April update

No apologies necessary, Coldfusion! It can be a bit overwhelming when there is so much to find and you want to make sure to get the most out of it! To answer your questions:

1. Typically, if you are not receiving Friend Notifications, it is likely because the default initial setting for these is Favorites. So, if you've never marked a friend as a fave, you won't see these at first. To fix this, there are two places to check:
in Menu -> Settings -> Preferences to make sure the notifications are turned on. Also, I believe if you go to the Friends area (by highlighting your profile to the left of your home screen and pressing A) there should be a section to specify which friends
(faves or All) give you a notification. One note: you won't receive notifications for friends on Xbox 360.

2. The best way to know if an update is available is to go to the menu -> Settings -> System, and at the very bottom of the options at the left will be an item for "System Update." If that option isn't there, then no update is available at that time. If
it is there, you can press it at any time to receive the update.

3. Finally, the latest updates can be found by going to your "Games and Apps" tile. The items with the latest update (or with one available which requires your input) will have a small star/asterisk * in a white dog-ear triangle in the top-right corner.

Hope this helps!

 

Cold, if you're still having issues getting your friends to pop up each time they come on or go off, you need to go into your friends list and favorite them so the indicator will come up. Since MS decided to expand the amount of "friends" one can have on
live, the biggest complaint they got in the beta was being assailed with log in notifications. So to assuage that they give you the ability to choose which ones you want to pop up.

As for game and app updates, when they become available they are mandatory. So if it's something you use regularly then you probably wouldn't notice unless it was something major. As for what happens at what updates, you would have to check the patch notes
on whatever it was that was getting updated.

This new system is supposed to be a "maintenance free" system. Which of course isn't perfect yet, but the update option seems to be working without issue so far.

 

Thanks for all the help, Jaymo 1978 and bigbenx88 - I appreciate the clarification!

 

Anytime! Don't hesitate to give a shout if you need anything else!