Amen to all that. It’s bloody awful. On the old one, if you wanted to message a friend or compare your Achievements, you went to the “Friends” tab and selected him/her. Now… “Social”/“Friends” (two steps down)/press left/… then I think there’s another couple of steps. It’s a total pain in the arsular regions. As are the carousel panels. What the hell were they thinking? “Hey, there’s a new episode of NeXuS out… f*%$£, missed it! Oh well, games then…”. Pointyhead and SuperKaylo’s ratings are going to drop like a stone.

Also, I don’t know how this affects normal people (my ‘Box is hooked up to a 19″ “square” monitor), but it’s a lot harder to see what panel is selected now.

And in the name of all that is sane and rational, why on God’s green earth would I want YouTube, IPlayer, 4oD and Demand5 on my XBox, let alone TwatFace and Bong? Why, Microsoft, why? I have a computer. I have three computers. My Xbox is for videogames. Remember those?

My impression is that they’ve been talking to Canonical and the Gnome project. The sensation of shiny prettiness getting in the way of what you actually want to do is very familiar.

I always used to wonder what sort of joyless weirdos selected “autostart” (or whatever it’s called) when you could have all the multifarious joys of the Dashboard every time you powered up your ‘Box. I’m going to switch to it tonight. If I can find the bloody option…