How can Garmin miss so much on the Edge 1050 firmware?

After years of experience with Garmin cycling computers, I don't expect a new product of this company to work without buggy firmware from the beginning.

It is always like this, but it is usable and will usually get better till it is stable after the first year.....I am always more worried about intentional UX decisions that make no sense than about bugs. Thats usually something that gets just ignored by Garmin, bugs are usually fixed at some point in time. But we will have to live forever with stuff like as for example the virtual partner....

I've found the same across many Garmin products. I ended-up having to return my Epix watch - brilliant hardweare but firmware was a disaster. But two distinct aspects: functionality and bugs.

Bugs always happen in new software though given Garmin's device history I do think they are worse than they should be ... but bugs can and do get fixed.

Functionality: is a bigger shortcoming and highlights failure to listem to users. In the case of the Epix watch users had been screaming about a disastrous feature for many months yet Garmin persisted where a simple preference switch eg" Disable <xxx>" would have completely solved the shortcoming for 90% of users. But Garmin don't listen. On Edge devices "Virtual Partner" is such a feature; so easy to add a preserence "Disable Virtual Partner" and make much of the world happy but Garmin ignore users convinced only they are right. It's what is pushing me to look at alternative manufacturers.

The standard cycle is for Garmin to release a new device, the forums fill up with posts about crashes, bugs, inaccurate maps blah blah. And then there is never a response. I wish their head of product development or engineering or whatever would do an AMA.