George, yes any button can be a macro and you can put macros on the home menu too. You can also change the default settings of the hard buttons, including mapping a macro to a hard button. Like the touchscreen buttons, the hard buttons are unique per activity. And lastly, yes I'm a Microsoft employee...

dcc- The buttons are a fixed size, and in an even 4x5 grid layout. You can put a button anywhere within the grid. There are two shapes for buttons, oval and square. Oval buttons are always shortcuts to other screens, and square always send IR codes (including macros).