Where Function Bows to Form

If there's ever been a case study of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", we can now add Microsoft's update to the Xbox 360 Dashboard to the study and collectively smack our foreheads with an open palm.

In what I'm sure is just a move to sip more money out of gamers pockets, Microsoft completely overhauled the "desktop" of the 360, switching out panes of control screens with long winded, space hogging, graphical menus. I really can't describe it in words, so a Google search might work for you.

I won't say I'm utilitarian or completely neurotic about simplification, but Microsoft basically took Checkers and turned it into Shoots and Ladders. Decisions about things like changing how you boot up a game, which was once at the bottom of every pane, is now hidden away in and only available in one place.

Of course this just ties back into the issue with electronics in the internet 2.0 world: companies have full control over the things you buy from them and how you use them. We don't own our phones, computers or data. We don't control how we watch movies on our MacBooks. We don't get to opt of things like our Xbox 360 updates.

I've always been a fan of science and technology in Star Trek. It completely fascinates me. But the closer we get to making out with hot, green skinned women, the more I realize that there's no way the engineer can rewire a phaser to shoot out a tractor beam to save the sentient lifeform. The phaser will stop working once you open the casing, the tractor beam is protected by DRM so you can't copy the frequencies, and the sentient lifeform isn't from the same sector of the universe, voiding your phaser beam warranty for use outside of the specified region.

Welcome to the future people.