4. Multitasking
This was actually one of my least favorite parts of what Microsoft showed at the conference. While I understand the practicality of multitasking, I have an issue with the principles of it. Yes, it is cool that you can have several programs running at once and that you can jump in and out of them with ease. It is cool that you can have something playing and go buy movie tickets or receive a Skype call at the same time. Yes, that is all practical. However, for me that seems to take away what we should be focusing on. This is definitely a product of the world that we live in today. Call me old fashioned, but I have a massive problem focusing on two things at once. I could never watch a film and check my emails at the same time. For me it depletes the point of watching the film in the first place. Games are the same. These arts are cognitive experiences that demand our attention and that we should be thinking about as we interact with them. I have always seen that as the point of engaging with them, otherwise it all just seems like a massive waste of time. Most of the multitasking features just seemed to be ways of getting in the way of me interacting with all the entertainment that Microsoft seem so keen to push. Maybe this is just because I am rubbish at dividing my attention between tasks. I understand that we live in a world where people like to have movies on in the background and want to be able to check Facebook in the cinema. I get that. For those people, this will be a joy. For me, it is just a distraction.