
Sometimes I laugh at how spoilt technology has made me. I used to type video game code into my computer from a magazine every month, which often took days and sometimes didn't work. Nowadays I'm whingeing because my Xbox Series X takes about ten seconds to boot up. While this is clearly a first-world problem, it'd be nice if it were faster. And if you're an Xbox Insider, now it is. The rest of us will need to wait for the autumn update.
The news comes via Xbox marketing director Josh Munsee, who confirmed on Twitter that he'd commissioned animators to make a shorter boot animation to reflect the change: instead of taking roughly nine seconds to boot from cold, both the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S will boot in around four seconds.
Just imagine what you could do with all that extra time! I'm only being slightly sarcastic: if you use your Xbox constantly with power options set for maximum environmental friendliness, those little seconds will soon add up to quite a lot of time. And that's brilliant.
Everything is awesome
This forthcoming update is a great example of how technology gets better in little ways. I played the remastered Mass Effect trilogy recently and every single time my Commander Shepard went into a lift – something that players of the original will remember with horror, because it felt like it took a fortnight to load the levels – I was delighted by how quickly the next section loaded.
I'm currently playing Far Cry 5 on Game Pass and enjoying load screens that disappear so quickly that I don't have time to read the on-screen text. And I've been kicking back with a TV series I used to watch back in the 90s, completely taking for granted the fact that, like all the best TVs, my Samsung happily upsamples the original rather grainy HD into something crisper and clearer.
I hate to sound like a character from The Lego Movie here, but this is one of the reasons I love writing about tech: every day somebody somewhere is working on something that might be fairly tiny in the great scheme of things but that will make my life that little bit nicer, more entertaining, more fun. It might just be an Xbox that boots four seconds faster, or – at last – the always-on display that'll be in some versions of the iPhone 14. But collectively all of these little improvements make a big difference.
Sign up to the T3 newsletter for smarter living straight to your inbox
Get all the latest news, reviews, deals and buying guides on gorgeous tech, home and active products from the T3 experts
Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).
-
Three underrated Pilates exercises that will build phenomenal core strength
Remove sit-ups and crunches from your routine and add these instead
By Bryony Firth-Bernard Published
-
I wish this Amy Schumer movie didn't exist – but it's already Netflix's new no.1
Kinda Pregnant has been critically lambasted
By Mike Lowe Published
-
Xbox Game Pass to get one of the biggest day one releases of the year so far... and for free
Obsidian's first-person action RPG is coming to Game Pass this month, as well as Madden NFL 25 ahead of Super Bowl LIX
By Rik Henderson Published
-
Xbox Game Pass loses major franchise after 4 years of day one releases
All good things must come to an end
By Rik Henderson Published
-
Xbox Game Pass members get one of the year's hottest new shooters for free this month
The latest Sniper Elite is coming to Xbox Game Pass as a day one release in January
By Rik Henderson Published
-
Xbox greatly expands storage options to more than 16TB, but doesn't address the biggest issue
You can now add more than 16TB of external storage to your Xbox Series X/S
By Rik Henderson Published
-
How to watch the new Xbox Games Showcase – Developer_Direct 2025
Xbox will host a new Developer_Direct today, where we'll get deep dives on forthcoming games – here's how to watch it live
By Rik Henderson Last updated
-
Xbox Game Pass getting one of the best RPGs of all time for free
See how it all began
By Rik Henderson Published
-
5 best Xbox Game Pass games to download first on Xbox Series X/S
Here are our picks of the Xbox Game Pass library to get you started
By Rik Henderson Published
-
5 best fantasy games coming in 2025 and beyond
If you love swords and sorcery then these five upcoming games need to be on your wishlist
By Rik Henderson Published