Comments

1. captain_caveman2k
   April 22nd, 2006 | 9:10 am

   I guess if Vista MCE looked like this then I would be resonably happy…

   Personally, I quite like the look of the new background but it’s the new horizonal navigation concept that I totally hate - it just doesn’t feel right. Apart from which the MRU items on the start menu have disappeared as well.

   I’m sure the new interface is going to be even more confusing to new users as well, when you consider that MCE, with it’s 10 foot interface, is supposed to be aimed at the consumer electronics industry rather than the typical techie / gadget junky that it is aimed at, at the moment.

   By all means, a new version needs a facelift - that is to be expected. But the UI has evoluted over the last 3 or so years to the very usuable, very simplistic yet very intuitive interface that we have today.

   Unfortunately, the Vista interface doesn’t follow that path of evolution and is to all intense and purpose is a new kid on the block, a new puppy, one could almost say that in the path of evolution there is now a missing link between MCE 2005 and Vista MCE - just like there is between apes and humans.

   To the extent that you sort of know the pedigree and that the two are linked - but you’re not too sure how!!

2. Matt Goyer
   April 25th, 2006 | 7:10 pm

   I’d have to disagree that we’re aimed at the ‘typical techie / gadget junkie’. If you were to sit down with the program managers and designers reponsible for Media Center you’d find that very few of us are even techies. We’re primarily really passionate about simple user experiences and our usability team keeps us on track whenever we begin to drift into the techie zone.

   I know some feel that we’re not making forward progress with the UI but without going into details, we do have a usability team whose primary purpose is to ensure we keep moving forward in terms of MCE being easier to use with each successive release. While we have some one off data points from users in the newsgroups and on blogs talking about some issues they have with the new design, I have yet to see a trend in the data we get from usability indicating we are going backwards.

   As for how we’re evolving the user interface… This time around we had a longer release cycle and took advantage of that to leap frog a generation in UI design and in fact, we had much more ambitious plans and they got scaled back so what you’re seeing isn’t as radical as we had initially proposed. While I don’t know for sure, I’d guess that users would rather we roll out more changes at once rather than slowly releasing them across multiple years, to ensure a truly evolutionary approach.

   (MRUs: Our research concluded that not many people even discovered what these were so the majority of users won’t miss them. However, I use the music MRU frequently, and will miss it).

3. captain_caveman2k
   April 26th, 2006 | 5:56 pm

   Cheers for the reply Matt - it’s always a pleasure to read.

   I’m not sure if those responsible for Media Center are typical of the it’s userbase but I do believe that MCE, at the moment, is primarily used by the early adopters. However, I would say that MCE is coming to the end of that period in it’s life and is becoming more mainstream. Furthermore this can only improve with the release of Vista with MCE not being an OEM / System Builder only feature.

   Don’t get my wrong Matt - I am looking forward to some of the changes in Vista and some of the improvements (It isn’t all dome and gloom).

   For example: I am really looking forward to the now and next feature, the movie libray, increased music library performance, DRM (Yes I am pro-DRM - do I really want to admit that in public and will I receive a public flogging for doing so?), better support for writing CDs and DVDs as well as the improvements for developers to allow third party applications to look and feel part of media center (with the transittion effects and animated buttons).

   And hopefully we will see some of the other items on my wishlist such as offical support (in the UI) for more than two (DVB-T) tuners, support for DVB-T subtitles, DVB-T teletext and DVB-T interactive channels (including the red button that we have here in the UK) ;-)

   However, with the new features and the not so easy transittion from MCE2005 to Vista it will make my dicission to upgrade more difficult. As such, my office PC and the girlfriend’s PC will probably be upgraded first and the MCE machine will probably stay on MCE2005 for a while.

   I know there is still 6 months or so to go and alot can change in that time - but I really hope that you guys make the transittion alot easier for us - being able to customise the UI would be a great way of doing that (e.g: having the MRU disabled for new installations and enabled for upgrades would be really great - that would be the one thing I will really miss, especially as I use it for My Music, My Movies, mceWhether, More Programs and Settings) and being able to change the Start menu so that it appears solid (rather than fadded over the video image) when the green button is pressed. Customisation exists in parts of the OS’s 2 foot interface. e.g enabling the “Classic” Start menu.

   I guess the really frustrating thing, for me, is having a feature (especially one that I use) and then having it taken away from me in the next version of software. It’s like saying the MRU in 2 foot applications (such as Office) isn’t used by the majority of users so lets remove it or even what’s the point in having the Help -> About dialog in all the OS applications so lets remove them as well ;-)

   Anyway… enough of my ramblings.

4. captain_caveman2k
   April 26th, 2006 | 5:59 pm

   PS. Why do I always find a typo in my posts after I have posted them?

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