Killing live tiles..

[jimski]

Crap!!! So my registry editor doesn't work anymore. So I'm stuck having to do a factory restore every time this **** happens, which can happen any given time without warning. How is this not a critical issue and they are not releasing a fix. So all in all, live tiles don't work worth a ****, SMH.

Yes, it sucks. And I have been telling people that more than likely, until Mango becomes available as an update hopefully by Oct/Nov, pretty much every WP user is going to experience push/live tile issues. That's inevitable. Another big issue is that users will continually ***** to developers who can't do anything to solve this issue on their own, resulting in bad reviews and lost sales. That, plus the negative user experience for a highly promoted feature, should be enough for Microsoft to take action before Mango comes around. I think this stands up there with c&p or Marketplace crashes, so maybe it deserves its own update.

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[1jaxstate1]

Looks like material for a dubious class action lawsuit.

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[eric12341]

Looks like material for a dubious class action lawsuit.

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not even! its also the fault of the developers too for poorly implementing live tile support in their apps. all the apps I use have properly working live tiles and push except for the FIM messenger. I have miyowa live messenger,weatherbug and had flory IM but it would always crash so i uninstalled it. but the live tiles work flawlessly with these apps.

 

[1jaxstate1]

yeah. I was bull****ting. But should have some type of fail safe or something. And from the previous post above mine. Seems MS shares some blame.

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[eric12341]

some but not nearly enough for a class action lawsuit, u had like 2 or 3 twitter apps installed when only 1 is necessary so I see where the conflict could come from there. there's some apps that are just buggy like the lyricsnowplaying app that doesn't work for crap, the dailymotion app that always crashes on login or when accessing favorites. there's some pure chingadera out there.

 

[1jaxstate1]

if MS allows me to download the apps and run them on my phone, I don't care if I had 6 Twitter apps, they should all work. And lets say if that was the problem, even after a uninstall of said apps, the problem persists is insane. So what is MS doing with apps when they are reviewing them. If apps break the notification system,MS shouldn't allow them in the marketplace.

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[Dagolara]

jimski what is the feasibility that some dev can whip up an app that would just clear out both registry points that would then have end users just reopen their apps to wake them up? Is this even possible, furthermore would MS let it pass into the wild in your opinion?

 

[thed]

not even! its also the fault of the developers too for poorly implementing live tile support in their apps. all the apps I use have properly working live tiles and push except for the FIM messenger. I have miyowa live messenger,weatherbug and had flory IM but it would always crash so i uninstalled it. but the live tiles work flawlessly with these apps.

It's possible that the developers screwed up but I still think the blame lies with Microsoft here. It's a phone, not a desktop PC. Third party apps shouldn't have the ability to muck up the registry like that. This is (supposed to be) the advantage of having a locked down OS.

Anyway, kudos to jimski for doing all that research on live tiles. I've read his posts about this on Mobility Digest, really interesting stuff (if you're a geek I guess).

 

[jmerrey]

I just decided it was worth the $99 to have working live tiles, and dev unlocked my phone. So now I just clean up the reg entries about every 2-3 weeks and I'm fine. Not only that, but I can add and remove live tiles at will without having to worry about clogging things up. Yes, it's lame to have to do this, and it's a bit of a pain to have to use the reg editor to clean it up every so often, but overall well worth it imho.

 

[1jaxstate1]

Yeah. I think I'm gonna bite the bullet too. The live tiles are the second most awesome thing about the phone!

I just decided it was worth the $99 to have working live tiles, and dev unlocked my phone. So now I just clean up the reg entries about every 2-3 weeks and I'm fine. Not only that, but I can add and remove live tiles at will without having to worry about clogging things up. Yes, it's lame to have to do this, and it's a bit of a pain to have to use the reg editor to clean it up every so often, but overall well worth it imho.

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[jimski]

Yeah. I think I'm gonna bite the bullet too. The live tiles are the second most awesome thing about the phone!

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Go for it. That's the primary reason I dev unlocked. That, and to trying and get to the bottom of the problem. Don't forget that custom ringtones are also within reach. An added bonus.

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[jimski]

jimski what is the feasibility that some dev can whip up an app that would just clear out both registry points that would then have end users just reopen their apps to wake them up? Is this even possible, furthermore would MS let it pass into the wild in your opinion?

Dont think it would ever pass the Marketplace police, and as devs like Schapman have had problems making one registry editor work on all device brands, don't think a single app would it. Best bet would be for Microsoft to put out an update to correct it. And if the code is so intertwined with Mango (don't think so) then a patch, maybe in Settings where a user can do what you suggest, tap a button to clear the Live Tile keys. At least till Mango comes around.

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[jimski]

not even! its also the fault of the developers too for poorly implementing live tile support in their apps. all the apps I use have properly working live tiles and push except for the FIM messenger. I have miyowa live messenger,weatherbug and had flory IM but it would always crash so i uninstalled it. but the live tiles work flawlessly with these apps.

Maybe, but probably not. I have exchanged well over a 100 emails with more than a dozen developers trying to find a common thread for why this happens, moving the blame from MS to devs and back to MS again. They are very frustrated when their apps disconnect for no reason and have tried all kinds of things to correct. I am running two beta live tile apps right now, trying to provide feedback.

Despite apps that automatically register on open and apps that sometimes, mysteriously disconnect/reconnect, if the ManagedEndpoints and Endpoints keys, "always" disappeared/reappeared together, no one would have an issue, except when they reached their 15 live tile app limit. That problem is on Microsoft, and they have already admitted that, and put through a fix for Mango. Long wait though.

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[jimski]

Btw, just to clarify. Third party developers have absolutely no access to the registry or what happens in there (unlike WM). I asked that question a half dozen times. They add a line of code that says, "get me an available push channel" and the OS does the rest. Devs were actually very confused when I started talking Endpoints. That part of it is out of their hands.

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[thed]

Btw, just to clarify. Third party developers have absolutely no access to the registry or what happens in there (unlike WM). I asked that question a half dozen times. They add a line of code that says, "get me an available push channel" and the OS does the rest. Devs were actually very confused when I started talking Endpoints. That part of it is out of their hands.

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I haven't had a chance to look through the dev tools much, so thanks for confirming that. At least MS got that right. But that means it's an OS bug and its all on them. It should have been fixed long ago. There's no reason they couldn't have fixed this in Nodo, unless they didn't know about it back in January or whenever they finished Nodo.

 

[jimski]

I haven't had a chance to look through the dev tools much, so thanks for confirming that. At least MS got that right. But that means it's an OS bug and its all on them. It should have been fixed long ago. There's no reason they couldn't have fixed this in Nodo, unless they didn't know about it back in January or whenever they finished Nodo.

Don't think they knew about it in January but they do now. This is a comment made by a Microsoft employee in the Developer forums dated 5/24/11:
Hi,
I searched our internal issues database. *There was a problem where endpoint information was being persisted in the phone's internal registry even after Tile and Toast are unbound and the service is restarted or the phone is rebooted; which might explain the channel open failures described in this discussion. *This appears to be fixed now. Hopefully this problem will resolve itself as phones get updated with newer OS images in the future.
- Mark
"Failed to open channel" fix/workaround? - App Hub Forums

This sort of clarifies that they understand the persistance of the endpoints (not being deleted when an app is disconnected, disabled or deleted). But that last sentence makes it sound like we may all be waiting till Mango for a fix. Then again, maybe they will surprise us all.

 

[1jaxstate1]

Why hasn't WPCentral ran a very detailed article on this issue. This need to be on the front page. Hopefully bigger sites like Engadget, BGR, or Gizmodo will run it afterwards. Someone needs to kick MS in the ***, and a crap load of bad press might just get them to fix this issue sooner than Mango.

 

[foosball]

Why hasn't WPCentral ran a very detailed article on this issue. This need to be on the front page. Hopefully bigger sites like Engadget, BGR, or Gizmodo will run it afterwards. Someone needs to kick MS in the ***, and a crap load of bad press might just get them to fix this issue sooner than Mango.

No kidding! It really is news-worthy and a shame it hasn't been fixed yet. Everybody was complaining about No-Do but they should have been saving it for a real issue like this one.

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