So, let me begin by saying how much I am enjoying my new console. The hardware itself is very cool, and I have been loving several of the launch games on offer. The controller is a ingeniously well iterated version of what had been the best video game controller of all time.
All that being said I have a few suggestion of how to improve what's good, solidify what's in it's infancy or just unfinished, and fix those few things that are flat out broken.
First off, I'm one of the people who thinks the new Kinect is in the " good but could still be better" category. I would say that in my personal experience, it accurately understands my voice commands about eighty percent of the time. Good, but not good enough. Also, seriously think about refining hand gestures, as those are easily the weakest link in the Kinect chain. One more note on the new Kinect, I know that coming into this, most people were worried that their gaming space was too small to be effective for the camera. I have the opposite problem. I sit nearly 10 feet from my TV, and Kinect doesn't always recognize me. Not sure if that is something that you guys could refine, but it'd be really nice to find out you can.
The HDMI in is a great addition, and being able to (mostly) navigate my DirectTV service from the much more intuitive OneGuide you have provided me is great. But it needs to go further. I am not suggesting you ink a deal with every swinging cable provider in existence, but it seems to me that accessing my DVR content isn't as difficult as it has been made out to be. To be honest, in more than one way, I already am. I boot up smartglass on my phone. From there I can turn the volume up on my receiver ( a much better alternative than saying "Xbox volume up" multiple times) and I can pause, play, rewind or fast forward recordings on my DVR. The catch? I can't get to the DVR menu from smartglass. I guess what I'm getting at is that if I can pause or play that content, it should not be to hard for you to add a way for my smartglass remote to pull up my list of recorded content on the cable box. Or have the Kinect's IR blaster tell my cable box to record a series or movie. This should be high on your list of "hey lets get that working the way that our customers really want to use it" items.
Last, but by no stretch of the imagination least, are those few things that are just inexcusably broken. Thankfully, they can be fixed. But you need to do it soon, because having firmware in this rough of shape out in the wild is a bit shameful. The party system on Xbox 360 was a shining example of how to do online parties right. Xbox One's version is the absolute antithesis of that. Why on earth is party chat "on" not the default setting while in a party? Invites are no longer intuitive, and getting to the party system at all is kind of a pain (better with Kinect admittedly).
This should be priority one over at Xbox central, followed very closely by cleaning up the UI in general, so that it is easier for those who don't want to use Kinect to navigate quickly. Holding down the Xbox button after getting an Achievement toast should give me an immediate synopsis of what I just accomplished. From there, if I want to see more, by all means, take me to the achievements app, but don't make stopping my game for long stretches to see what I just did mandatory.
Finally, I'm a bit OCD. I LIKE to manage my storage space. I don't like being left out of the loop on how much I have. Change this please, and make the information easy to find and access.
I really love the Xbox One, and I hope those of you who worked so hard to get it to market are listening, because those of us who have jumped in feet first so early want this to be the best it can be. No rest for the wicked Microsoft, get cracking!
PS: I don't want to personally put a faster hybrid SS/HDD into my brand new console, but you should make alternatives to voiding the warranty available to your customers. License a few select outlets like Fry's Electronics, Geek Squad at Best Buy, and your own Microsoft stores to do the work for me. I don't work on my own car either, but I like having a certified tech do what needs done to improve performance, and this kind of flexibility towards upgrading the hard drive will gain you some more good will.