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Why Microsoft? Why!

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Yesterday afternoon, I pulled my Lumia 950 off my belt and unexpectedly noticed that my battery was below 50%. I then saw a popup message indicating that my phone needed to restart to install updates. What updates? Anyway, I placed the phone on my wireless charger, went to settings and clicked restart, at which time I was reminded that I needed at least 40% (I was at 39%) to continue. Not wanting to wait an hour at the office for updates to complete I decided to let the phone charge and restart when I got home. On a wired charge the phone updated just fine. All good, right? Not so fast buddy.

This morning, as I do every morning, I got into Nextgen Reader and started reading about all of yesterday’s news, including all the new theoretical news from BUILD. I got down to the Windows Phone section and saw an article indicating that a Slow Ring update had gone out on Wednesday (yesterday) to Windows Mobile users. As I continued reading, I saw that there were some “known issues” with this new Slow Ring build. Wait, I said to myself. “Why should a Slow Ring build have known issues”. Isn’t that what the Fast Ring is for? As I read further I discovered that this new build, that I inadvertently installed last night, had a teeny little problem. If you happened to own a Microsoft Band 1 or 2, it would disconnect from your phone and you couldn’t pair again without hard resetting your phone. WTF!!!! Would Microsoft really release a Slow Ring build with a “known issue” that effectively disconnects their own products from each other. I went in to other room to fetch my Microsoft Band 2 and got the answer to my question. Yes. I tried pairing multiple times with no success. Rebooted the phone. Reinstalled the Microsoft Health app. Rebooted the Band. Nothing. Just a stupid error message explaining that the two devices could not pair. Note that I was pairing Bluetooth devices when many of you were still toddlers, so I found this downright silly. No actually, I found this seriously fucked up.

Now I won’t deny that I was the guy complaining that the Slow Ring folks never get any love. Usually receiving a new update the same day as the general public. Of if we were lucky, the day before. So I NEVER, NEVER, expected a Slow Ring build to be released with a bug that “REQUIRED” a hard reset of your phone. I just didn’t believe that would ever happen. But that’s exactly what I did this morning before jumping in the shower to get ready for work. I checked first to see that I had a reliable backup from 5:35AM today (that was convenient) and then tapped the RESET button. I was so frustrated at the time, I didn’t take all the other precautionary steps to backup some of the apps I have with peculiar backup methods (CSV files, email dumps) etc., so once I got to work and started to rebuild my phone I realized I had lost a lot of stuff. Probably not very important in our ever troubling world, but important to me. What for example. My mileage and fuel tracker, that I have been faithfully updating since my first Windows Phone in 2010. All the data, gone. Or the Weight Tracker app that I have faithfully updated every Saturday morning since June of 2015, helping me track my weight loss from 235 down to 194 last week (yah). Along with my future goals and targets. All gone. Or Clever To Do, now showing recurring tasks from 1/4/16, the last update. Not going to bother tapping through three months of tasks. Then of course, there is all the Authenticator nonsense, resetting signatures on eight email accounts, adding passwords to five of the eight accounts. Then checking all the sync characteristics to make sure everything is correct. Then relinking account, renaming, etc. Then restoring all the apps that do use Dropbox or OneDrive for backups. Got to the office at 12:00pm and haven’t done a snot of work yet. That means I will be here to 9:00 or 9:30 in an attempt to catch up. Thanks Microsoft. No, FUCK YOU MICROSOFT!

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I tried to send the above screenshot from my phone using my Sharefolder app (of course, I have to reconfigure all the connections again) but was getting an error. It’s happened before after an update, so I deleted the app and went to the Store to reinstall. That’s when I was greeted by a message that there were 165 Pending Updates. WTF. I don’t even have 165 apps installed. Actually, before I went to the Store, I went through my apps and deleted anything I haven’t used in several months. Probably 50 or 60 apps and games. Leaving maybe 20-25 third party apps on the phone. I will purge more tonight.  I finally just emailed the images to myself. It’s just so tiring.

Needless to say, I am back on the Production Build with my L950. I’ll leave my L640 on the Fast Ring as it only has pre-installed apps, and frankly I don’t give a shit about a $40 phone. But I am effectively done with Windows Insider. Microsoft can get feedback from others who don’t have anything better to do. I was really let down today and I’m disappointed. I don’t know. Maybe the whole Windows Phone / Windows Insider thing is a big psych experiment to see how people handle frustration and disappointment. Maybe if Microsoft discourages enough Windows Phone users they can tell the world they abandoned the mobile platform due to lack of interest. They sort of made that clear at BUILD. Maybe 2017 they say. Maybe. Oh, and FUCK YOU Microsoft!

Let me get back to reconfiguring my Windows Phone and my Band. Got another few hours to go.

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