Thurott reviews Front Row

[mac-er]

Paul Thurott reviews Front Row

He basically tears it a new one.

*Microsoft: They didn't copy us; they used the iPod as a basis for Front Row.
*His and MS's surprised it took them so long to bring out Media Center capabilities.
*Obvious: doesn't have DVR capabilities
*No one cares about movie trailers.
*UI is better than Media Center
*Remote is "comically designed for children"

 

[Lord Blackadder]

Thurrot is an arrogant ******.

Still, he is correct that Media Center is more fully featured than Front Row right now - Apple should take this to heart and plan on matching or surpassing every major feature in Media center with the next release of Front Row, or at least include the features in Leopard.

He is also correct that Apple has caused M$ to lose sleep due to Apple's domination of the digital music market. If Apple can dominate the "media center"-style computer market as well it will own the future, even as M$ owns the present.

 

[slu]

I am in no way a fan of Thurott at all, but this article does raise some decent points...but then again I have not used Front Row OR a Windows Media Center PC, so what the hell would I know?

At least to me it didn't read like a blantant MS Fanboy article for once.

 

[Chundles]

It's not too bad a review really, I've read him say worse about M$.

He's right about it needing a "now playing" part to the menu and does state the Front Row isn't directly competing with Media Centre.

I see Front Row as a handy little way to operate stuff you don't need to be close to the computer to see, it's a nice little app but nothing revolutionary yet.

 

[fistful]

Even though he comes across as condescending I only have two small issues with this article.

1. how is "ok" more intuitive than "play"?

2.His issue with apps running in the background. So say you already have an app running in the background then launch front row (if he had his way with the capability built in) and use it for the same purpose as the app running in the background aren't you then essentially running the app twice?

 

[RobHague]

Was it just me that never really saw 'Front Row' as a competitor to Media Centre? I mean its easy to jump to a comparison because it looks simular in function but i think both had very different goals in mind.

I really dont see it as anything more than a simple addition to OSX, that gives you a nice front-end to view the media on your system. Apple are all for 'simplicity' and 'ease of use' (their moto used to be A Computer For the Rest of Us right...) this offers users of the iMac a neat way to get to their movies, trailers/music and DVD's and forget the 'Computer' behind it for a bit. Basically turn your iMac into a self-contained DVD player and remove any faffing around with opening applications. Just click and put the DVD in and its playing full screen. I'd also imagine that Front Row might have been a bi-product of Apple wanting to give the iMac a remote for DVD playback too... maybe the idea evolved from there.

Anyhow im sure front row will evolve over time, but then again Apple might not have any plans and taking the functionality beyond what it is now -- they might improve it but they might not go as far as Microsoft has with MCE.

I always thought that if Apple decided to enter that particular market, they would have a seperate product to do it (that links all the current systems together). Sort of like a home 'control station' for all your Apple Hardware, that gives you links to the media on the systems as well as content from the net, and of course TV recording and the inevitable extras.

 

[dotdotdot]

Was it just me that never really saw 'Front Row' as a competitor to Media Centre? I mean its easy to jump to a comparison because it looks simular in function but i think both had very different goals in mind.

Steve Jobs indirectly compared it to Media Center on Windows XP when Front Row was announced. He showed two Media Center remotes, and the Apple Remote. He stated that the Media Center remotes all had over forty buttons, whereas the Apple remote has six.

What Jobs didn't mention was that a home television remote usually has over 40 buttons anyway, and that if you remove the television/DVR aspect of Windows XP media center remotes, you will have maybe 10 buttons at most, so that comparison was wrong.

But is it just me or does Front Row feel pretty... empty? Its all black with little icons. I prefer Media Center as it looks more "inviting" and is much better.

Be sure to read the Vista Media Center review, however. Thurrott HATES Vista Media Center, and thinks MS should have kept XP Media Center's basic function and design.

 

[moonislune]

Did he mention...

Did Thurrowup mention how MS media sinner has a plethora of erratic errors...so much so to where the next new big update of media sinner is hailed as the holy grail of updates... Hmm, media sinner locks up at random, complains of memory errors if other XP programs are concurrently running while trying to record and watch tv (granted closing the system monitor frees up needed memory and thus the system runs smoother), menus from screens disappear, and there is no way to change the codec for video encoding so you're stuck with crappy MS-dvr which is a pain in the bios to reencode to other formats.

And as far as the remotes go Mr. Thurrowup, MS remotes stink (I've gone through 2 in 8 months).

 

[ravenvii]

I don't think Front Row is a competitor to Media Center at all... not yet, anyway. Front Row is beautiful and awesome for what it's intended for. It's not intended to be a "media center" as Media Center is... One obvious example, the iMac comes with a LCD already. Yes you can hook it up to a TV, but then you'd have a big iMac with it's own display sitting next to the TV. I don't think that's what Front Row is *supposed* to be for, even though it does offer this functionality at least.

The day Apple puts Front Row in the Mac mini (or any Mac really) and ships a remote that works with any Mac, is the day we can start calling Front Row a competitor to Media Center. At this point, Front Row is just a toe in the water.

 

[ScruffyTheMac]

I love this quote:

In other words, Front Row is pure Apple: Lot's of style and flash, but not as functional as the competition.

There's nothing like comedy to start the day.