microsoft respond to developer | Hacker News Reader

Windows Phone 7 Part Deux - Microsoft respond to developer

blog.dantup.com

53 pointsdll21 comments

"[…] in reality, bigger companies move slower. I don't really think this is a good excuse - if policies and processes mean it takes 5 months to release an update, then the policies and processes need improving. If a big company can't work as efficiently as a small company, then the big company should act as smaller companies."

This seems really naive to me. If Microsoft could just "act as smaller companies" on directive, they wouldn't be in the mess they're in.

Of course, on the other side, a MS employee simply stating that big companies move slower like it's an unchangeable law of nature gives a little insight into the problem as well.

He missed an opportunity to make another point here. Surely it isn't easy for a large company to behave like a small one or that they move slowly. However, being a large, seasoned company with all kinds of bureaucracy should at least buy you the ability to set realistic deadlines and meet them. Announcing a critical update to your platform and then failing to deliver it four months late is a small-company mistake, and mistake is being really generous.

They tried to set a realistic deadline - they internally estimated they'd have it out in January, but were usually careful to pad that out to "early 2011" or "in the coming months" in public. Unfortunately they slipped a couple times.

Great quote: "Brandon pointed out that the real issue here was that the parts of the software that allow sending of logs to Microsoft are removed from retail builds of the OS - only developer builds are able to do this."

Everything else (Android, Windows 7, Firefox, iOS, etc) ships with this functionality, so I was trying to figure out what would cause Microsoft to strip it out. Seems like an interesting Rorschach-esque blot of their culture/thinking. Under-confidence because of all of the lawsuits from the past? Hubris because Windows will dominate? Poor product management? Fear of the reactions from the corporations they'd try to sell this phone into?

My best guess is that they simply didn't have enough time(after all it's almost all pretty new code and building OSes is very hard) to strip out the user info.

They didn't want to end up potentially violating privacy. Hell, even their sending logs feature on Windows results in accusations. For example of a brouhaha, see this http://news.softpedia.com/news/Forget-about-the-WGA-20-Windo...

Read some of the comments on here:

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/07/07/02/139251/Vista-is-Watch...

I actually think MS has this totally backwards.

They need to get updates out more quickly... quarterly. This "No Donuts" mentality is wrong. Google got it right.

And they need to talk less about the updates. A nine month heads up on a smartphone update is counterproductive. They really need to just spend less time talking about stuff that isn't ready to go.

The need to turn the crank quickly and announce w/ two week windows.

With that said, I think they may have backed themselves into a corner with their OS distribution model. I don't think they can support this number of phones (and this is just the first wave of them). At least it appears that they can't. If they can't figure out how to make this work, they may need to drop to one, maybe two, phones (different configurations of the same phone is fine though). Otherwise this platform is dead.

Somehow, Google's upgrades do not tend to end up on the phones, or only with substantial delay. So I don't think claiming that "Google got it right" is accurate if you talk about smartphone software.

Sorry, I should have split that out more clearly.

Google's dev process for building updates is right. They rapidly iterate to generate new updates and versions of Android. It's arguably better than iOS now, but w/ a far worse app ecosystem, IMO.

BUT Google falls down the same way WP7 does... too many phones to support. The process of getting updates to all of these different phones is painful, but Google and MS differ here too -- and this difference, while maybe cosmetic, is important.

Since Google drops source and OEMs pick it up, Google has moved the update responsibility to the OEMs. Nobody screams at Google because the Samsung Galaxys took a long time to update. It was Samsung's issue.

MS OTOH owns the update process. They get the blame for not supporting all the phones.

The end result for MS is a double whammy since they may not be able to move as quickly as Google (since Google can just drop source, and each OEM needs to get it working with their device and skin) AND Microsoft gets the blame for being slow.

While you make very valid points, this is the very first update for WP7. What further complicates things is that firmware upgrades from carriers/OEMs are pushed along with this update, and the need for OEM/Carrier testing further delays things.

IIRC they haven't done similar updates for Windows Mobile.While it sucks now, if MS learns from the issues, it has potential to be a better update process than Android, because users don't have to depend on OEMs which cause major delays for updates.

The key difference is that OEMs on Android are allowed to(and make) a LOT of changes to the UI etc. resulting in things like MotoBlur, HTC Sense and that Samsung skin. This results in delays of several months(or no updates at all) because of all the required changes to the UI skins which WP7 can avoid(since they don't allow OEMs to mess with internals or the UI) if they learn from the first update and speed up things.

I agreed with everything you said... six months ago. I've lost faith that they can execute on this now. I honestly hope I'm wrong.

The real end result for both systems is that the devices just don't get updated. The only difference is that we know that Google has produced code, and MS hasn't released any.

Blame doesn't really matter, because at the end of the day, neither Google nor MS are getting their updates out to consumers at this point. So while Android 2.4(when it comes out) might do everything better than the iPhone, stop world hunger, and cure cancer, it doesn't matter if people can't update their devices to it. They're in the exact same boat as MS.

> This "No Donuts" mentality is wrong. Google got it right.

The name "No Donuts" has nothing to do with Google, but with someone who didn't bring donuts to a meeting. (One source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/09/windows-phone-7... )

Thanks, good to know. That gives me a little hope that at least they don't have a philosophically backwards position with respect to update frequrency.

They're sort of damned if they do, damned if they don't.

They need to let people know what the long term plans are to keep the interested in what the platform will become (especially with the Nokia deal), but at the same time it feel frustrating how far away these new features seem (talking about the "Mango" update with multi-tasking, IE9 etc coming "later" this year).

Personally I agree with you, I'd like smaller, more frequent updates, but at the same time I definitely want to know the long term roap-map.

I disagree about there being too many phones, it's a fraction of the number of Android variants out there, and the phones are much more similar to each other due to the minimum hardware specs. With that in mind, there was no excuse that the first update a few weeks ago wasn't flawless; they should have easily picked up any issue on all available models during testing.

Nice to see Microsoft responding so fast.

I guess this shows how HN and other sites can create enough publicity to make issues heard.

If you were in bizspark (free) I am pretty sure you could get just as fast a response -- email Joel Franusic (@jf).

After the initial positive reactions that WP7 got, everyone expected Microsoft to really push the envelope and arrive in the smart phone market. I think the Nokia deal has got a lot to do with the unexpected loss of momentum. I still feel that Microsoft is going to emerge as a strong competitor in the smart phone arena. They are going to take some time, but they will get there. The Nokia deal is going to be a big win for them.

I doubt that had anything to do with it - so far their schedule for rolling out the major update this year seems to be a repeat of their schedule for rolling out the initial release last year (initial demo at MWC, developer info + initial CTP at Mix in April, eventual release in October, November) which to me strongly suggest they've always intended to be on an annual refresh schedule, with only minor out-of-band updates.

I suspect that WP7 continues to have update issues because it is built on top of the Windows CE kernel. the MS-skeptic in me thinks that it probably a bad foundation for a high-performing device, but this view is not based on any actual knowledge of Windows CE. Would love to hear from someone who actually knows about Windows CE.

Windows CE -- from a kernel and userland foundations perspective -- is quite solid. It's a hard-RTOS, it supports pervasive SMP as of 7, the kernel is modular as hell and well designed, and it's very performant. There's nothing in the CE design that would make updating difficult in the least.

very interesting. Then they have fewer excuses for not getting their updates out

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