Switch OS Walkthrough [video] | Hacker News Reader

Switch OS Walkthrough [video]

vid.me

38 pointsaresant21 comments

I really love how the system sounds create a musical sense of progression (ascending clips with varying patterns), that you are getting closer and closer to setting things up successfully. It turns the OS itself into something that feels like a Nintendo title (really!).

They have done very pleasing and playful UI in the past. I remember back when I moved my virtual console data from a Wii go a WiiU. Or when I moved from a 3DS to a New 3DS.

While the process took way too long and was very annoying in general, I loved the animation showing Pikmin moving blocks of data between the machines.

As a technical person, I would have loved a progress bar and a data rate display even more, but a cute animation like this is text second best option I guess.

The system sounds are indeed very pleasing somehow.

A number of the UI elements, namely the system settings pane, the detecting network popup, and the keyboard, have a very Android like look to my eyes.

Is there much known about the underlying OS for the Switch?

Fully custom OS apparently:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/20/13346004/nintendo-took-th...

Though I believe the Shield uses a form of Android, and the Switch uses a lot of Shield components so it's plausible that the Switch OS is similar to Android

Came here to say this! It's a very small but nice touch to the OS.

It makes me think "It's happening!". It's designed to make the player more excited to finish the next step of setup. This is a very interesting reward mechanism.

This isn't so much a "walkthrough" as it is a terribly-shot video of someone bumbling through some of the Switch OS screens, but! Nonetheless, the UI looks snappy and pleasant, and I wonder if this device could ever be a workable replacement for an iPhone. Probably not, given its size, but... I can't help but think that a Nintendo mobile that can serve as a general communications device and app platform would be pretty rad.

Nintendo is not going to make a general-purpose mobile device, it would contradict the company's core philosophy.

I imagine it won't be friendly to would-be third party application developers.

Good. Compare the average quality of third party releases on something like the 3DS with the iOS app store. For once I would like to see a walled garden behave like a garden rather than a jungle with walls around it.

I'll reserve real judgment until I can see one in person, but it's nice to at least see indications that the UI won't be slow as molasses like it is on the 3DS.

Does Anyone know if the retail units can be used for (indie) development at this point?

I'm wondering this too.

Depending on the unit's battery life under a light load, it could be awfully interesting to try and put together general-purpose consumer apps for it for use as an "iPad alternative" - ebook reader, video podcast downloader, etc.

The press line was 2-6 hours, depending on load.

Being Nintendo I doubt it.

I wonder if they've switched to preemptive multitasking. (No pun intended, although as I've found in conversations with friends, that one's going to pop up a lot.)

so this confirms the lack of a browser

will be interesting to see how well they manage to lock down the rest of the system

Nintendo already confirmed the lack of browser a couple of weeks ago:

http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/7/14544724/nintendo-switch-we...

Wonder what UI toolkit this uses.

Just like in any other console, a in-house developed one.

Source or speculation?

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