[Mr Lebowski]

If anyone ever gives me a car, then yes. I will do as the law requires. Even if I don't agree with that particular legislation, which I don't.


Ummmm.... Yeah, you're talking about stealing. Plain and simple. Were you authorized by the owner of the intellectual property to let someone else install it? No. They do, and they're stealing. You do it for them, and you're an accessory. I'm not a lawyer, but this seems like pretty simple stuff to me, and if anyone had explained it to me when I was pirating software more than 30 years ago when I was in about 7th grade, I would have understood it, and obeyed it.


Microsoft offers no mechanism to offer refunds. You could write me and demand a refund, and I don't even have a way to know whether you actually bought the app. That's privacy. But even given those hinderances, I have heard of developers refunding people, which leaves them out 30% because Microsoft keeps 30%, and if a dev refunds on his own, MS isn't going to give that dev back their 30%.


You don't demonstrate a good understanding of background agents at all. And on top of it you make baseless accusations that you cannot back up.
Here is Microsoft's documentation on Periodic Agents (commonly referred to as Background Agents or Background Tasks):
Background agents for Windows Phone

More to the point that blows your accusations out of the water, here are the restrictions on Periodic Agents:
Background agents for Windows Phone

Before you go calling people liars, you should probably check the information out for yourself.

Good day.

I can read that and have a better understand BUT
developers say their apps ( those who say it) will update every 30 min -they don't, I really don't care why, but they say they do, so then I take notice.
Everyone can read that they say they do, and everyone knows it's BS. Perhaps they shouldn't say an untruth and
perhaps they should include that link with an asterisk saying the "live" tile might update every 30 minutes but they don't -just to let you know.
They lie by omission.
.
Thanks for the link -every app should have that link in the info.

[manicottiK]

I can read that and have a better understand BUT...Everyone can read that they say they do, and everyone knows it's BS. Perhaps they shouldn't say an untruth andperhaps they should include that link with an asterisk saying the "live" tile might update every 30 minutes but they don't...They lie by omission.

As you now know from your reading, the phone provides the capability of starting "background tasks" periodically. Microsoft documents that "period" as 30 minutes +/- 10 minutes -- that's what I see on my phone and I see it reliably. Developers saying that they use this Microsoft service isn't a lie of omission or any other way.

There are multiple reasons for a periodic task to not start as scheduled (Battery Saver active, service subscription expired, previous runs failed repeatedly) and even more for not completing as scheduled (processing/data transfer took too long, ran out of memory, bug), but that doesn't mean that the "background service" doesn't work. I don't see the running of these tasks failing to happen on my phone.

To help drive home the general regularness ("every 30minutes") and the specific variability ("+/- 10 minutes") of the periodic tasks, on our app has an option to tag the tile title with the last periodic update time so that our users can see when the task last ran. You can see in the two pictures below that the last two updates ran 20 minutes apart.


Aside: WP Central to the rescue: Posting these pictures made me realize that there was a bug in our background task that was causing it to not report on DragonCard meal plans. Because I posted this, I paid more attention to the tile, found and fixed the bug, and will submit a new update to the store shortly. Here's what the tile SHOULD be saying:

[hopmedic]

I can read that and have a better understand BUT
developers say their apps ( those who say it) will update every 30 min -they don't, I really don't care why, but they say they do, so then I take notice.
Everyone can read that they say they do, and everyone knows it's BS. Perhaps they shouldn't say an untruth and
perhaps they should include that link with an asterisk saying the "live" tile might update every 30 minutes but they don't -just to let you know.
They lie by omission.
.
Thanks for the link -every app should have that link in the info.

Ummm.... I'm still not seeing a good understanding, and I'm still seeing baseless accusations of lying.

Developers have no way of adjusting when a background agent will run. They have no way of determining when - or IF - a background agent will run (since users can easily disable them). When your phone runs background agents, it runs all of the agents that are registered. So every time background agents run, each and every background agent that is registered will run. Keep in mind that there is a limit to how many can be registered (and developers have no control over whether theirs is one that is registered).

Every time background agents are run by the phone, all background agents run, as I've said. So they all update whatever data they are there to update. What you're not taking into consideration is that every time a background agent runs, the data that's being updated may not have changed. So while it does update, it updates with the same data that it updated with during the previous run. Consider that even though background agents run every 30 +/- 10 minutes, data doesn't change every 30 +/- 10 minutes.

Also, consider that unless the developer has done what manicottiK has done, and actually puts on the tile (or elsewhere) what time the agent ran last, you have no way of knowing when it ran last. You don't know if it ran two minutes ago and the data remained the same, or it ran 40 minutes ago and is about to run again.

Another thing to consider: If you do not open an app for 14 days, its registered background agent will expire. If you have a tile that you look at all the time, and watch the changes, but you never open the app, 14 days after the last time it was opened, the background agent will expire and the tile will no longer update. Developers have no control over this, and cannot bypass or trick the system to get their agents to no longer expire. You must actually open the app at least once every 14 days in order to keep a tile updating (the obvious exception being the apps built into the OS). So you bear some responsibility to keep the tiles updating, as well.

If you would stop jumping to conclusions and realize that people are basically honest and don't start each day with the goal of seeing how much they can deceive Mr. Lebowski, you may find that life can be a much happier event.

[Murray#WP]

I just got a Lumia 920 I can't figure out if I can move the apps I purchased from my retired wp7 device. I would appreciate some advice. Thanks!

[neo158]

I just got a Lumia 920 I can't figure out if I can move the apps I purchased from my retired wp7 device. I would appreciate some advice. Thanks!

If the apps have been updated to run on WP8 then you can download and use them on your new phone, the best thing to do is to look on windowsphone.com at your downloaded apps.

[hopmedic]

Even if the apps have not been updated from the WP7 SDK, the vast majority of apps developed for WP7 will work. The issue at this point would probably be more a matter of whether they are still published or not.

[neo158]

Even if the apps have not been updated from the WP7 SDK, the vast majority of apps developed for WP7 will work. The issue at this point would probably be more a matter of whether they are still published or not.

What I should really have said is if they are showing on the store at all.

[Murray#WP]

I got the phone squared away. Some of the apps I really liked are not available wp8. Thanks a lot!