…and PowerMac G5… and another mini… and… on OS X on Intel anyone…?
Front Row is an iApp released specifically for the new (Oct 2005) iMac G5s. It provides an IR remote control and streamlined interface to access music, downloaded/ripped video, DVDs, photoes. It’s basically Apple’s first whack (to the public) at an integrated home media center… sort of.
Actually it’s a glorified front-end to iTunes/Photo/uh/DVD Player/some other action.
Too bad it’s currently only available on the iMac G5, and Apple (to my knowledge) has yet to announce an intent to bring it to Mac systems at large.
hey, i’m not a real blogger, so far be it from me to actually research anything regarding my assertions.
Surprised it took almost two whole weeks to hack (in the example below, on a Mini), but I’m glad it didn’t take longer.
Will be confirmed / denied on my PowerMac G5 within the next few hours.
rds
have implemented on my PowerMac G5. Works more or less as advertised upon initial inspection. using keyboard in lieu of remote control.
It wouldn’t be hard to use Salling Clicker (or any other Mac remote) to fill in the gaps.
The only step I didn’t take is download Xkeys (macro program), because the links I found were all to ancient versions. I’ve just been double-clicking the Applescript created in this process to test it out. front row is indeed loaded and works, upon a cursory examination of functionality.
The Front Row interface automatically uses my entire 23″ cinema display space when loaded. Since that more or less adheres to the fundamental principles of good UI design, I’m not shooting up any flares over it… but it’s nice.
More details to follow.
rds
additional notes re: front row hack on g5:
a) haven’t mapped out all the available keyboard keys (or maybe I have, in which case i’m dissapointed), but rough and tough once you’re in front row:
a) return => go into menu
b) escape => go up one menu
c) up and down => scroll up and down menu
um, that’s all i’ve figured out. pretty much any other button seems to quit Front Row.
bummers:
- holding the down and up scroll keys when browsing through a large library listing accelerates to a certain point of scrolling, and then goes no faster. i mention this as a bummer because i have about 44K audio files managed by iTunes, and the time required to scroll through a large index (ex. By Artist) is too long to be meaningful in most situations
- i haven’t found the key that equals (if it exists) “start playing from this point of the hierarchy”. In other words – i want to select a hierarchy object (ex. A playlist) and begin playing that playlist right then. As is, you hit “return”, it goes into the playlist, and then you have to hit a song to begin playing. Minor but annoying.
- Most significantly – I selected an album from an artist containing only a few albums / tracks (the artist in question was “Cat Power”, but that’s not really important), and hit a song to play. that activity was greeted by about five minutes of spinning-scrolly-I’m-thinking-wheel before anything started to play. I’m assuming this has to do with the size of my library, and I have not tried it again to see if something internal to the program (some index, hash, file, whatever) was created as part of a one-time event, causing the slowdown. However, if it’s standard issue behavior… I can’t see that the current version of Front Row would really meet my needs.
NOTE: I wasn’t running a Virus scan or anything else overly CPU-intensive while doing this benchmark…
Otherwise, looks very cool, great concept, promising, we’ll see where it goes. Of course I’m dealing with a hack, so these points may or may not be true re: the genuine article on a G5 iMac.
Cross-check,
rds
I can report success with Front Row on a Mac mini, but Xkeys does not seem to launch the Applescript correctly. The DVD player does not work, however, and I did note the objectionable latency on accessing some music in my very small library (about 40 total). I agree this is a cool concept, but hope Apple will sell a proper version tuned for Mac mini’s in the future. This will make a very nice media playing solution, although a little pricy compared to other solutions out there.
hey tim. the latency-on-play issue repeats pretty consistantly. so as-is, we agree-to-agree that this is a cool concept that needs development.
in an unrelated side-note, the inability to import / manage .avi video files within iTunes (per my experience) is another bummer. it appears that only quicktime video can be managed.
work to do, as always…
on the macro front… QuickKeys (for-pay, like $30 or something) is a solid product (well. I demo’ed it, it was solid, and then it expired… my need to macro-enable disgusting noise cues for my podcast wasn’t dire enough to pay for it). Don’t know offhand if this is a progeny of the original QuickKeys for Classic-style Mac OS (same name, same type functionality) or something new. Also don’t know offhand the level of functional overlap between QuickKeys and 10.4′s Automator, a technology I’ve spent way too little time playing with.
rds