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Why is Front Row so bad?

Jolly Jimmy

Jolly Jimmy

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 13, 2007
1,357
3
I use Front Row because I can use it from across the room with the remote. But there are many things I hate about it. Why isn't it just itunes in full screen?
At a first glance it looks to be just that, but it certainly isn't. Why doesn't music continue playing in itunes when I exit Front Row? Most annoying. And why are there no display options like in itunes? Where is my iPod in front row? But most importantly, what the hell happened to the super cool zoom effect from tiger?
 
FR is just a simple multimedia interface, designed more for the living room than the desktop. Desktop-level control is reserved for the app, FR is point & click easy. It's not just an iTunes controller, either, ITMS & iPhoto are part of it.

I don't use it (since I'm always at the desktop), but if I had an AppleTV or a Mini setup in the family room, I'd use it like crazy. For what it's supposed to be, I think it's darn near perfect.
 
Jolly Jimmy said:
I use Front Row because I can use it from across the room with the remote. But there are many things I hate about it. Why isn't it just itunes in full screen?
At a first glance it looks to be just that, but it certainly isn't. Why doesn't music continue playing in itunes when I exit Front Row? Most annoying. And why are there no display options like in itunes? Where is my iPod in front row? But most importantly, what the hell happened to the super cool zoom effect from tiger?
Click to expand...

Yup, I totally agree with you.
FrontRow in Tiger was much better than the one in Leopard.
I could play a lot more formats with Perian installed, but now FrontRow is a totally independent application.

I wish I could go back to Tiger's FrontRow without any problems..
 
JohnNotBeatle said:
It's not just an iTunes controller, either, ITMS & iPhoto are part of it.
Click to expand...

FR is not an iTunes controller. It doesn't control any programs and that is my point. It just accesses the files without going through itunes or other program. So why isn't it simply a controller for itunes and iphoto, rather than a whole new program? Why can't I switch seamlessly between the desktop and FR? I often use FR on a Macbook in the living room, but that doesn't mean I no longer want to be able to use it for anything else. Say you are listening to music but want to leave "living room mode" for a moment, to check email for example. So you quit FR and the music stops. Why??? I'd like my music to continue playing and to be able to return to FR straight afterwards as if I'd never left "living room mode" at all.
 
millap said:
Maybe you can...

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1251292&tstart=0

looks like people have had mixed results, but it might be worth a look if you really need FR1 functionality. I haven't done it myself, so can't comment on the result.
Click to expand...

Thank you!
I've tried it and it works... sometimes..
Sometimes I get the message "A problem has occured" and then FrontRow just fades back to my desktop. I only get the error when I go to Videos. When I go to Photos, FrontRow just freezes for a while and then closes without a warning. When I play music, I don't have any problem. It works great and iTunes keeps playing the music when I close FrontRow, just like in Tiger :)
 
Interesting... looks like it's only really an option for music playback then. I wonder if this also allows streaming over AirTunes which has not been implemented in FR2 yet.

b.t.w. Did you try going back to FR2 to see if it restored everything Ok?
 
i love front row! really it's very simple, nicely designed, and good for living media center..
 
Put me in the "used to love" column

Front Row under Tiger was great for me, I used it as a TV replacement. I ripped all my DVDs using handbrake and imported and categorized them in iTunes. then when I went to front row, it would give me a list of shows, then a list of seasons. It was great. But then Leopard front row came along and dumped all the shows into one big list for each show. Not great, but tolerable. Then the newest version of front row came along, and now each season of each show(and there can be 10+ in some cases) now has an entry on the root menu, and whats worse, it doesn't even tell you which season it is!

I hope that is a bug, because it is totally unlike Apple to go out of their way to make a UI increasingly LESS usable....or at least I like to hope.
 
the new front row is fantastic. i hook my macbook up to my tv all the time and scroll through my movies. hundreds of times better than the original front row.
 
JohnNotBeatle said:
Well, actually, it is, as it launches iTunes or iPhoto in the background.
Click to expand...

iTunes and iPhoto don't launch when FR is opened in Leopard, but do in Tiger. I just did the test on both. In Tiger you can switch seamlessly between the desktop and FR. In Leopard, iTunes and FR work seperately, starting a song in one program doesn't start it in the other. In Tiger iTunes and FR worked together which was great. Are you using Tiger? Why did they make FR independant in Leopard? Surely this is a step backwards?
 
Jolly Jimmy said:
Why did they make FR independant in Leopard? Surely this is a step backwards?
Click to expand...

FR2 is based on the same interface as the Apple TV. If it wasn't a separate application and just a launcher like FR1 was, then they would have to include some of the iLife apps on the ATV to get it to work.

It makes sense that they wanted to keep the ATV operating system as simple as possible for updates etc... and I guess it also makes sense to develop the FR2 application based on the same code. Otherwise it's twice as much work to maintain both apps.

I would imagine that FR2 will also be updated to include the changes made in ATV (Take 2) at some point in the near future, but maybe not for about 6 months until they've made some money out of ATV sales.
 
Jolly Jimmy said:
iTunes and iPhoto don't launch when FR is opened in Leopard, but do in Tiger. I just did the test on both. In Tiger you can switch seamlessly between the desktop and FR. In Leopard, iTunes and FR work seperately, starting a song in one program doesn't start it in the other. In Tiger iTunes and FR worked together which was great. Are you using Tiger? Why did they make FR independant in Leopard? Surely this is a step backwards?
Click to expand...

Well put panties on me and call me a turkey!

I just checked myself. Actually, I prefer it this way, as I got tired of iPhoto & iTunes launching and then having to manually quit them after exiting FR. I think it's more responsive and probably "lighter weight" on resources than the prior version. Feels more like a dedicated app now. Maybe I'm the only one, but I definitely like the "new" FR. Even if I have no use for it...
 
Can you stream movies and music from another computer using your wireless network through Front Row? That would make it not so bad...
 
i don't get how people like this new Front Row better than the Tiger version. I used to impress all my friends with that zoom out opening animation and now it just fades to black, the previews of movies as u sorted thru them used to be animated which was really cool, now ther just still pictures, I mean its not a very utilitarian program to begin with but old Front Row had way more impressive visual flare, why dump it down? now it looks like a bad microsoft clone of the original and for what reason. I thought leopard could handle more cool effects not less:mad::confused:
 
Rychiar said:
i don't get how people like this new Front Row better than the Tiger version. I used to impress all my friends with that zoom out opening animation and now it just fades to black, the previews of movies as u sorted thru them used to be animated which was really cool, now ther just still pictures, I mean its not a very utilitarian program to begin with but old Front Row had way more impressive visual flare, why dump it down? now it looks like a bad microsoft clone of the original and for what reason. I thought leopard could handle more cool effects not less:mad::confused:
Click to expand...

Pretty much my exact opinion. Why the hell would you get rid of the neat animation?
 
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