If you mean specially designed the phones to be efficient at every day tasks, then you are correct. Don't get all bent out of shape because of your loathing of Microsoft.
You must not have read the article. The challenge was to pull up the weather in 2 different cities (later, the manager said 2 cities in different states)
The reps phone just "happened" to have LiveTiles setup so that the weather in 2 cities was the first thing on the home screen.
They knew the challenge, and setup their phone do win it as fast as possible. The "Specially customized their phones" comment is that they rigged the phone to be near-unbeatable ahead of time, since they made the challenge.
Can you honestly not see that they stacked the competition in their favor by customizing the device from its stock install state?
And not that it's relevant, but I like Microsoft's products. I think their direction of the latest Windows Phones are great. I'd rather they didn't resort to cheap tricks to try and "prove" that their product is better.
If you mean specially designed the phones to be efficient at every day tasks, then you are correct. Don't get all bent out of shape because of your loathing of Microsoft.