Hi all!

I thought you might be interested to know some fun behind the scenes facts about the newest band features, Music Controls and Inactivity Reminders!

Music Controls

Music controls is actually implemented completely differently on each phone platform.

• Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows Mobile 10 uses the Bluetooth standard media control profile called AVRCP.

• We found too much variance in different Android phone's support for AVRCP so we go through the Health app to control music on Android.

• Apple has their own Bluetooth music control standard that we use instead of AVRCP when talking to iOS devices.e43

We had a prototype of Music Controls ready at launch, but it wasn't polished or tested enough. We actually checked in our last small fix for media controls just last week. The rich and varied phone landscape turns what looks like simple a feature into a large test and compatibility matrix!

For the Music Controls UI, We had to come up with something that was accessible from anywhere on the band, at any time. The design phase was over 4 months of prototyping and design sketches. Ideas included swiping up from the bottom of the screen while exercising, to having it off to the left inside of tiles similar to the Start Strip peak.

We eventually decided upon the double button press, but the issue we then faced is that this is 100% non-discoverable! This lead directly to creating the What's New tile.

Inactivity Reminders

I've wanted this since day 1! It is one of my favorite fitness band features, I love being reminded to get up, stretch a bit and walk around.

One of our guiding principles is for us to remember we are a very personal device, putting us on your wrist means you have placed certain trust in us to not try and take over your life. A lot of time was spent working on how to let you have full control over the inactivity reminders, and how to not make them intrusive. This is why we give you, directly on the band, controls for what hours we should be looking for these reminders. We also make it really easy to turn them off for the day.

I actually pushed for us not even turning the screen on, I wanted a really unique haptic and nothing else! UX countered with the very good points:

• We already have a lot of different haptic patterns on Microsoft Band 2

• Each additional haptic pattern makes it harder for users to differentiate between the patterns

• Having one type of haptic where we don't turn on the screen breaks from every other time we use haptics.

So we do turn the screen on, but we make it very easy for you to tell us to go away.

Hopefully this is interesting, and thank you all for your bug reports and feedback. Uservoice really does help us know what to work on next, I promise, we do listen!

Hi everyone,

Another update was just pushed out, and you'll start to receive it as soon as your respective phone store approves it.

This update brings two exciting changes to the band.

First up, is the much requested feature of Auto Pause while running and biking. As usual, our blog has an excellent write up.

Next, and one of the features I'm most proud of my team for accomplishing, is that Microsoft Band 2 now uses True Type font rendering.

This was a massive undertaking on the part of the entire Band team. Everyone was impacted, from our apps all the way down to our production line. I cannot emphasis enough, or give enough thanks to everyone who was involved with this.

With real True Type fonts, we now support over 150 of the most common emoji. We have also greatly expanded the number of Latin characters we can render, helping you stay in contact with friends from around the world.

Even more exciting, Microsoft Band now supports messages in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean! There is a new page in settings to select the preferred font for use.

I'm extremely proud of everyone on the Band team for pulling this off. The new fonts look great, and I really love being able to make our product usable by more and more people. I've seen Microsoft Band 2 become an incredibly personal device for so many, and there is a look of joy that happens the first time someone sees a message in their native language show up on their Band.

Hey everybody!

As we all know, Microsoft has pronounced the Band dead and if yours wasn't set up when they killed it or you reset it since then, your band is nothing more than a really pretty bracelet (with possible cracks in the elastomer).

I've been bothered by that quite a lot and decided to do something about it.

Let me introduce to you: A really hacky way to bypass the setup of your Microsoft Band 2!

I've programmed a little tool that will trick your band into thinking you set it up without needing the official app from Microsoft.

You'll need a PC, the USB Cable and your band for this.
The way it works is by feeding the band some fake data so it thinks it has been paired to the Microsoft servers. One of the few last steps to actually set it up for real would be to send an ephemeris file to the band. This file would have to come from the Microsoft servers that have been shut down, so there is no way to do it, really. However, I've found that there is a way through the demo mode (used in stores to showcase the device) that will get you around that step and made a program that does just that.
This will obviously lead to the GPS taking ages to lock, but at the very least, you'll have a working watch.

For anyone who wants to try it out, here's the link. (I hope the mods will be fine with me posting this link. I don't get any ads revenue through it or track anyone, it's just the program and information about it)

Information on how exactly to do it is provided at the bottom of the page, PLEASE READ IT CAREFULLY! We don't want any broken bands.

There is no syncing, there is nothing that goes beyond making your band work like a standalone device, but it's a start. Maybe something else will follow.

They seriously have to be using some type of sorcery for the keyboard to work this nicely. Well done Microsoft.

As a developer for the Microsoft Band platform, I feel particularly abandoned by their exit from this space. To be honest, in 2014 I thought I would never own buy a Microsoft product again. Windows had become more trouble to develop on then a Mac, and my own consumer products were being replaced with iDevices. With the Microsoft devices announcement of 2015, all that changed- here was a company that looked to be building a small piece of the future. Bash on Windows, Objective C and Android app translation to WP, the Band- and my favorite announced tech Hololens all pointed to a new hopeful direction.

In line with my own aspirations to become fit, I bought a Band 2. After a week or so, I noticed there was maybe 2 applications targeting it on the iOS app store and there was a nice SDK to boot- well, I filled the vacuum with my own applications. Mostly, I looked to the Apple Watch for inspirations on what to develop, trying to build as much feature parity as I could.

Apps sold, more than I anticipated and were I believe enjoyed by the users. I started to look at other Microsoft platforms- Xamarin, .Net and particularly the Hololens (though the price repelled me). In the end though, probably because of the hardware defects (5th band here) the band has been scrapped, and with it pretty much all my intentions of developing on MS platforms again. As Bush Jr. once commented “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.”

I’ve decided that here on out- all my Band related Apps are free- Download them. Particularly the one which allows you to export your data to Apple Heath… or the Mac app which lets you download all your data to a native OS X app. I’ll be developing for Apple Watch now. See you on the other side.

TLDR: I’m a developer, I’m pissed, iOS/OS X Apps now free, Don’t buy abandon ware.

John

http://bandapps.ca/