I certainly agree that "because Mac does it" is not a good reason. But that doesn't mean there isn't a good reason -- you've made a straw man argument, IMO.
And there's no reason a design expert should be forced to explain those reasons to a layman. That's asking too much.
But I can think of some reasons that might apply: "as windows resize, the top left corner is the anchor from which all resizing is done, therefore putting elements there minimizes gratuitous movement of those elements" could easily be a factor in a reasonable decision along these lines. Or "as left-to-right/top-to-bottom readers, our eyes are naturally drawn to the top left, so putting critical controls there makes sense".
If you don't agree with the conclusion, prove to the design team that you're enough of a design expert that they should pay attention to you, and have the discussion with them.
Just because one country speaks the same language you do and has the same form of government you do shouldn't make it anymore or less important to you than another country with differences.
Why? What is the reason you feel my value system should work that way?
An example of what you're missing is, well, consider menu (or button) bar placement. On a mouse-based UI, there's no downside to putting that at the top of the screen. On a touch-based UI, putting that at the top of the screen means your hand covers up the screen when you use it.
A really good touch UI isn't going to have a whole lot in common with a really good mouse-based UI. Awful ones can share a lot, but good ones won't.
Actually, the kind of background processing that the Newton used, which has some things in common with what Android does (specifically Android "services"), would be awesome. The main problem is that developers are really not used to working this way.
Basically, you have your main app, and it runs when it's in the foreground, and that's it. But you also have these other chunks of code that the app can register with the system. On the Newton you could attach that code to the OS-level alarm mechanism ("when this alarm that I just asked the system service to execute for me at that timestamp fires, don't show a dialog box or play a sound, run this bytecode instead"). On Android, it can be a daemon-like thing that actually runs in the background (eg. to play streaming music).
The fundamental idea is that the whole app isn't doing background processing -- instead you break of very small pieces and those run in the background, under much more severe constraints. (The distinction between cron-like and daemon-like isn't really critical here. The developer still has to be trained to break their app up into distinct pieces with different constraints, instead of having one big app.)
This is simply not the architecture a lot of developers are used to (though Unix folk have a head start). But it's a way to provide actual real usable multitasking on a device like this without crushing the memory and battery usage (especially if you use the alarm-based method and your apps can schedule the alarms far apart; for some apps this is more than adequate).
Some programmers would certainly yell if they had to jump through that kind of hoop. But something like that could very well be the best compromise on these devices.
I'm undecided on whether this particular behavior on Apple's part is a bad thing (as opposed to other cases, like the Google Voice one, where I'm sure it's a bad thing, and the Opera Mini one, where I'm at least leaning that way).
On desktops, it seems to me that various web ads or email messages encouraging users to install some third-party "security tool" are a major infection vector for malware/spyware. Many, many of the sorts of people who buy Apple products -- and I say this as an Apple user myself -- are... not the sorts of people who routinely make informed decisions about computer security.
Certainly, if third parties are permitted to sell iPhone security software, one might reasonably want them to be subject to considerably more oversight than other software, because of the potential for damage. Again, not because the software is "magic" or other software can't behave badly, but because of the particular ways most real-world users brains just shut down when dealing with security issues. Most people really don't have the mindset for this stuff.
There are more games because people who own an iPhone or Android device are considerably less shy about paying for apps on their phones than the owners of J2ME devices have historically been.
(This is a measurable and real effect. Feel free to speculate about why -- once this meme gets taken into account in the planning of mobile developers, that "why" doesn't matter anymore, unless you think you can break the trend for some reason. In which case, why aren't you rich yet?)
How come there are not any great games on normal Java phones? J2ME has so many libraries and they're capable of the same.
You can get one hint by tracking down the five most popular J2ME-enabled phones, and then trying to get the same app to run the same way on all of them.
You can get another hint by looking at the revenue earned in the J2ME-app market compared to the iPhone and Android app markets.
This line of reasoning makes one wonder how much energy it'll take to edit documents with the new iPad versions of iWork, on an iPad with a keyboard attached. Honestly it's something I'm actually considering.
The best subnotebook-like device I ever used in terms of power management was my eMate. I would take that thing to a conference, and in one case actually a business trip to Europe, and not have to charge it until I got home (ie. I got days of use out of it before I had to recharge it). But nobody builds stuff like that anymore.
What does "starting out on my own" mean? Does that mean you're going to make a startup company?
If so, you may have options, depending on where you're located. I participated in a startup company in Pittsburgh, PA, and what we did... there's an organization there called "The Pittsburgh Technology Council" that lets multiple small tech startups pool together for purposes like this. Here's their page on health insurance:
What is ironic is that as up-to-date games get more and more draconic DRM, the customers will find old second-hand games, whose DRM is much less bothersome (or even non-existant), to be relatively more attractive.
Queue reference to "Good Old Games". What an awesome company. Legit DRM-free "Fallout" for $5.99. Legit DRM-free "Psychonauts" for $9.99. Holy crap. This needed to happen years ago. Yay Gog!
I think installing Windows in space is a very bad idea. I know things have improved, but even today, the main cause of all crashes that I observe has been Windows, and you do not want a space station to crash.
Doing it centrally for all games, with a shared authentication infrastructure, is more expensive than what you're describing. And that's what Sony is doing.
This idea that some groups at MSFT sabotage others? Looks to me like we can see it happening to the XBox 360 right now.
The main culprits are Zune and (maybe) Silverlight.
All of the video stuff on the XB360, movie rentals and such, just got changed from a "built into the firmware" thing to a separate app. A separate app that requires registration, isn't as convenient to use, won't let you queue up video downloads from over the web anymore, and has Zune branding. Does anyone think the initiative behind that started by thinking about how to make the box better for consumers? Really? Come on.
And as I understand it, there's been a beefed up Silverlight engine deployed recently, with the result that there are now full video advertisements in "blades" (or whatever they're called now) all over the recent "no it's not the Sony XMB" NXE user interface.
Look at what's going on. It looks like Someone who's not from within the successful XBox team has decided to Tamper With Things. And things are getting worse. Right at the time when Sony is getting better.
It's not all gone yet, but I don't like the direction it's heading. And the clues seem to indicate that the author of the linked-to article has put their finger on the core problem.
That's exactly what won't work. Someone who buys a small number of multiplayer titles and then plays them for a long time for free, there won't be enough ongoing revenue that way for Sony to support the network operation costs. There has to be some sustained revenue stream eventually.
Maybe it'll be a tiered system where the bottom is free and the top overpays for what they consume, subsidizing the bottom... which is exactly what XBox Live is, by the way, only with multiplayer being part of the "premium" package. But maybe Sony will do that with basic multiplayer as part of the free package.
Maybe it'll be some way of making money from advertising. Maybe multiplayer will in the long run only be free for games that include plugins for some Sony advertising infrastructure, so like, if you see ads on billboards in-game, the online play is free, but if the game completely insulates you from advertising, that's part of a paid tier.
Maybe it'll be something nobody is thinking of yet. But game sales are a one-time thing and can't ever cover it, not in the long run.
Otherwise, I think this will amount to Sony shooting themselves in the foot when they have momentum, just like they did with the PS2 to PS3 transition.
The thing is, not doing it will also amount to Sony shooting themselves in the foot.
The network is far from free to run, and is losing money. Unless they can figure out another way to monetize it (eg. advertising infrastructure, "subscription fee" from developers, whatever), I don't think anyone can realistically expect it to remain free forever. At some point it has to stop, unless someone can figure out another way for it to be free and profitable (on an ongoing basis -- just as a marketing tool to get people to buy PS3 won't cut it forever).
The reason nobody has made a great gaming phone, IMO, is because the criteria for "great gaming device" and "great phone" are so at odds with each other.
For a phone, you want to ensure that the primary use (communicating with people) is always available -- you don't want the battery to run down because if it does, you're screwed in an emergency. For a gaming device, you don't want the design to discourage people from gaming all they want. For a phone, you want the usability of the core functions (sending and receiving communications) to be as trivial and obvious as possible. For a gaming device, you want enough input options that a variety of types of games are easily supportable.
I do not expect Nintendo or Sony to try to make a great gaming phone, because if they did, I'm sure it would fail in the marketplace. And I'm sure they see that.
Now, what should they do? IMO, they should make it so their portable platforms can use other mobile devices.
Specifically, for example, how about some bluetooth headset support? There are a lot of bluetooth headsets out there. Can I bond them to your device to use both for audio output and spoken input? The Nintendo DSi has speakers and a microphone, and headphone jacks. But if I'm already using a bluetooth headset because of my phone, why not let me share that headset with my gaming device?
Another example: bluetooth PAN support. When wireless iPhone tethering is turned on, this is how it will work, and there are other phones that do this too. It's great if your gaming device can be a wifi client, but that's not the best way to get connectivity from most phones. Bluetooth is better for this for a variety of reasons.
Honestly? Put an XBox in the lunch room, and get Rock Band for it. Works great for us. All sorts of people who wouldn't otherwise get to know each other together end up playing together.
ESPN will have a solution. It'll probably be a standalone app, maybe an update of their existing (iPhone) app. I expect it to work like the MLB.com app that was demoed.
We'll have to see what happens with Hulu. I half expect Hulu and Netflix apps to appear within six months.
Everytime this topic comes up I am amazed at how many people think that it's somehow Mozilla's fault that Firefox doesn't support H.264.
That's because it is.
Mozilla doesn't have to support H.264 themselves, they just have to "get out of the way". They just have to enable the ability for plugins to add support for new codecs. Pretty much every platform comes with some kind of H.264 implementation these days. The plugins would appear very rapidly, if Firefox permitted it.
Do you prefer a world where YouTube asks some users to install an H.264 codec, or where it asks many users to install the Flash player? Why is H.264 worse than Flash?
At one point Mozilla believed they had the leverage to force a codec other than H.264. Maybe they still think so. Hopefully, they'll get over it before too much damage is done to them.
In the long run, wearable computing has seemed inevitable to me since about 1994 or 1996.
What happened in 1994? That's about when I got my first laptop, which got me used to mobile computing. I used it to take notes in lectures. Then in 1996 I bought my first PDA, the Apple Newton MP120.
And I started to do mobile device software development, and to participate in discussions/forums with other developers. Other developers including Steve Mann. Go look him up, right now. Go ahead, I'll wait.
So yeah, after about that time period, a future world with ubiquitous wearable computing devices seemed inevitable. Still does. But it's not going to be some instantaneous revolution where everything changes. It's going to be (and in fact already is) gradual. It's going to involve a variety of small gadgets that can interact with other small gadgets, sometimes just in your own "personal area network" (eg. your wristwatch showing the caller ID for the phone that's ringing in your pocket), sometimes over face-to-face distances (vCard exchange during a sales meeting), and sometimes globally (posting Bejeweled scores to a global leaderboard). All of those are happening right now, and more will come.
To some people this was obvious decades ago. To me it was obvious 16 years ago. To an awful lot of people it was obvious three years ago. I guess it's just becoming obvious to ASUS right now?
He calls Bioshock an example of RPG elements creeping into other genres? WTF?
At its core that game should be an RPG. I think it's an example of shooter elements creeping into my RPGs. Same damned thing happened to Mass Effect. Hopefully I'll be able to look past it in Bioshock 2 and ME2.
It's with this in mind that I've been watching the current console generation with great interest, and even I'm starting to think that this may be the last generation of consoles as we know them.
Okay, that I'll buy. This generation of consoles is changing the console world in two important ways: input mechanisms (Wii, Guitar Hero, Project Natal, et cetera) and network connectivity (and all of its implications).
Yeah, look at the Nintendo DSi, and look at XBox Live's "games on demand"... the console as a standalone box that exists to play software off of media that you buy at a retailer, using a standard gamepad... yes, this might be the last generation with that as its focus. But I don't give a rat's ass. I'm content to download code to internal storage, and I've got nothing against more diversity in control schemes.
And note that the article doesn't even pretend to claim that Nintendo has lost any money doing what they're doing. Yeah, profits are down, but the numbers are still in the black. Sony and Microsoft are still being silly, sure. Next generation may see them approach it more like Nintendo, which is certainly fine with me.
The console is banned from XBox Live, but they went out of their way to leave the capability to test the network hardware in? They wrote an entirely new network testing routine that has no purpose on a console unless it has been banned? They're explicitly still supporting the device's ability to network (eg. LAN games), and only disabling its ability to connect to XBox Live specifically?
I had no idea they were bending over backwards to such a degree in order to disable XBL and nothing else. Thanks much for linking to that screen shot.
Slashdot Mirror
Are we going to see people back away from Mono? Are we going to see him back away from Mono?
There are certainly counter-arguments.
Laymen have no real place in them. If you have design experts, trust them or fire them.
If you are not a design expert, resist the urge to micromanage design experts. That way crappy blink-laden web page design lies (for example).
A relevant link: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell
Another relevant link: http://clientsfromhell.tumblr.com/
I certainly agree that "because Mac does it" is not a good reason. But that doesn't mean there isn't a good reason -- you've made a straw man argument, IMO.
And there's no reason a design expert should be forced to explain those reasons to a layman. That's asking too much.
But I can think of some reasons that might apply: "as windows resize, the top left corner is the anchor from which all resizing is done, therefore putting elements there minimizes gratuitous movement of those elements" could easily be a factor in a reasonable decision along these lines. Or "as left-to-right/top-to-bottom readers, our eyes are naturally drawn to the top left, so putting critical controls there makes sense".
If you don't agree with the conclusion, prove to the design team that you're enough of a design expert that they should pay attention to you, and have the discussion with them.
Just because one country speaks the same language you do and has the same form of government you do shouldn't make it anymore or less important to you than another country with differences.
Why? What is the reason you feel my value system should work that way?
An example of what you're missing is, well, consider menu (or button) bar placement. On a mouse-based UI, there's no downside to putting that at the top of the screen. On a touch-based UI, putting that at the top of the screen means your hand covers up the screen when you use it.
A really good touch UI isn't going to have a whole lot in common with a really good mouse-based UI. Awful ones can share a lot, but good ones won't.
Actually, the kind of background processing that the Newton used, which has some things in common with what Android does (specifically Android "services"), would be awesome. The main problem is that developers are really not used to working this way.
Basically, you have your main app, and it runs when it's in the foreground, and that's it. But you also have these other chunks of code that the app can register with the system. On the Newton you could attach that code to the OS-level alarm mechanism ("when this alarm that I just asked the system service to execute for me at that timestamp fires, don't show a dialog box or play a sound, run this bytecode instead"). On Android, it can be a daemon-like thing that actually runs in the background (eg. to play streaming music).
The fundamental idea is that the whole app isn't doing background processing -- instead you break of very small pieces and those run in the background, under much more severe constraints. (The distinction between cron-like and daemon-like isn't really critical here. The developer still has to be trained to break their app up into distinct pieces with different constraints, instead of having one big app.)
This is simply not the architecture a lot of developers are used to (though Unix folk have a head start). But it's a way to provide actual real usable multitasking on a device like this without crushing the memory and battery usage (especially if you use the alarm-based method and your apps can schedule the alarms far apart; for some apps this is more than adequate).
Some programmers would certainly yell if they had to jump through that kind of hoop. But something like that could very well be the best compromise on these devices.
I'm undecided on whether this particular behavior on Apple's part is a bad thing (as opposed to other cases, like the Google Voice one, where I'm sure it's a bad thing, and the Opera Mini one, where I'm at least leaning that way).
On desktops, it seems to me that various web ads or email messages encouraging users to install some third-party "security tool" are a major infection vector for malware/spyware. Many, many of the sorts of people who buy Apple products -- and I say this as an Apple user myself -- are... not the sorts of people who routinely make informed decisions about computer security.
Certainly, if third parties are permitted to sell iPhone security software, one might reasonably want them to be subject to considerably more oversight than other software, because of the potential for damage. Again, not because the software is "magic" or other software can't behave badly, but because of the particular ways most real-world users brains just shut down when dealing with security issues. Most people really don't have the mindset for this stuff.
There are more games because people who own an iPhone or Android device are considerably less shy about paying for apps on their phones than the owners of J2ME devices have historically been.
(This is a measurable and real effect. Feel free to speculate about why -- once this meme gets taken into account in the planning of mobile developers, that "why" doesn't matter anymore, unless you think you can break the trend for some reason. In which case, why aren't you rich yet?)
How come there are not any great games on normal Java phones? J2ME has so many libraries and they're capable of the same.
You can get one hint by tracking down the five most popular J2ME-enabled phones, and then trying to get the same app to run the same way on all of them.
You can get another hint by looking at the revenue earned in the J2ME-app market compared to the iPhone and Android app markets.
This line of reasoning makes one wonder how much energy it'll take to edit documents with the new iPad versions of iWork, on an iPad with a keyboard attached. Honestly it's something I'm actually considering.
The best subnotebook-like device I ever used in terms of power management was my eMate. I would take that thing to a conference, and in one case actually a business trip to Europe, and not have to charge it until I got home (ie. I got days of use out of it before I had to recharge it). But nobody builds stuff like that anymore.
What does "starting out on my own" mean? Does that mean you're going to make a startup company?
If so, you may have options, depending on where you're located. I participated in a startup company in Pittsburgh, PA, and what we did... there's an organization there called "The Pittsburgh Technology Council" that lets multiple small tech startups pool together for purposes like this. Here's their page on health insurance:
http://www.pghtech.org/why-join/member-benefits/council-employee-benefits-group.aspx
Try to find a similar organization in your own area, they may be able to help.
What is ironic is that as up-to-date games get more and more draconic DRM, the customers will find old second-hand games, whose DRM is much less bothersome (or even non-existant), to be relatively more attractive.
Queue reference to "Good Old Games". What an awesome company. Legit DRM-free "Fallout" for $5.99. Legit DRM-free "Psychonauts" for $9.99. Holy crap. This needed to happen years ago. Yay Gog!
I think installing Windows in space is a very bad idea. I know things have improved, but even today, the main cause of all crashes that I observe has been Windows, and you do not want a space station to crash.
Wait, what?
Doing it centrally for all games, with a shared authentication infrastructure, is more expensive than what you're describing. And that's what Sony is doing.
This idea that some groups at MSFT sabotage others? Looks to me like we can see it happening to the XBox 360 right now.
The main culprits are Zune and (maybe) Silverlight.
All of the video stuff on the XB360, movie rentals and such, just got changed from a "built into the firmware" thing to a separate app. A separate app that requires registration, isn't as convenient to use, won't let you queue up video downloads from over the web anymore, and has Zune branding. Does anyone think the initiative behind that started by thinking about how to make the box better for consumers? Really? Come on.
And as I understand it, there's been a beefed up Silverlight engine deployed recently, with the result that there are now full video advertisements in "blades" (or whatever they're called now) all over the recent "no it's not the Sony XMB" NXE user interface.
Look at what's going on. It looks like Someone who's not from within the successful XBox team has decided to Tamper With Things. And things are getting worse. Right at the time when Sony is getting better.
It's not all gone yet, but I don't like the direction it's heading. And the clues seem to indicate that the author of the linked-to article has put their finger on the core problem.
That's exactly what won't work. Someone who buys a small number of multiplayer titles and then plays them for a long time for free, there won't be enough ongoing revenue that way for Sony to support the network operation costs. There has to be some sustained revenue stream eventually.
Maybe it'll be a tiered system where the bottom is free and the top overpays for what they consume, subsidizing the bottom... which is exactly what XBox Live is, by the way, only with multiplayer being part of the "premium" package. But maybe Sony will do that with basic multiplayer as part of the free package.
Maybe it'll be some way of making money from advertising. Maybe multiplayer will in the long run only be free for games that include plugins for some Sony advertising infrastructure, so like, if you see ads on billboards in-game, the online play is free, but if the game completely insulates you from advertising, that's part of a paid tier.
Maybe it'll be something nobody is thinking of yet. But game sales are a one-time thing and can't ever cover it, not in the long run.
Otherwise, I think this will amount to Sony shooting themselves in the foot when they have momentum, just like they did with the PS2 to PS3 transition.
The thing is, not doing it will also amount to Sony shooting themselves in the foot.
The network is far from free to run, and is losing money. Unless they can figure out another way to monetize it (eg. advertising infrastructure, "subscription fee" from developers, whatever), I don't think anyone can realistically expect it to remain free forever. At some point it has to stop, unless someone can figure out another way for it to be free and profitable (on an ongoing basis -- just as a marketing tool to get people to buy PS3 won't cut it forever).
The reason nobody has made a great gaming phone, IMO, is because the criteria for "great gaming device" and "great phone" are so at odds with each other.
For a phone, you want to ensure that the primary use (communicating with people) is always available -- you don't want the battery to run down because if it does, you're screwed in an emergency. For a gaming device, you don't want the design to discourage people from gaming all they want. For a phone, you want the usability of the core functions (sending and receiving communications) to be as trivial and obvious as possible. For a gaming device, you want enough input options that a variety of types of games are easily supportable.
I do not expect Nintendo or Sony to try to make a great gaming phone, because if they did, I'm sure it would fail in the marketplace. And I'm sure they see that.
Now, what should they do? IMO, they should make it so their portable platforms can use other mobile devices.
Specifically, for example, how about some bluetooth headset support? There are a lot of bluetooth headsets out there. Can I bond them to your device to use both for audio output and spoken input? The Nintendo DSi has speakers and a microphone, and headphone jacks. But if I'm already using a bluetooth headset because of my phone, why not let me share that headset with my gaming device?
Another example: bluetooth PAN support. When wireless iPhone tethering is turned on, this is how it will work, and there are other phones that do this too. It's great if your gaming device can be a wifi client, but that's not the best way to get connectivity from most phones. Bluetooth is better for this for a variety of reasons.
Honestly? Put an XBox in the lunch room, and get Rock Band for it. Works great for us. All sorts of people who wouldn't otherwise get to know each other together end up playing together.
ESPN will have a solution. It'll probably be a standalone app, maybe an update of their existing (iPhone) app. I expect it to work like the MLB.com app that was demoed.
We'll have to see what happens with Hulu. I half expect Hulu and Netflix apps to appear within six months.
Everytime this topic comes up I am amazed at how many people think that it's somehow Mozilla's fault that Firefox doesn't support H.264.
That's because it is.
Mozilla doesn't have to support H.264 themselves, they just have to "get out of the way". They just have to enable the ability for plugins to add support for new codecs. Pretty much every platform comes with some kind of H.264 implementation these days. The plugins would appear very rapidly, if Firefox permitted it.
Do you prefer a world where YouTube asks some users to install an H.264 codec, or where it asks many users to install the Flash player? Why is H.264 worse than Flash?
At one point Mozilla believed they had the leverage to force a codec other than H.264. Maybe they still think so. Hopefully, they'll get over it before too much damage is done to them.
In the long run, wearable computing has seemed inevitable to me since about 1994 or 1996.
What happened in 1994? That's about when I got my first laptop, which got me used to mobile computing. I used it to take notes in lectures. Then in 1996 I bought my first PDA, the Apple Newton MP120.
And I started to do mobile device software development, and to participate in discussions/forums with other developers. Other developers including Steve Mann. Go look him up, right now. Go ahead, I'll wait.
So yeah, after about that time period, a future world with ubiquitous wearable computing devices seemed inevitable. Still does. But it's not going to be some instantaneous revolution where everything changes. It's going to be (and in fact already is) gradual. It's going to involve a variety of small gadgets that can interact with other small gadgets, sometimes just in your own "personal area network" (eg. your wristwatch showing the caller ID for the phone that's ringing in your pocket), sometimes over face-to-face distances (vCard exchange during a sales meeting), and sometimes globally (posting Bejeweled scores to a global leaderboard). All of those are happening right now, and more will come.
To some people this was obvious decades ago. To me it was obvious 16 years ago. To an awful lot of people it was obvious three years ago. I guess it's just becoming obvious to ASUS right now?
He calls Bioshock an example of RPG elements creeping into other genres? WTF?
At its core that game should be an RPG. I think it's an example of shooter elements creeping into my RPGs. Same damned thing happened to Mass Effect. Hopefully I'll be able to look past it in Bioshock 2 and ME2.
From the article:
It's with this in mind that I've been watching the current console generation with great interest, and even I'm starting to think that this may be the last generation of consoles as we know them.
Okay, that I'll buy. This generation of consoles is changing the console world in two important ways: input mechanisms (Wii, Guitar Hero, Project Natal, et cetera) and network connectivity (and all of its implications).
Yeah, look at the Nintendo DSi, and look at XBox Live's "games on demand"... the console as a standalone box that exists to play software off of media that you buy at a retailer, using a standard gamepad... yes, this might be the last generation with that as its focus. But I don't give a rat's ass. I'm content to download code to internal storage, and I've got nothing against more diversity in control schemes.
And note that the article doesn't even pretend to claim that Nintendo has lost any money doing what they're doing. Yeah, profits are down, but the numbers are still in the black. Sony and Microsoft are still being silly, sure. Next generation may see them approach it more like Nintendo, which is certainly fine with me.
http://www.dabbledoo.com/ee/images/uploads/gamertell/banned_message.jpg
Actually... wow. That's pretty nice.
The console is banned from XBox Live, but they went out of their way to leave the capability to test the network hardware in? They wrote an entirely new network testing routine that has no purpose on a console unless it has been banned? They're explicitly still supporting the device's ability to network (eg. LAN games), and only disabling its ability to connect to XBox Live specifically?
I had no idea they were bending over backwards to such a degree in order to disable XBL and nothing else. Thanks much for linking to that screen shot.