Re: WMP 11 Bug


"zachd [MSFT]" <zachd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:%239OBYdnYHHA.3928@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"video4ever" <video4ever@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:E28E6675-13BC-4A3A-81BF-2D122FD69450@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I think what he says is true. There are many bugs introduced in wm11 that MS
seems unwilling to fix.

There's a particularly great article written about the 'cost of fixing one bug' that you can search for if you're interested. This is a non-trivial field. Happily Tedd leads this team, and he's one of my favorite people at Microsoft because he loves to do the right thing. But no, the right answer isn't always fixing anything: the product shipped at a certain implementation level/style, and any further tweaks to that post-release come at a huge expense that have to be well justified. That's established by customer feedback to product support.

Your customers don't provide feedback to product support. While we have seen many bugs and usability issues here, you have made the statement that, from what you're hearing from product support, there are very few issues. The problem is, who wants to pay anywhere from 35 dollars (soon to be 59 dollars) up to hundreds of dollars for the privilege of providing you product feedback? And here's more name dropping. Yes, Zach, we know that you know people at Microsoft. But we don't know Tedd. Using his name is just bragging on your part. It's totally meaningless to us.

And, from what you stated above, are we to assume then that there will be few or no improvements to WMP 11?

Regardless of channel available, given the cost/effort involved (maintaining / servicing incremental releases is an interesting problem), it takes significant feedback. At the core of it, Microsoft isn't a garage company. This stuff isn't rocket science: there's a business being run here, and you actually do have to make tough decisions in order to do the right long term thing. I'm more a fan of the Garage / Anything Goes style myself, but incremental releases have massive impact and demand on the company, so...

Other departments, much to my chagrin, have said that Microsoft is aggressively pursuing iterative development and incremental releases. Now you're saying that your group isn't doing that. That's even more scary because that means that even the most amateurish bugs in WMP won't get fixed, let alone the serious usability issues.

if you're really really interested in Release Management and SE and that kind of thing, I know the right people and can swing a resume their way.

In other words, your reply to your customers who are dissatisfied with the quality of WMP is, "If you think you can do it better, come on and try"?



I applaud things just working, but the short term QFE to patch Annoyance X often comes at a much more interesting cost to something even better in the future plans.

Your over-use of the word interesting doesn't do a thing for your customers. We really don't care about interesting. We just want a product that works.


My biggest problem is long play lists referencing files longer than 30
minuites will not work. It is a long known bug that has not been fixed.

You posted this general comment four times today - I linked you to KB931756 which contains the fix. So yeah: the stuff that product support gets feedback about is getting looked at and fixed. I have a link to the five WMP11 QFEs at the top of my page - or you can just search for "windows media player 11" fix at http://support.microsoft.com .

Generally if it's a critical / important bug (not a design change request) affecting numerous people and gets into Product Support's hands... that's the right way for things to go.

-Zach
--
Speaking for myself only.
See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.



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