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xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

WattsvilleBlues posted:

Jesus effing Christ. Am I not more likely to want to toggle my loving data connection than project my mothereffing screen?

This is a touchy subject that I really don't want to get involved in but I'm going to give this a shot and hope I don't get skewered.

In general, assuming no buggy apps etc, you shouldn't be needing to manually turn off wifi to save battery. Same for location. In most instances, turning wifi off actually makes battery usage worse as it normally uses less power then Cell/LTE. Location + Wifi is actually battery efficient because you're not using GPS until later (which does take up more battery power). There are a couple of edge cases here but they are not near the major to be of much concern. With wifi sense, hopefully you'll be spending more and more time on wifi networks then cell networks and should see better and better battery performance for data usage as time goes on.

As far as managing it for roaming, there is an option to prevent cell usage while roaming, but it sounds like you have an very edge case if this is something that's vexing you. I'm hoping that it maybe a case of "you don't really need it but you did in the past, therefore inertia".

# ¿ Apr 7, 2014 00:41

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 04:42

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Mecca-Benghazi posted:

xylo, are there any plans to increase the number of background tasks in 8.1?

You should expect no more feature work for the current release. Beyond that, who knows?

# ¿ Apr 7, 2014 04:29

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Chasiubao posted:

Without being too much of a smug prick, I doubt it's a minor thing in terms of software development costs.

Code wise? You're right it would probably be pretty "easy". Risk wise? Incredibly high -- potential to delay a release *months* if something were to break and cause a failure to the MO acceptance process. Then there maybe other factors (maybe an MO won't allow it like some don't like you using 3G instead of LTE, etc).

Many people view the mobile space through the same prism as any other desktop coding stream. Hell even I did before I joined the group. I now know it's unfortunately hellishly more complex than that. It's difficult to convey that to people that haven't worked in the space before -- it breaks peoples minds why something seemingly so simple needs to be so complex on the outside.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2014 08:47

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

WattsvilleBlues posted:

Here's my usage scenario - I work long days, and no where near WiFi. I like to conserve my battery as much as possible, especially since I have to use Here Drive, and that thing demolishes battery (even after it's been closed - I think it's a long-standing bug). So I turn mobile data off unless I need to explicitly use it.

On my days off, I'm usually in a WiFi zone, so I have WiFi turned on and mobile data turned off. Occasionally, someone will send me an MMS picture message, which can only be downloaded over mobile data, so I need to hop in and out of settings to toggle it.

So that's it. I want to conserve battery and data usage.

Yeah I've had the HERE drive thing destroy battery also so I can get that.

We've worked pretty hard to not be excessive on cell data. In fact, on several carries it's part of the acceptance criteria that we have to meet (ie, the phone just stilling idle with can't consume more then X amount of data.) Many people in places (esp China) are on your small/limited data plans, but from what I understand is that they pretty much just leave the data off non stop and rely almost exclusively on wifi (ie, the toggling often isn't a thing). I believe the texting/mms thing just doesn't happen as much and they use WhatsApp/QQ/Weibo (or whatever one of those apps are called) to replace the need for cell data all together.

I'll forward the request to add the quick toggle option for cell data toggle. Can't promise anything but it doesn't hurt to ask though.

Sri.Theo posted:

Managing Wi-Fi or mobile data are incredibly useful.

1) In the USA do you not have shops/restaurants which have open Wi-Fi but then require you to click though an acceptance screen or enter your email address or something? They're everywhere in the UK and are really annoying because if you've connected in the past your phone will always re-connect but not actually be able to use it. It's easier just to flip wifi on or off.

This is what wifi sense is all about. Leave that wifi on and it will do the work for you. Don't worry about the captive portal -- we'll do it without you needing to.

Sri.Theo posted:

And while I'm here can you test how Cortana reacts to commands given through a headset microphone on the Emulator? Especially if you take a voice note or make a reminder does the screen turn on even if its in your pocket? That was so annoying I had to stop using that feature.

I'm not sure if it does or not. I don't have the headset with the controls to try it out, sorry.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2014 18:43

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

ElGroucho posted:

My only complaint right now is with AT&T and Verizon and their awful exclusive nonsense.

In many instances, carriers are not your friend. From the phone exclusive blocking to subsidized phones, the customer doesn't win.

They are currently fighting a war that will see their respective companies becoming nothing more then "dumb pipes" again for the second time in less then 2 decades.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2014 18:37

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Jewmanji posted:

For all of the really cool things 8.1 brings, it's frustrating that it's a step backward in certain ways.

- As stated, Music is pretty weird.
- Why does Podcasts have to be a separate app?
- Facebook integration has basically been neutered. There is no messaging function within the SMS tile, and you can't even see comment threads on facebook posts in the People tile anymore. I know this is probably at Facebook's request but, seriously.
- Has anyone noticed that a lot of the animations seem a little choppier now? Is this a symptom of the slower CPUs? It's kind of glaring at first.
- To go from having the notification bar never visible to always visible seems like the kind of thing there should be a toggle for. I liked it the way it was...
- Calendar is definitely an improvement, but could still use some refinement.

Otherwise though, it really is excellent, the "Remind me to..." feature of Cortana is a complete game changer for me. They really could've called this 8.5 or 9.0 and I wouldn't have batted an eye. Very pleased!

You'll not find me arguing about the music app being great. I would agree that it is not acceptable in terms of functionality or performance compared to the zune system. (Yes I still use the Zune client).

Podcasts is a separate app (like many things including calendar) so we can rev them faster. Also because people have been trained to look for apps and get confused when they can't find them.

Facebook chat (xmpp)/etc apis were deprecated afaik, hence the change. To retain the integration, we're allowing the apps to hook in to get as clock to parity as we can.

IMO, some of the animation changes need to be tweaked to be sped up (like the window blind effect). Subjective tastes? I dunno.

Subject of intense debate ( :v:

) and again i believe was based on a lot of user feedback/studies.

It's an app now, so we should be able to update it pretty easy. Post your requests/feedback on user-voice for certain, or maybe just rate and review the app.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2014 03:21

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

joebuddah posted:

Has any other Toyota owners noticed that after the update you can no longer browse the device for songs from the in dash radio?

It's not Toyota specific. There was a large Bluetooth overhaul and this was a parity regression from WP8. Known issue, CXE is aware -- hoping they fix it because it impacts me also

# ¿ Apr 18, 2014 01:51

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Jewmanji posted:

I'm using a 920 on AT&T and have found my battery life has decreased dramatically. A large part of that has to do with needing to leave location on all the time now for Cortana, whereas I used to have location on very infrequently. As well, I think I'm constantly in somewhat low reception, which makes pinging for the location all the more arduous. Also, since I updated the outgoing voice quality has basically nerfed. No one can understand me on my phone anymore. Kinda sucks.

Post pictures of your battery usage. If you're having major drain we can pull logs from the device if needed to see if an app is stuck (but it should still show int he battery app).

I can 99% say for certain that location is probably not the direct cause of any huge battery drain you're seeing in this case. Most calls for location are literally a simple call to a web service (normally less then 10-20k total) and that's it. The only time location is a major drain is when you're running something that's requesting high accuracy location for long periods (ie GPS gets on and left on for while), like some navigation apps.

In fact, most of the guides that I see for extending battery (recommend to turn off manually control location/nfs/wifi) have negligible benefites (results are about as placebo as you can get.) The work done to make sure those are not battery drainers is very in depth and normally most issues I've see have been bugs or misbehaving apps.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2014 04:14

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

PlaneGuy posted:

What's IE doing in the background? I just went into battery sense and saw it was numero uno and had background task permission.

I believe there is a known bug where something is causing it to get stuck and spin. If it's the one I'm thinking of, you'll need to restart your phone as I don't think killing it normally will fix the issue. This is where field medic will be very useful -- I'll find and find out if we can put out a howto and where to get the logs sent to.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2014 08:26

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

wookieepelt posted:

I used to open a tab in IE and it would stay until I closed the tab, even if I quit IE. Now, if I back out of IE, it loses everything I had saved for later. What is the point of unlimited tabs if you start over every time you back out?

It should still save them (it does on my 1020). The only time I think it might close some is when there is memory pressure.

Drastic Actions posted:

Hey Xylo, I can't get Window Phone's header controls (The battery, time, signal strength bar, I'm not sure what it's called) to respect the requested theme settings in my App.xaml. I'm trying to force the light theme for both Windows 8 and Windows Phone apps, but the controls at the top only seem to respect the phones settings, so while I set it to display the light theme those controls are still white, so you can't see them. Am I missing something?

I think the official name for that is the tray. I don't know what the design options for that are, but off hand if you're trying to override how the user set something on it's phone and you can't, that sounds like a good thing. I do know it's possible you can turn it off in someway (see the bing apps for an example).

# ¿ Apr 20, 2014 18:15

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Drastic Actions posted:

EDIT: Oh, by the way, the Xbox music app overrides the user settings and uses a dark theme. It also does not show the tray. .

IMO, and I'm sure many would agree, the current Xbox Music app isn't something anyone should model anything after. Just sayin'.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2014 01:56

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Doomsday Jesus posted:

My wife just got a 1520 and signed in with her love account.

It tried syncing then said "not up to date." So, we told it to sync again. She triple checked her login information and it is correct. She gets the error code 86000c0a when trying to download apps or update existing apps.

Any ideas?

Love account? Do you mean Microsoft Account? If so, that error code is telling the client to do backoff (throttling).

# ¿ Apr 22, 2014 03:17

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Cybernetic Vermin posted:

Some people earlier in the thread talked about sms backup causing timeouts on account updates, but that they eventually go away after sufficiently many attempts (some portion gets successfully done each time). Might be that issue?

Yes this is correct. You can also turn off other backups/syncs (beyond sms) as a temp solution to get it to sync, then turn them back on later.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2014 06:20

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Drastic Actions posted:

xylo: I've got another question for you. I changed my phones language and region settings back to Japanese. If I set my speech language to English, I can hold down the search button and still get access to the advance voice command features.

This is great. I can keep adding voice commands to my app without having to set the language of the phone to English. Sure I lose Cortana access, but I don't really care about that right now. My bigger issue is if I set the speech language settings back to Japanese, I don't get voice commands at all. I tried resetting the phone, but I can't even get the old interface to appear. Was it taken out completely? Is it ever coming back? It's not like it's a major loss, but I'm just wondering.

Oh yeah, my phone is set to light theme mode. If you change the speech settings right after you reboot the phone and then launch it, it tries to show the dark theme .

I'm not sure about the first. I don't so much with intl builds so I'm not sure what the expected thing to happen is. Sorry.

Also the second looks like a good bug.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2014 01:03

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

OldPueblo posted:

Now that the start screen is restored as well as app data, is there any reason anymore to cringe when you need to do a hard reset? All I can think of is re-downloading your Xbox music, but creating a playlist ahead of time with all the music saved would probably make that easy as well?

Remember, app data is only restored if the app supports it.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2014 03:03

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

LentThem posted:

Field Medic is something else, mentioned here: https://dev.windowsphone.com/en-US/OEM/docs/Debugging/Collect_and_view_data_connectivity_settings_using_Field_Medic

Disappointed that it isn't available in my region.

They are basically the same thing. FM drops logs onto your phone so you can break them over and debug. The other gives uploads them for us to do the work.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2014 07:29

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Mecca-Benghazi posted:

xylo, I reset my phone recently and when I opened up the podcast app none of my subscriptions had synced. It wasn't really a problem since I only had a few but was that a bug or is syncing not supported at the moment?

I don't know if that's by design or not. I'll be honest in that I don't ever listen to podcasts. :shrug:

On the the side, I would think it should.

# ¿ May 1, 2014 03:32

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Rent posted:

I've reset 3 times so far. I checked my 4 device limit. The music app works when it wants to. Earlier today at the gym when I REALLY wanted to use it, not at all. Then it would give me 30 second clips. Now it works just fine.

Yep.

Cortana trying to be helpful. This is about 30% of the time when I try to use her for anything. Of course I have internet access and can browse the web, but Cortana won't work until I cycle airplane mode.

This is about 50% of the time when I try to play a song. I'd warn any Xbox music listener not to upgrade to 8.1 until this type of stuff gets sorted out. I know my problems aren't problems everyone is having, but there's a fair amount of us out there with these issues.

And I have to give a loving presentation on what's new and cool about 8.1 at my job. Ugh

drat this is not good. This is defiantly not the normal experience, but it's hard for me to stay if you're got a bad phone, firmware issue, or an MO issue. Please use the diagnostics apps and do some repros/send logs etc.

# ¿ May 9, 2014 01:40

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Jewmanji posted:

Xylo, can you tell me the most effective place to lodge my bug report? As detailed a few pages back, the mic on my phone seems to not work during phone calls (both regular 4G on AT&T and Skype). Voice recognition still works seamlessly, but there doesn't seem to be a way for anyone to hear me. I'm left with a broken phone, and it doesn't seem like there's any clarity about whether rolling back to 8.0 is risk-free?

Use the diagnostics app in the store to get logs and send them to us. Then you can use the nokia tool to reflash.

# ¿ May 22, 2014 03:38

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

G-III posted:

Any restructuring going on right now at Microsoft will take at least a year for teams to get re-aligned, their budgets properly allocated, their project portfolio updated, new project plans drafted, new requirements updated, and finally something developed.

False. The realignment already happened -- anything else going on is just fine tuning as new plans are evaluated. Fun fact: Did you know that the WPD (Windows Phone Division) and the related WPC/WPS teams don't exist anymore? Sure there are people working on it still, but the team as you know it is gone and already been realigned. Same goes for all the other engineering teams at MS.

LentThem posted:

I don't think this will do anything as long as the management ranks are filled with "GO TEAM GO! CRAPPLE AND SCROOGLE! Evangelize to the wife and kids!" high school football team loyalty garbage. Hoping that "restructure" is actually code for "mass purge."

You'd be surprised. Internally, I think we are our own worst critics. You can look back about two or three pages and find some pretty angry posts here -- take that and ratchet it up ten fold and you would come close to some of the discussions we have internally. It's not that we're rude and bashing each other, but we've learned and encourage people to give the raw feedback -- because our customers will if we don't do it then. Doesn't mean we get it perfect, and certainly the Xbox Music issue (like I've posted before) is one of those spots.

xylo fucked around with this message at 08:49 on Jun 20, 2014

# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 08:42

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

LentThem posted:

Okay quick employment check: Xylo and thestoreroom, you guys still around? Probably too personal but I'm super curious.

Still here and reading the thread. Still busy working on cool new things.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2014 07:53

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Jonah Hex posted:

It is a developer phone with our next Snapdragon chip in it. Cannot say too much about it at this point.

Looks like a standard QRD device. Glad to see the work we did to support those is being put to use.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2014 23:30

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Sri.Theo posted:

So I got the Cortana update. The screen still turns on when you give a command through headphones. That still sucks.

I think this is because when the screen is off that subsystem is in a deep sleep power state.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 19:47

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Naffer posted:

Wifi calling is such an awesome feature but it means having to wait several extra months to get update because T-mobile invariably has to fix it with every OS update.

I wish this implementation of wifi calling would go away forever. The things it does to the call stack are nothing short of truly awful.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2014 21:36

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Jomo posted:

Question for all you Lumia owners. With WP8, did they fix the boot loop issue that existed WP6.5? It would occur when you ran the phone flat and started to charge it, as 6.5 would try to boot up as soon as it had "enough" charge, which usually caused the phone to go flat again. That was the only issue I had with my 900, but also the reason I switched to a S3.

I am however willing to give WP8.1 a try as I've been lusting after the 1020 for a while. Not having to carry a point-and-shot camera with me ever again is a very big attraction.

There was no WP6.5. The condition you describe can be caused by using a charger with too low draw compared to what you were trying to do on the phone. Frequently this would mean trying to charge over a standard usb port on say a computer instead of directly from the wall.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2014 03:36

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Maneki Neko posted:

Looks like the Windows 10 chat just finished, guess we'll have to wait for a bit to actually get better info on the future of Windows Phone, other than "we're moving everything to Windows 10"

Today was just enterprise talk and announcing the Insider Program.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2014 19:23

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

jeeves posted:

Is there any way to look in any caches for the password or such?

No.

quote:

It seems I stupidly used a fake mail address during the account setup procedure originally and now Microsoft won't let me recover the password at all since it wants to use my Xbox account's credit card to verify the identity but gently caress if I ever put in a credit card or even have an xbox account.

gently caress, do I just need to make a new account? Will it gently caress up all of her current applications to have to reset them to a new account?

Apps/Contact are tied to the account. If you used a fake information you've just hosed yourself. You can try the "forgot password" step on account.live.com and try to send a reset code via text/etc to the phone number you put on the profile. But if you used fake information there also then it's not going to work. (don't use fake information/etc on these accounts -- all it does end up hurting the user and preventing us from giving you support when you need it).

# ¿ Oct 3, 2014 20:00

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Chasiubao posted:

So the light sensor on my 920 decided to stop working. Glance doesn't work, notifications don't turn the screen on, and the screen goes black immediately when I'm trying to push keys during a call.

I've tried everything short of a hard reset, and I don't have a screen protector. Anyone have any ideas?

Sounds like dust in the proximity sensor. Try using some canned air in the ear hole angled to the right to blow it out.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 02:16

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Mecca-Benghazi posted:

I have found that the Data Sense app likes to round up (which makes sense) and that when I 'call' the AT&T data number, the number in the text they send me is lower. Maybe check with your provider to see if they have a similar thing.

It's not really rounding up. Many carriers have data paths that they do not charge you for. So while it went out of the network stack and we count it, we don't know that the carrier didn't count it against your total. It's very common for you to have used less data against your plan than you thought.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2014 01:24

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

kurona_bright posted:

The updated app looks cool, but it crashes whenever I go to bookmarks. I tried reinstalling it, but no dice.

Thanks for all your hard work!

Ditto. Since mine was set to open on bookmarks first it crashes on load.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2014 02:59

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Drastic Actions posted:

It blows my mind. Again, I'm really sorry for promising all this stuff, only to have it broken on launch. Hopefully they can fix it soon so it will work as I want it to.

gently caress you worst app ever rated 1 start etc. :v:

Just force updated and it seems to be working now. Good stuff. Thanks for the fix.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2014 06:20

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Cybernetic Vermin posted:

Yeah, the Lumia 535 is probably a sign that the age of 512 MB is over. Not that sure it was ever that wise a tier to have.

Christ I loving sure as poo poo hope so. 512MB only exists so OEMs can get to sub 100$ phones for cost conscience areas where there is poo poo tons of sales volumne (this is why there are like 120934575 lovely low end Android devices).

# ¿ Nov 22, 2014 06:07

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Shrimpy posted:

It's a couple of things (and a few of which I'm sure I'll miss) but when WP7 originally launched:

1) You had the "Me" tile which worked as basically a notification center for all your social media activity. It was persistent too, so more like the Facebook Notifications globe than the current notification system. You could also post/check-in to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc directly from the tile. The functionality of this got neutered pretty heavily in WP8-8.1. If I recall correctly you could do Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MSN, and a handful of others.

It was great.. we didn't want to neuter it. I think I posted on why it happened though.

Shrimpy posted:

2) You used to be able to do everything social media related directly from the People hub. So if you wanted to click on someone's Facebook status, view a picture, comment or like something, you were always doing so within the People hub. It wasn't this whole "let me jump out into the dedicated app to reply" type deal. The original FB and Twitter apps being lovely didn't matter because the integration with the core platform was so solid.

That was great... we didn't want to neuter it. I think I posted on why it happened though.

I'm hoping things get better with Win10 seeing how well OSG working out.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2014 05:37

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

LentThem posted:

Was the reasoning for this something like "Every time one of these other services (twitter/linkedin/facebook) changes their APIs, the hub is broken until the next OS update, but if we split these into separate apps then things can be updated quickly"?

That's part of it. Since carriers are not really your friends when you want to push fast and frequent updates, having it be something you can change server side is a huge benefit. This is why you're seeing rapid releases with Cortana and (the admittedly still terrible) Xbox Music client. It's the right move really since we are moving to a Windows as a Service model (ie, continually development/release as opposed to once every 2-4 years.)

For the people hub changes, for example there were multiple additionally reasons. For example the Facebook chat system (XMPP) that we hooked into was deprecated and slated for removal. There was no replacement. Another reason is people have been "trained" to look for apps. It didn't matter that it was all rolled into one, people kept looking for app X because that's how other platforms did it.

Another problem is the behind the scenes "war" that's going on. All the social companies right now are in a cold war trying to bring people into there ecosystems and lock them there. They want people to be hooked into there system and only be able to use their products/apps to interface with the system for control and monetization reasons. You can see this with Facebook and it's messenger system (which I won't be surprised if it becomes pure Whatsapp later). You see this with Twitter blocking 3rd party clients when they reach a certain size (unless they start paying for access). You see it with iMessage.

Mobile is exploding with growth -- this isn't ground floor but more like "level 2, going up" and companies are doing a mad rush to stake claims. Knowing this, if you're just trying to quickly grab as much share to lock in your ecosystem, I can understand the thought process that leads them to just spit out a system on Android/iOS, and then block any access to the system from a competitor/3rd party app that might lower your ad revenue/distort your "vision" of how the service works. Listen to any stock/company analyst talk about Facebook/Twitter/Snapchat/etc and I'm sure you'll hear "are they growing users, are monetizing mobile that growth, etc" and it's pretty easy to trace back why things are happening like they are.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2014 20:21

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Stick100 posted:

1. They've never invested heavily in the software team of WP. WP7 was made by just a handful of people, since it never took off they never brought in the big teams.

This is not an accurate statement. WP7 was not a super small handful team and WPD as a whole expanded during the 7->8 timeframe.

Stick100 posted:

3. Because it was never true, it was never possible. Carriers block OTA updates PERIOD there are no exceptions. Apple doesn't get blocked because Apple works with the carriers months in advance and it would be too embarrassing for an iOS update to go on every US carrier except one. This is also the only sane method as a broken OTA results in a phone returned/service cancelled to the store not to the OEM. Why would a carrier let you sell a phone that could be bricked at will and incur the damage to them directly.

This has some inadequacies also. It certainly was possible but for ~reasons~ didn't pan out. Carriers want to control the update process because there networks not not all uniform. If a software update comes out borks something, they pay the costs of it from support calls. If carried blocked everything, developer preview wouldn't exist either. Anyone who has phones on a carrier network works months in advance with carrier for all of these items -- it's not unique to Apple. You have your allotted time when you go into the carriers lab testing and there is back and forth as you fix things they feel are broken/not working as expected. The reason Apple gets to push out whenever is due to it's original contact with AT&T, and later now, due to it's clout.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2014 22:55

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Factor Mystic posted:

Inadequate doesn't mean wrong. If the WP mouthpieces would be more honest and forthcoming instead of pretending that all is well, then people wouldn't make inadequate statements.

I didn't say it was wrong. I would love for the "mouthpieces" to just come out and say the real story. However if they did that and the ugly truth was revealed it would make some parties look pretty bad. And people don't like to look bad in public. That would damage business relationships and make things even harder then they are.

I don't think you're going to find any of them saying "Xbox Music came out great" -- I'm pretty sure they've been saying "yeah this isn't good -- we're fixing it by doing a rapid release cycle." That doesn't mean they've been able to address everything, but clearly the spending time fixing that, pushing the dev preview program, getting apps like instagram/pandora/etc is acknowledgement there is work to be done. Note I'm not saying it's all good and endorse it -- I'm just saying "this is the reality and it sucks but sometimes you have to make do behind the scenes to fix things without talking much."

As far as communication, the fact that we're doing Windows 10 pretty openly and letting people participate like this should be a clear sign that we agree with the communication issue and are heading in the right direction.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2014 03:15

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

CalvinandHobbes posted:

Most of the windows phone forums these days are pretty miserable places and that's partially because a lot of the early adopters and fans are really apprehensions about the future of the platform. This mostly comes from a desire for the platform to succeed although it can seem quite a bit more negative than that.

Touching on this, I think many people are rightfully unhappy that we appear to have gone slow. With all the work that we've had to do with taking on the Windows kernel and convergence it's taken a lot of effort meaning there isn't much flashy for people to see up front. On the flip side I certainly can't stand lovely sites like wmpoweruser and can get barely tolerate wpcentral. It's pretty important to acknowledged the flaws so you know where you need to focus to get them fixed. At the same token, some of the bad need to be framed with some context -- normally this helps make it (and any waiting for a fix) a bit more tolerable.

All that aside, I strongly encourage anyone to use the windows feedback app on Win10. We have a whole team dedcated to just curating feedback from that and making sure what people are voting for gets priority feature wise, and I'm watching the bugs people find get pushed up tot he teams for fixing. It really is your voice to be heard by the team.

Okay enough shilling.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2014 08:04

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-announces-windows-10-press-event-for-january-21st

This will be live streamed. It may be interesting. :v:

# ¿ Dec 13, 2014 00:46

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Factor Mystic posted:

Let me guess.

New desktop OS version, so... focus on Universal Apps and how they can be in windows and not just snapped. Highlight is on integration, so big talk about how Universal Apps can target multiple platforms with buy once use everywhere, with warmed over demos about apps can share state across platforms (which was demoed in the Windows 8 runup, iirc). Integration benefits if you sign in with your Microsoft account, of course. Someone might use the phrase "same kernel", but it is supposed to be a consumer event so I may be wrong on that count. Even though the event is about Windows 10, there will be time spent on Windows phones, since they're also part of the broad Windows family. There will be a slide showing better battery life. Probably a few slides with OEM partner logos. And don't forget the slide with a lot of big name apps that have promised to deliver Windows apps, but are actually built by contractors and will only have 1 update per year, lagging them behind the iOS versions in features and UX. Someone will probably make a fuzzy statement about the upgradability of current gen devices (a statement that will later be clarified to exclude more phones than it includes). All the tech journalists in the audience will be reporting from macbook airs. The Verge will post a story like "New Windows 10 Looks Great, But Is It Enough To Keep Microsoft Relevant In A Mobile World?" and the final phrase will be "only time will tell". The word "productivity" is the free space on the buzzword bingo card.

Someone make a bunch of bingo cards for us. I think there are a good 10-15 of us that would play while watching.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2014 21:18

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 04:42

xylo: Feb 21, 2007; <img src="https://forumimages.somethingawful.com/images/newbie.gif" border=0>

Wheezle posted:

Xylo please take note of my shitposting and use it to enhance your mobile platform.

Shitposting noted.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2014 21:24

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