Got the new Netflix app on my 360 this weekend. There are a few pluses, but really these are more bugfixes rather than interface improvements. Specifically, it no longer has a tendency to freeze when you first start streaming something like the previous one did the last few months (I guess they stopped maintaining compatibility with the server on it...), and it gets up to 720p quicker.
But so many things suck with the new interface, you really have to wonder if it went through basic usability testing.
I think 2012/2013 in general will go down in infamy as the year of bad UI decisions:
Seriously, has anybody's UI not gotten worse in the last 2 years?
But so many things suck with the new interface, you really have to wonder if it went through basic usability testing.
- The cover art for the currently selected video now occupies the upper 60% of the screen, leaving only 2 rows at the bottom to search for something to watch in. This is an absolutely obscene waste of space.
- The individual item graphics being changed from DVD boxes to a wide 16:9 format so only 4 fit on a row exacerabates the issue above greatly. Before there were roughly 50 titles visible on the screen to select from before scrolling. Now there are 8. The information density is just awful.
- Why did they change all the buttons being used away from the standards used for everything else? Moving a screen forward or backward is now REW/FF instead of skip buttons. Why not at least support both?
- It is probably also the only XBOX 360 media app besides the DVD player to use the Display button instead of the Info button to display the current position, resolution, and audio mode. In the old interface (and on all other streaming apps, you can also briefly display this using the play button. No more.
- The infinite horizontal wraparound when searching through titles is unintuitive, and gives no cue when you have wrapped through everything.
- In the old interface, it was easy to quickly find a category as there were at least 5 or 6 on the screen above/below your current position fading in. In the new interface with only 2 rows shown at all, this is terrible.
- Can no longer see synopsis of other episodes without stopping playback of the current one.
- Looks like they got rid of voice control as well, not just motion based kinect gestures.
- Still no 1080p. I suspect this is something MS has been preventing 3rd parties from doing since late 2011.
I think 2012/2013 in general will go down in infamy as the year of bad UI decisions:
- Metro
- Office 2013
- VS 2012
- iOS7
- Unity as Ubuntu default
- Gnome 3 (this being so terrible is why the switch to Unity!)
- Linux imitating Apple's stupid disappearing scrollbars from OSX 10.7, and managing to make them even worse.
- google maps navigation
- g-mail compose window
- Netflix UI
Seriously, has anybody's UI not gotten worse in the last 2 years?
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