back to article Microsoft Phone man offers guarantee-free glitch pledge

Microsoft will try to avoid the mistakes that bedeviled the NoDo update to handsets but Windows Phone chief Joe Belfiore has stopped short of issuing a guarantee. Belfiore, the corporate vice president responsible for Windows Phone product management and design, said on Wednesday that Microsoft has learned its lessons from the …

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  1. mraak

    Black Hawk Down

    Why does MS remind me of a helicopter desperately trying to stay in the air? You know the scene. The tail keeps on spinning in circles, rotating the helicopter which aimlessly spirals down while the crew tries everything to pull it up, or somewhere, anywhere but down.

  2. ElReg!comments!Pierre
    Coat

    I don't understand the problem

    That upgrade really did what it said on the can, which is better than usual for MS! Give the man a rest.

    Mine is the NoCoat.

  3. Mikel
    Go

    This evolution is amusing

    It's entertaining to watch them thrash about like this with their updates, but it's pretty harmless really. Remember that in six months after release they've sold barely a few days worth of iPhone or Android phone sales. It's not like their bumbling is hurting a lot of people.

    And remember that pre-NoDo update? 90% of the time it didn't brick the phone at all. From the reportage you can see that was a stroke of good luck.

    This is not a big deal - especially if you choose the right phone.

  4. Charles-A Rovira
    FAIL

    Its called "Mango"?

    Well, while its better than "Windows Mobile 7.x, Fruity edition", it shows that Microsoft still hasn't learned how to name a product to save its life.

    What focus group came up with this, uh, gem of a name?

    They ought to take their marketing people and replace them with trained monkeys.

    "Mango"? Indeed he has ... over to Google Android and Apple iOS.

    1. Growler
      Joke

      I agree, how silly...

      ...why couldn't they choose a gem of a name like, for example, Cupcake or Donut ?

  5. LaeMing
    Megaphone

    Re: Phones are harder than PCs

    I'd tend to disagree: Phone users just haven't been hen-pecked for decades into accepting shoddy crashy data-lossy software as inevitable and acceptable, so are less forgiving of such.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I disagree

      So companies like LG, Motorola, Samsung etc... that had no experience whatsoever in developping an OS were perfectly capable of rolling out stable mobile phones in the last decade, but a multibillion software multinational company which made it's business solely from OS over the last 3 decades whine that it's too hard?

      No Joe, if anyone should use this excuse, it should definitely NOT be you, and if YOU find it hard while the others just get on with it and deliver, it's because you suck. So either hand back over your undeserved massive wages and bonuses for your own failures and walk away with your tail between your legs in disgrace, or STFU and deliver.

  6. Anomalous Cowturd
    Joke

    Or did he really say...

    "Have we learned from this and could it get worse?" Belfiore asked. "I'd definitely say 'no'." ®

  7. Shannon Jacobs
    Gates Horns

    Phones are NOT guns

    I think the fundamental problem is that Microsoft is a weapons-oriented company. They've always seen the OS as primarily a weapon to blast competitors. The same philosophy worked pretty good with Office, but has passed its best-sold-by date and is not very suitable for such small devices as PDAs and phones.

    The triumph of Microsoft is little old ladies driving trench mortar OSes that are pwned every which way but loose.

    Will this philosophy work for phones? Not so much.

  8. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    "but phones are different"

    As noted by someone a few years ago:

    Phones and computers are different: Computers don't ring

    - Andrew Tanenbaum e-mail signature

  9. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    But...

    "The company has thrown more staff at the building and testing of phone code..."

    They've hired an intern to do "make; make install" (or whatever the Windows Phone equivalent is)

    In another article, it says that there are just 5 handset manufacturers of Windows phones. Is it really *that* hard to test against 5 manufacturers ? (OK, I know each manufacturer has more than one handset, but still....)

    "The OEMs do a lot more of the core operating system code on phones than PCs"

    Surely MS must have know about this when they were writing the O/S in the first place ?

    "Mobile operators play a role in testing and we are still trying to figure out the process for doing that"

    Er, don't they already have this equivalent problem with all the 3rd party application & hardware developers for Windows on PCs ?

    "One was Microsoft tested NoDo on pre-release handsets but the handsets were updated by OEMs for sale"

    So, for a product that MS is throwing considerable corporate muscle behind, they couldn't afford (or be bothered) to buy phones once they hit the stores ? I've seen many software vendors say "We'll support the latest Windows version X days after it launches", purely for the reason that MS might have changed Windows code between beta/test versions and the finally released version. Did someone in MS not think that the manufacturers *might* have changed their handsets between pre-release and release ?

    All these excuses/mistakes, are the sort of thing I'd expect to hear from a company staffed by teenagers releasing their first product from their dad's shed. Not a corporate software company like MS, who've been around a fair few years. Did the team writing Windows Phone 7 even meet anyone from the PC Windows product team ?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Halo

    In MS's defence..

    Lets be right, as soon as the Mobile operators get hold of the phones, they piss around with the OS sticking in their own shite. Anyone whom has ever debranded a phone will know what i mean.

    I'm not saying MS are blameless but you cant hold them responsible for the crap that the network operators insist on putting on the phone..

    1. Mikel
      Gates Horns

      It's not Microsoft's fault?

      @cornz 1 - you cant hold them responsible for the crap that the network operators insist on putting on the phone..

      You can't be serious. After all the millions they've paid in marketing to brand Android as "fragmented" by irregular update versions now we can't blame Microsoft for failing to deliver consistency on their own phones? Why not? Turnabout is fair play. They promised consistency and they didn't deliver it. How are people not entitled to feel cheated? They didn't get what they were promised.

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