By SteveJack
I’ve been testing Apple’s Front Row software for over a week now. It’s a deceptively simple application. It works in its own environment, just like Mac OS X Tiger’s Dashboard. When launched, Front Row very nicely zooms your Mac away, while fading it out, and fades in Front Row’s main screen which consists of four choices: Photos, DVD, Videos, and Music in a “3-D” ring you through which you can cycle. Leaving Front Row slowly spins theses choices and your Mac fades up from the foreground. Very nice.
The brilliance of Front Row is its simplicity. Front Row is basically an application launcher and interface control replacement for existing Macintosh media applications. Choose “DVD” in Front Row and your Mac uses DVD Player in the background. “Photos” uses iPhoto. “Music” uses iTunes. “Videos” uses iTunes and QuickTime. Front Row is basically a large display control center for your Mac’s media, so you can use a remote from across the room to control your Mac and still be able to see the controls. You step through screens to access and control media very much like you do with Apple’s iPod.
Right now, Front Row’s Music section lets you control iTunes music and playlists, Photos lets you view slideshows from your iPhoto library, complete with transitions and music, Videos lets you watch and control home movies, music videos, movie trailers, and more, and DVD lets you watch and control whatever DVD you pop into your Mac’s DVD drive.
Because Front Row is so simple and relies on existing applications to do the heavy lifting, it’s not hard to imagine how quickly its capacities can grow. If Apple decided to offer a TV Tuner application and/or a personal video recorder (PVR) TiVo-like application, for example, it could easily be integrated into Front Row’s controls. All of those extra buttons that are on Microsoft Media Center remote controls would be software based and controlled on-screen with Apple’s simple 6-button Apple Remote.
Front Row holds a world of promise. It works very well already. I predict Front Row will soon boast even more features and spread to all Mac products. We already know it works on other Mac models. A key to Front Row’s growth will be a wireless Airport Express that’s capable of transmitting video and audio from the media on your Mac to screens throughout your house. Apple’s probably planning to offer such a device that also allows display of the Front Row interface on whichever screen you’re watching and maybe also a small receiver for the remote that you can place near each screen; better yet, they’d be combined into one unit. That way, you’d just have an Apple Remote in each room with a screen, press the Menu button, bring up your Mac’s Front Row interface on the screen and choose your media.
The next generation of Wi-Fi, 802.11n, will help usher in the pieces Apple need to make your Mac a true digital hub. Apple has much more work to do to make this all possible. Many, many questions remain, such as: will this setup be able to play multiple video streams simultaneously to different rooms? If your Mac can record media, can it do it while playing multiple streams to multiple screens? Will Apple allow you to record TV or do they want you to buy it from iTunes? Would Apple consider a flat monthly subscription rate for TV shows, like cable / satellite TV, so you can watch whatever programs whenever you want without having to buy them? If so, wouldn’t they be recordable and therefore subject to piracy? What role could iPod play in all this? I’m sure you can think of many more!
What I’m thinking of right now is a Mac with a large hard drive (and external drives) in one room that contains all of your media. Airport Video Express units would be near every screen upon which you control and play your Mac’s media. Front Row would display on each screen and an Apple Remote would be in each room with a screen. This seems to be the most efficient way to arrive at a true Mac digital hub. It beats an idea such as a more expensive Mac Front Row Tablet that you’d carry around to each room and use as the combo Apple Remote+Front Row display. It certainly beats buying an iMac G5 for each room with a screen in your house. What if Apple could do something like a Newton form factor that would be cheap enough to buy for each room? What if Apple simply made an iPod accessory that allowed you to use the iPod as the Front Row remote? See, there are some more questions already!
Front Row is an important piece in Apple’s future digital hub plans, but it raises many questions. What do you think Apple will or should do to complete the true digital hub?
SteveJack is a long-time Macintosh user, web designer, multimedia producer and a regular contributor to the MacDailyNews and iPodDailyNews Opinion sections.
Advertisement: The New iMac G5 – Built-in iSight camera and remote control with Front Row media experience. From $1299. Free shipping.
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Apple’s Front Row hits torrent sites, video showing application running on Mac mini – October 25, 2005
Analyst: ‘media companies will call Apple to strike deals, Front Row is Media Center done right’ – October 12, 2005
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Apple’s new iMac G5, iTunes 6, iPod video designed to bait Hollywood – October 13, 2005
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Macs King, sounds like you’re doing exactly what I’ve been thinking about trying as soon as I get a mini or another Mac in the house. I might want to pick your brain some, if you can spare the time.
I have an interesting thought that I’d like to hear some feedback on.
Apple introduced Front Row on their new 17″ and 20″ iMac. The pricing is $1300 to $1700. Apple’s Mac Mini is $499. Apple has a gorgeous 30″ HD display for $2500. 45″ to 37″ LCD TVs are listing for between $5800 and $2100, depending on the exact feature set. Steve Jobs, when introducing the new iMacs said, “…it’s the ultimate desktop architecture. Because when you have these large, flat displays, what better place to put the computer than right behind the display?” I believe Apple should upgrade the mini to optical audio out, at worst, and HDMI at best; bundle an EyeTV for cable/satellite tuner and voila, an inexpensive, compared to some of the Windows solutions, elegant media center pc.
With apologies to Steve Jobs…
One more thing…
Why not build some 30″ and up LCDs with an iMac built in – in that same price range as the other LCD TVs? Including a PC card slot for the cable card / sat. tuners wouldn’t be that difficult. Since the iMac is built in, Front Row can be the “default” interface; accessing the individual iApps when adding content only. While this is obviously an iMac with a monitor on steroids, it’s not marketed as such. This is not a computer, per se, but neither is the iPod. It is a consumer device. As this would be. Call it the PowerPod or the HomePod or the iTheater or the Front Row Experience, whatever. There are already several manufacturers that are including many of these capabilities in their TVs, with built in hard drives and ethernet. Why shouldn’t Apple come along, like with the iPod, late to the party, but ready to become the life of said party? This is Apple’s next market to come to late, maybe, but come to and do right.
Opinions?
Probably the same reason why Ford doesn’t put the engine of its Focus on a Hummer-like body and remove two seats to make it sportier. Finding the right combination for a mass-market product is no trivial task, but something will eventually emerge.
CD’s are not greater quality than those dusty and scratchy albums?
DVD’s are not greater quality than those blurry rental VHS tapes?
1080P Content is not much of an improvement over the 1953 NTSC Standard?
Maybe some of you are the anchors that have kept broadcast media dragging behind all other forms of technology. Oh, I forget, it was the studios that held things back so that their Square Low Rez libraries wouldn’t lose hundred of billions of dollars of value.
jus found this (new?) uk site that has a similar article abut macs and tv… http://www.mymacpad.co.uk
not quit as in-depth as this macdailynews story, but it has some intresting points. namely that apple aren’t going to add a tv-tuner to frontrow as long as their sellin tv shows with itunes.
IT guy
how about voice commands…mic in the remote, just say CHANNEL ## and it changes. Voice commands are already included, just expand on whats already there
Useful for handicapped
just a thought
MDN: ‘ask’ ask how to make it easier and ore useful, the Apple way
Why not build some 30″ and up LCDs with an iMac built in – in that same price range as the other LCD TVs? Including a PC card slot for the cable card / sat. tuners wouldn’t be that difficult. Since the iMac is built in, Front Row can be the “default” interface
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Pfft.. I’ve heard enough… you’re crazy.. a 30″ iMac? Give me a break.
I don’t believe Apple will make watching TV on your computer screen much easier (plugging in a tv-cable wire).
It’s obvious that Apple’s focus is strongly on the iPod and “the commercial Internet”, the iTMS.
Too bad we won’t hear much more from Apple this year, except one more Tiger update.