Forwards: May 2012

I love my Windows Phone

Seriously

I love it

And I love building apps for it too.

But in recent months, I've been finding the Microsoft AppHub slower and slower to use

certification which used to take 2-3 days now takes 7+ days
post-certification app publishing which used to take an hour, now takes a day
beta app publishing which used to take 2-3 hours now takes 2+ days
the support on my recent "stuck" app submission has been horrible - the app is currently on day 15 of waiting for testing and the support responses from Microsoft have basically just told me to wait, even though I told them the need for the app was urgent - it was for a conference last weekend :(

The few emails I've received from AppHub support seem to indicate that either Microsoft doesn't care, or that the team simply can't work in an agile way - their automated process has control and when it breaks, then their users don't seem to know how to detect it's broken or how to fix it.

Perhaps also, the Marketplace team are now too busy preparing for Win8 to remember WP7?

From the looks of a straw poll on Twitter today (see some of the comments below), it looks like I'm not alone in noticing the growing and slowing pains.

But I hold out hope that Microsoft care... In fact, I hope and believe that they care a lot...

Dear Microsoft. Please put some time and love into the marketplace. Please stop aiming to match Apple's experience - that's not an experience developers and app publishers love.

Thanks

Stuart

Forwards

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Please put some time and love into the WP7 marketplace submission process