An opinion on Front Row
Misc. News, Tech News October 25th, 2005This week I got a chance to take a look at Front Row (FR), Apple’s latest ‘media conduit’ application. Even though there is a lot of hype surrounding this product, I am finding it difficult to come to terms with the functionality of the app. This may be my own bias because of what we are designing iTheater to be, but it is mostly because of my exposure to many different media center applications (such as Windows MCE). Take my opinion for what its worth, but keep in mind that FR is a useful application for people who are just looking to add some eye candy to displaying their photos and music.
From a usability standpoint, FR does exactly what it is designed to do: display media on a user friendly screen. This is great for those looking for a simple media center, and in fact thats what FR really is. Let’s be honest here, Apple is the first to release a stable media center application…we just don’t have the resources to hire a team of programmers to code iTheater 5 days a week. I would have expected more from Apple on this one…the application has such great potential, but I’m just not seeing it yet. It’s a decent start, but I would expect more to be coming down the pipeline. For the time being, I give Front Row a 1.5 out of 5 stars. With some more functionality, FR can easily be a 3 or 4.
Front Row: 1.5 / 5 Stars
10 Responses to “An opinion on Front Row”
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October 26th, 2005 at 5:05 am
I absolutely agree. Played around a little bit with it yesterday, and must say that it wasn’t an impressive amount of functionality in it.
Actually, I’m not expecting it to grow much further either. After I bought iWork, I haven’t seen them doing much to improve Pages to be usable for anything else than brochures/posters and I don’t expect them to add much to Front Row either. As you write, it does what it is designed to do, and not more. They might add features that are added to iTMS, but that’s all.
October 26th, 2005 at 8:14 pm
I hear that Front Row doesn’t allow you to listen to music shared from another machine, or look at photos shared from another Mac. Very limiting - I hope iTheater has some support for that?
October 26th, 2005 at 8:45 pm
What functionality do you want it to have? Personally, I think it’s awesome. All I want is a from-across-a-30-foot-room-friendy interface for browsing my iTunes library… which of course plays thru my home theater system… all in Apple Lossless format. It does this beautifully… absolutely beautifully. I LOVE it! My dream of having every peice of music I own all on a computer, in a lossless format, with a couch-friendly interface is finally here!!!! Still interested to see what you do with iTheater tho’.
October 27th, 2005 at 10:07 am
I’ve tried front row and I wasn’t impressed. The biggest issue was movie playback, I would like to have all the functionallity of VLC (ie. support for all kinds of movie formats and subtitles).
The other issue was with the GUI, it was quite nice, but browsing a lagre library of music files or video files was quite a pain.
October 27th, 2005 at 1:27 pm
The comments regarding it’s “functionality” are vague and useless without actually explaining what specific “functionality” deficiencies you believe to exist. I, for one, think you hit the nail on the head when you described it in this way:
“From a usability standpoint, FR does exactly what it is designed to do: display media on a user friendly screen. This is great for those looking for a simple media center, and in fact thats what FR really is.”
That’s what people are looking for; a simple (to use) media center. One thing I would like to see that’s currently missing is quicker, more direct navigation through a long list of media, i.e. press the “G” key on your keyboard to jump to the “G” section. Of course, this would defeat the purpose of the simple remote being used from your sofa. Trade-offs. As with most Apple products, they’ll continue to tweak it and I’m sure it’ll become the standard by which all others are measured.
Your project looks to have some good foundation. I encourage you to press on and build the better app. Just don’t let your bias get in the way of that.
October 28th, 2005 at 7:10 pm
I think the the UI on front row is a bit weak. i some screenshots and it dont look all that impressive but i guess i will have to try it out.
October 28th, 2005 at 8:23 pm
Could you be a bit more specific - your article currently sounds like a rant, it actually doesn’t go down to any details where a reader could agree or disagree with your opinion. Where does FrontRow fail? What will you do better?
October 31st, 2005 at 12:19 am
Front row as you say does what it is designed to do. One thing I have NOT seen is Apple calling it a “Media Centre” I don’t think it is being placed in that section though has some similarities.
I saw a Windows Media Centre site ripping it apart mainly trying to say it was a poor feature lacking media centre . I personally doubt that Apple will go for a full blown TiVo and TV media centre with front row. iTheatre is a different story..FR will sell very very well and gives most people what they want.. Interstingly Media Centre for the PC doesnt actually sell that well and not that many people want a computer tied up permanently as a TV.. some do..
I hope itheatre goes well but for some simple stuff for a computer rather than TV computer FR is great.
October 31st, 2005 at 6:22 am
Front Row certainly looks very nice. I’m really only looking for one missing bit of functionality then it will be all I require. The ability to access iPhoto and iTunes libraries across a home network.
November 2nd, 2005 at 6:10 pm
Like most people who have already commented, I believe FrontRow oes what it is supposed to do really well. It is not a media Center. All it does is saves me a little trouble walking to and from the computer if I am watching movies, pictures or listening to music and want to change something.
From what I have seen, itheater is more of a Media Center and am strongly looking forward to using it on my iMac.