Friday, February 29, 2008

Tip: Open the main menu from anywhere on Apple TV 2.0

When Apple TV was upgraded to 2.0, a completely new main navigation menu replaced the 1.0 style list, though those lists still exist in some places. I stumbled on this little trick, ff you hold down the menu button on the remote for a few seconds (maybe 2), then the main menu will fly in no matter how deep you are in the navigation, which can get really deep when looking at movie rentals.

The remote trick/shortcut makes it obvious now why Apple went with this floating navigation menu. One of the tremendous problems I have with Xbox Live from an end-user standpoint is that you are always going back from somewhere to reset to home. Apple TV 1.0 didn't really suffer from the depth problem because you where always only 2-3 levels deep. With Apple TV 2.0, you can always get home at anytime, and still see where you currently are faded out behind the menu. If you want to stay where you are, you can click the menu button again. Simple, and a great example of a reason to rethink your UI if original assumptions are no longer true