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"And the Xbox One’s heavily pushed smart-TV integration features seem to be designed for an imaginary world in which people browse the web on their TVs instead

"And the Xbox One’s heavily pushed smart-TV integration features seem to be designed for an imaginary world in which people browse the web on their TVs instead of the (non-Microsoft) smartphone in their pocket. " I don't think I've read a more accurate summery of the Xbox One than the above quote.

untog 13y ago
As someone with a PC connected to their TV, I beg to differ. My housemates and I use it all the time to browse the web- place orders on Seamless, use YouTube, even use Amazon Instant without having to use a slow, remote-based interface. I'm not saying that many people do this, but I'm saying many would.
- slantyyz 13y ago
  You're right. I think it's quite possible that the reason why nobody surfs on their TV is that nobody has made it an enjoyable experience yet. Back in the days when we had to use WAP to get web access on phones, I'm sure nobody imagined that we'd be doing desktop style browsing on the small screens of our phones. Even having PDAs/phones with great screens sucked. I had a Toshiba e800 PocketPC with a VGA screen, but browsing on that thing sucked. And then in 2007, along comes Apple with phone having a less dense screen than my e800 but a vastly better browsing experience. And now, with awesome browsing experiences available on all smartphones, people have trouble remembering how the Internet on a phone used to suck horribly.
zhobbs 13y ago
This is the line that stood out to me as someone who misunderstands the strategy completely. Obviously browsing the web on a TV is not a good experience. But using apps could be great. They demo'd skype and a fantasy sports app, and both look like great use cases. As we all know, the Netflix app is one of the best reasons to own a console. TV apps will happen when someone comes along with a good development environment, reasonable distribution terms, and a large volume of users.

untog 13y ago

As someone with a PC connected to their TV, I beg to differ. My housemates and I use it all the time to browse the web- place orders on Seamless, use YouTube, even use Amazon Instant without having to use a slow, remote-based interface. I'm not saying that many people do this, but I'm saying many would.

slantyyz 13y ago
You're right. I think it's quite possible that the reason why nobody surfs on their TV is that nobody has made it an enjoyable experience yet. Back in the days when we had to use WAP to get web access on phones, I'm sure nobody imagined that we'd be doing desktop style browsing on the small screens of our phones. Even having PDAs/phones with great screens sucked. I had a Toshiba e800 PocketPC with a VGA screen, but browsing on that thing sucked. And then in 2007, along comes Apple with phone having a less dense screen than my e800 but a vastly better browsing experience. And now, with awesome browsing experiences available on all smartphones, people have trouble remembering how the Internet on a phone used to suck horribly.

zhobbs 13y ago

This is the line that stood out to me as someone who misunderstands the strategy completely. Obviously browsing the web on a TV is not a good experience. But using apps could be great. They demo'd skype and a fantasy sports app, and both look like great use cases. As we all know, the Netflix app is one of the best reasons to own a console. TV apps will happen when someone comes along with a good development environment, reasonable distribution terms, and a large volume of users.