As is now the norm with tablet picture galleries, you can view images in slideshow form or just flick through them individually. It’s worth pointing out that you can only see photos uploaded to Facebook from your own account, not friend’s images or pictures you’ve been tagged in. They show up as panels for each service, which show a full list of thumbnails. The photo application pulls images from your local pictures folder and camera roll, as well as being able to connect to Facebook, Flickr, and SkyDrive. It’s one of the easiest capture mechanisms out there, and fits right in with the simple UI. The controls are very straightforward - tap and hold to lock exposure is supported, and to capture an image you can just tap anywhere on the screen. Basic isn’t necessarily a bad thing though, as the application operates smoothly and quickly, with near-instant switching between modes and cameras. The camera application is about as basic as you can get, with a translucent control bar that lets you switch cameras, change between still and video capture modes, set up a timer, and basic picture quality settings. We will also have to wait until then to see what game support will be like out of the box currently, the Xbox Windows Game store shows titles like Reckless Racing, Hydro Thunder Hurricane, Fruit Ninja, Cut the Rope, and a number of Microsoft classic titles like Minesweeper and Solitaire, amongst others. This is still an unreleased software (until Friday, anyways) so it’s possible that we’ll see the application be updated between now and then for a working final release. The Xbox Live application didn’t appear to be ready at the time of posting, with broken links and missing pictures for all the games and hubs. Xbox Live is obviously the gaming portal of choice for Windows RT, and offers various hubs for Windows and Xbox 360 games. Now, we can’t discuss Xbox without touching on gaming. Xbox has been their most successful entertainment effort to date, so it’s no surprise to see Microsoft put their faith in it for media as well. I remember when Microsoft was supporting a half dozen different music stores when the original Zune launched in 2006, so I’m just glad that they’re finally consolidating all of their services and concentrating on a single content store. I’m also just glad to not have to deal with Windows Media Player.īoth Xbox Music and Xbox Video look very similar to the latest Xbox dashboard update, and it’s clear that Microsoft is pushing a unified entertainment content front here. I’m a huge fan of the Zune desktop software and how elegantly it operates, so I think this is great. The video playback controls are pretty elegant in full-screen mode, and both players seem to have taken a number of interface design cues from the Zune software. It’s not the best way to watch a video (who enjoys watching video content in a 320x180 window? Anyone? No takers?) but you can do it if you really want to. Hilariously, videos can also be played back when snapped, albeit in a very small window. The music application looks quite good when snapped to the edge, with various album art from your library appearing as the background for the music controls. The bottom edge swipe brings up the ability to specify a file for playback, as well as a now-playing control bar. The applications are separate but are very similarly designed and laid out, with local content on the left, featured content in a central location, and content stores to the right. The music and video players are now part of the Xbox Live family of services, so they’re connected to Xbox Music and Xbox Video respectively.
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