Well some useful apps such as friends, messages and partys are available with the guide button on xbox 360, you don't even need to return to dashboard as you do on Xbox One. And remember Xbox One before the two last updates: you couldn't see your controller's battery life or manage storage from hard drive. 

Xbox 360 was great and i enjoyed it a lot, XOne is full of flaws and is not even half as good  as Xbox 360 was back on its day.

Basically the Xbox One is a true X86, X86-64 machine. As Frank Savage said, “any game I made ran equally well on Windows 8 (desktop) and Xbox One”. The porting capability this implies is very powerful, infact, if Frank Savage is to be believed, port-lag is non existent.

Amzing spiderman 2 PC release april 29, XBox One release ???

Why is windows 8 good? I want a small fast OS that absolutely maxes out the hardware leaving perhaps 7.5GB of memory for games. Windows 8 is pure shit to be honest. Is this going to form the basis of new marketing;

'Xbox One the only console with a bloated operating system!'

I've just checked the size of my windows 7 directory on this computer - 21GB of crap! No doubt windows 8 is even worse. You'll never sell me a console on the basis of windows being the operating system. I don't want direct x 12 either I want something like mantle accessing the graphics hardware at a low level for maximum performance.

Micrsoft just seem to be streaming out all this total crap about the xbox one and yet a simple look at reviews shows how hopeless the xbone is at matching ps4 resolutions or frame rates.

Its like someone at Microsoft has realised they have lost the war on hardware and now they have taken the fight to software with the OS and graphics API.

Superior hardware, genius. Absolutely nothing to do with API or OS.

What does the flexibility of the OS have to do with resolution?

The fact that Microsoft can introduce an entirely new API (DirectX 12) while supporting the previous API points to the flexibility of the OS.

And do you remember the initial Xbox 360 dashboard?  The lack of chat, a feature that existed in the original Xbox but didn't initially make it to the Xbox 360.

Guess not.

The fact that Microsoft can so quickly and easily update the OS with new features without impacting the operation of previous games points to the flexibility of the OS. 

Windows core is pretty streamlined and relatively efficient. But for whatever reason, the windows releases have been VERY BLOATED ever since the advent of Windows Vista, which does not only tax the system performance wise but also takes too much space.

I have several PC running Windows 7 and XP. The XP machine does everything the Windows 7 does at 1/3 of the space (except for the latest games and tech maybe). Likewise, yes, XB1 OS is more functional and flexible compared to the PS4's OS, but this has nothing to do with having 3 OSs. PS4 has only 1 freebsd based OS, and still does pretty much everything XB1 does, and in the areas it is limited, it is because Sony did not focus on those areas as they designed and envisioned the console first and foremost as a gaming machine, not because the freebsd core behind is incapable of it.

Again windows core and windows as a programming back-end is a seriously efficient and good os. But it is Post-Bill Gates Era bureaucracy and inadequate corporate culture that causes the bloated mess we know as "windows" today. Windows RT Tablets for example, more than swallow 10 GB of space including all necessary partitions, while and Android tablet or Ipad will be happy with 1 GB. They are all tablets at the end of the day, one OS is incredibly bloated. This is why there is no 16 GB windows tablet out there!

Likewise Windows Phone OS is also very snappy and way more efficient than Android in terms of execution but Nokia Lumia 520, for example, has only 4 GB of usable space? This is around 5.5-6 GB in Android devices or an Iphone. Why does Windows OS take 2-3 times the space? And why do the apps in any arm powered windows tablet or phone take so much time to load and start? It's all because windows (nt) was never designed for mobile, gaming or arm devices to begin with. Microsoft, instead of designing a sleek and efficient but separate OS for different platforms, is trying to slap the same OS for all machines, hiding the bloat and architectural inefficiencies under the rug, and using the raw hardware power to mask the issues

Windows 8 is the kernel level. 

An operating system techically consists of a kernel, UI, hardware drivers, and a configuration file.  It's pretty easy to pare down Windows to those necessary components as well as any APIs and services necessary to run the OS.

The bulk of Windows comes in the form of drivers to support a wide array of hardware, applications that don't need to exist on the Xbox One.  So the games OS and the HyperVisor OS don't need to be full-fledged Windows.  They need to support the necessary hardware, services, and APIs used by the OS, UI, games, and apps.

The Apps OS is most likely still a stripped down version of Windows 8, eliminating almost every application yet supporting the majority of APIs available on a Windows 8 PC.  But the OS on the Xbox One, regardless of which one it is, isn't exactly the same as the OS on a Windows 8 PC.  It would be horribly inefficient to stuff everything that comes with Windows 8 onto an Xbox One, especially since it can't be used and the consumer would have no way of accessing it. 

Also, last time I checked, the performance difference between Windows 7 and Windows 8 wasn't humanly perceptible.  Windows 8 out performed
Windows 7 when it came to application performance, copying large files, and start-up and shut-down. 

 

Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 all create a hidden partition on the computer for restoration.  In addition, the OS does a better job of protecting itself (it does this with a file cache) as well as better cataloging with system restore points.  In addition, more of the OS is installed on the HDD than with Windows XP.  With Windows XP and prior, if you wanted to chance the features of the OS, you had to keep your disc on hand to install them.  With Windows Vista and later, uninstalled features are available without the disc for installation.  Essentially you activate those features with a flip of a switch. 

Microsoft also did something different that I don't entirely understand yet.  In Windows XP you only had local profiles.  In Windows Vista and later you have both roaming and local profiles cached on the system.  So where as application data used to be maintained in one spot, it's now maintained in two.  That's true whether you have the Home edition or the Professional edition.  Yet the only versions that can take advantage of a Domain log-in as I recall -- where a roaming profile might be used -- are the Ultimate and Enterprise versions.

Your statement regarding Microsoft and OSes would ring true if it weren't for the fact that the Xbox 360 OS was Windows NT based and ran in as little as 32MB of memory.  Windows Phone 8 was a transitional OS.  Much like Windows ME was the transition between Windows 9x-based OSes and Windows NT-based OSes, Windows Phone 8 was the transitional OS between Windows CE-based Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 compatible Windows Phone 8.1.  Windows Phone 8 had its own set of unique APIs.  While Windows Phone 8.1 does too, developers can create applications that work across Windows platforms.  They couldn't do that before Windows 8.1 Update 1 and Windows Phone 8.1. 

And that's... Good? I'm not gonna lie. I really hate Windows 8. It's a carbon copy of the original Window phone OS and it all just feels so unorganized and clunky. Like the main focus is shoving ads in people's faces. Ironically, didn't Sony catch a lot of criticism for the doing the same thing with the PS3 XMB? (copying it from the PSP XMB)