What Good Are Product Managers?

I use a Motorola RAZR v3 and rather than forking out the exorbitant price for their Phone Tools Software (originally $90 as I remember) I got a deal on eBay for real, licensed software for $8. Very cool. But does the software work? Well, mostly and therein lies the problem. I just upgrade using their update service and after the software had been upgraded it seemed to all work as normal which is to say, kind of dumbly. You would think that the software would now the status of the phone when connected (I’m using Bluetooth on a Sony VAIO T250) but often you’ll select a function and the software will complain that the phone isn’t available because it is busy or initializing. What gets me is that this is a consumer device yet the software is definitely very “techie” — faced with this software my wife would probably have to suppress the urge to drop her RAZR into the trash. What prompted me to write this complaint? I tried to use the Internet connection feature forgetting that I haven’t set up the account and after failing the Bluetooth connection couldn’t be re-established without rebooting the PC! But wait, after rebooting it turns out that the Phone Tools software needed to complete its installation! How lame is that? All of this makes me wonder (yet again) what product managers are actually for? I’ve had contact with a few PMs who did a great job — they understood what product management was all about but the bigger the company, the worse it seems that product management gets. Consider the Morotola Phone Tools software: Just observing a few real end users would show even the least insightful PM that all was not working as smoothly as it might. So, what should a product manager actually do? He is responsible for the product or service meeting its intended market’s needs. He should make sure that the details including documentation, packaging, support, Web site materials, feedback paths (email, Web forms, etc.) work, and that users are actually satisfied with their purchase and can use the product as intended. He needs to ensure that quality assurance is actually applied to upgrades and to the upgrade process (these steps appears to have been skimped on with the Motorola Phone Tools). Any product managers out there? Any comments?