| dib8rman said: I don't even recall the name of the article, I just remember kind of remember the general point. I'm actually much more interested in news from Nintendo on most ends so you'll have to forgive me for not remembering it at all. I could never have imagined such a non-issue becoming what it is now. I believe the article was on Kotaku at that time I read their news often enough for it to be theirs but I'm not certain, scrounging around in archives isn't fun stuff. I'm not saying your a tech guru I'm saying that persona is what is attracted to posts like this. Of course you can't actually redefine it... just take a step back to communication 101, words are meaningless but language is rule governed. I broke the rule by using Virtual OS to represent a app that runs like a GUI in virtual space and uses XMB as a quick select guide menu. Context is the rule that governs language and in this case I used Virtual to describe software, of course you can have a virtual drive but Home would be a GUI with indepth functions and XMB would be a quick selection menu.. lets mix it with Ribbon and XMB would be amazing in that aspect. (Ribbons content changes based on the users enviornment.) But now were talking about layers and at what point are we talking about what is seen and what doesn't need to be seen. It's rare that the user will need to go into the registery of any OS but in Windows that is accessible. Registeries are the GUI back bone of every live function that computer makes. If Home gives all of this functionality then it's layer 1, XMB would be for simple issues. That's how I pictured it after the forementioned experiences. This is why I could say XMB was easier to use than 'Carbon', as I've used them both, and should XMB make the move to being layer 2 of an OS then I would believe it very easy to navigate. I'm just amazed at how this string of responses has managed to stay on topic. Either way these three sources of mine could be wrong but if they are right, Apple will have a lot of competition for living room dominance. They make a profit in how they market themselves and should they continue to push themselves toward making their products look like the 'cool thing' then they will be challenging the incumbents for the core demographic. If they should move into the console entertainment business, they would end up competing with Nintendo or going after an undone market. I would wonder if the usual Core market or traditional business model rakes in around 29 million users Since August 2006 while the new market has brought in 30 million, and thats on consoles alone, any more competition would put way too much strain on the core market. (If you add hand helds the numbers get much higher.) But should Nintendo achieve 50% market share by the end of this year it would mean the acceptance rate has increased in the new business model. So I'm sure Apple would gun for that... |
Now I think I'm finally beginning to understand you. So, in this vision of Home OS + XMB, the XMB would be actually more akin to the Dock in OS X or the Start menu in Windows, in that it would contain the most frequently used and most important functions/apps/whatever. It would be a kind of shortcut menu, with perhaps context dependent elements in it. Am I in the ballpark here? If I am, that doesn't sound bad at all.
And for other things, the 3D world would have the controls and interactions built-in.
I myself am more of a fan of attaching the controls direct to the element/context they belong to, but the Ribbon style has support and obviously MS did a huge amount of user testing while developing it. Anyway, a 3D world would not function very well with the buttons and menus laid out on the sides of the screen, which is the traditional GUI pattern, I suspect a better way would be to have the controls on the items, or directly around them. Although, without a mouse or some other pointer, I don't know how well it would work... Anyway, if anybody is interested, what I mean can be seen in a free program called CMapTools.
