I blogged about the possible loss of Microsoft’s vitality. I thought it is worthwhile to document the issues that I encountered with Microsoft App Hub that may be a reflection of some aspects of Microsoft.

I was strongly encouraged to publish apps for the soon-to-be-debuted Windows Phone 7. I was even offered an opportunity to sit down with a Microsoft engineer to help get the app development started. As a grateful member of Microsfot’s BizSpark program, with faith in Windows Phone 7 which still remains today, I prepared apps for publication before the debut of Windows Phone 7 in November 2010. Unfortunately, there was a problem – my registration at their App Hub could not be completed.  I contacted multiple Microsoft staff members desperately starting from late October 2010, and followed all their suggestions. The debut of Windows Phone 7 passed while the issue still lingering. I assume Microsoft staff were overloaded and understaffed during the holiday season.  I continued the struggle after the New Year.  I did not give up until February.

I waited for more than half a year, then and resumed the struggle in August. My registration finally went through after numerous email exchanges with Microsoft tech support staff and different trial-and-error efforts. I tried a brand new account, it did not work.  I created a brand new Windows Live account, it did not work.  I finally passed the step where I got stuck for more than half a year by assigning an email field with the email address of my Windows Live ID, but then I got stuck at the last step – payment. A few different payment methods were tried to no avail. It  suddenly worked one day after I received an email message from Microsoft tech support. They told me they did not do anything.  I did not make any changes either.  How and why it started to work remains a mystery.

I thought I was all set after submitting registration information so many times, so I was totally surprised that I needed to submit exactly the same information again when trying to publish an app.

I have been stunned by certain known issues, and especially, how long they have remained.  For example, a beta submission is not available for up to 10 hours after App Hub sends an email message specifically informing the availability of the app with a link.  In other words, Microsoft knows it sends misleading email messages, but it cannot stop this. Another example is beta submissions cannot have updates. Beta versions of software need more frequent updates than production versions by definition. App Hub allows production versions to have updates, but prevents beta versions from uploading updates!  The 5-6 days delay of app downloads is incomprehensible.  I have created my own feedback mechanism embedded in my apps.  I can get real-time updates easily all based on Microsoft technologies, but Microsoft has to have a delay of 6 days in reporting the data they collect.  It would take another article do just describe the inconsistency among different parts of the download report page.

An efficient firm usually can fix similar issues in minutes, or hours at most. All of these indicate that Microsoft has certainly contracted the bureaucracy disease that many big corporations have, and it may get sicker and sicker.  It could use a major shakeup and cleansing.