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Front Row is WEAK at the APPLe stores

poppe

poppe

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Apr 29, 2006
2,249
53
Woodland Hills
Hello,

I have tried now twice to show two people how front row works, but everytime I go to the store front row performs HORRIBLY!!!

I hit the menu system... Waiting... Waiting... 5 seconds... 10 seconds... 15 seconds finally it comes up.

Once in there it works great until you hit the library in iTunes or iMovie... then it takes another 30 seconds looking for everything else...

Why is this? I was trying to impress some people, but they were just stunned at how it didn't work well...

Is it just the store comps that are having problems? I tried the MB and the Mini because they were the only ones with front row remotes on display.

The mini also lagged horribly through all menus and switching. To movie up a menu line it would take around 5 seconds. It was core duo 1.66... 1gig of ram..
 
Mine doesn't start so fast (never timed it) but once there it's snappy. This slownesss in starting leads to me pushing it about 5000 times. It's kineda annoying. I never actually use it though. It's more useful in theory for me.
 
I bet to many apps were open. The Apple Store(s) near Portland, every time I go in at least 10-15 apps are running at any given time. And rosetta apps really bite into cpu and ram.
 
I noticed this at my local Apple store too the other day. They didn't have any remotes out (they said they get stolen too easily), but I used the shortcut CMD+esc to get into it. I tried it on just about every Front Row-capable computer on display (including a MBP and iMac) and it had the same problems you describe on all of them . It took a little while to start up, and then performed nicely until I tried to go into the iTunes music library, and it just sat there and took forever to get into it.

It couldn't have been that too many apps were open, because I have a little pet peeve about people trying to close applications by just closing the window, so whenever I get on one of the computers I CMD+tab to all the open apps without windows open and quit them (weird, I know, just a little habit of mine). Unless it was a bunch of background processes, in which case it's entirely possible.

So I don't know what's causing it to run so slowly. I don't think it's because the library is too large, I'm sure many people have bigger libraries than they do there and it still runs fine. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the computers are all networked together (I think) and it has to retrieve all of the songs over the network???
 
i think frontrow will open whatever program youre trying to use (itunes, iphoto, imovie, dvd) so that would take however long depending on your system. then it has to search for whatever file you want to listen/view so thatll take up cpu and time. frontrow is a cool feature for parties and having it sit in the background but not practical IMO.
 
Apple Store computers always seem to run slower than they should. Even when they put more RAM in them. I tested an iMac at one and it was achingly slow, even with a gig of RAM. The one at CompUSA seemed faster, even with only 512MB. The one I wound up buying was even faster, even before I added more RAM. I don't know why, maybe it has something to do with people being on it all day, how they have everything loaded, the network connection, something. Show them the iMac after having the sales clerk reboot it. Should be a lot faster.
 
the firmware updates made the response EXTREMELY slow for me. before, i click and it responded within half a second. now it takes like 3-4 seconds each click. it's annoying because it was fine before.
 
Yes all very weird...

In regards to if alot of applications were opened: When I jump on a Mac I first look for the little black triangle at the bottom. And I close them not using just the click of the red dot but going file Quit Application (but using the key strokes). So maybe something was open I dont know? but nothing had a black triangle under it...

How is everyones Front Row working at home?

I dont have a Mac yet, and I loved bragging about this App.
 
wordmunger said:
Just fine (intel iMac w/1GB). I imagine the problem is the computers are accessing files from a slow central server.
Click to expand...

That would make sense. I never really thought why all the computers in the apple stores all have the exact same pictures.
 
this is odd. Everytime i have used front row in the store it has been pretty snappy.

I wonder how bad it will perform at Best buy
 
FrontRow has always performed well for me.

It's always this way, no? When you try to show someone something it never quite works out. :confused:
 
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