10-13-2005, 10:00 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Apple Unveils Front Row, and iYawn...
"Apple’s breakthrough Front Row media experience uses the bundled Apple Remote to let users enjoy the content they have on their iMac—including songs from their iTunes music library, slideshows of their photo albums in iPhoto®, videos including Podcasts, iMovies and DVDs, and popular movie trailers streamed from apple.com—all from up to 30 feet away. And with iTunes 6, users can now purchase and download music videos, Pixar short films and hit TV shows such as “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost” from the iTunes Music Store and watch them on their iMac using Front Row. Front Row is easily controlled using the Apple Remote, which has only six buttons, compared to remote controls for Microsoft’s Media Center which typically have over 40 buttons."
If you're a self-proclaimed Apple fanboy, you may want to shut this browser window immediately - things are going to get roasty. Apple recently unveiled Front Row, a "media experience" software package that comes with their new iMacs. Let me get this out of the way up-front: Front Row is a watered-down version of what Windows Media Center was over two years ago. It lacks any TV functionality - it's a glorified slideshow and music program. For all the people who whine when Microsoft "copies" Apple, turnabout is fair play: Apple has copied Windows MCE, and done a poor job at it. As Ed Bott put it, "It appears they’re going after the dorm room, not the living room." That's a dorm room without TV it seems. This is where Microsoft started several years back, but the extenders evolved that concept to allow customers to access their MCE content on any TV. This is a critical step that Apple is missing. Sure, they might get there, but this is an underwhelming product given how well Apple usually executes.
The TV shows that you can download from iTunes? Great idea, nice market breakthrough, but now I see why the studios allowed it to happen: the video resolution is only 320 x 240! NTSC cable TV is 720 x 480, and anyone who has watched regular cable on computer monitor or HDTV will tell you how bad it looks. 320 x 240 is a joke, pure and simple - and Apple wants you to pay $1.99 for the experience. Why wouldn't someone just record the TV shows on their PVR? If they don't have cable TV, will they be into paying $24 a month to watch three weekly shows? The math just doesn't add up - I can see someone buying a favourite music video for $1.99, but that's 4-5 minutes of video. Watching a badly pixellated video for 60 minutes is not my idea of quality TV. Then there's the remote...
The above photo was published on Jack Cheng.com, and he says "I don’t think there’s ever been a slide that captures what Apple is about as much as this one." Now, I'm one for simplicity, and I know that MCE needs to get more appliance-like if it's ever to be a real replacement for a TV tuner box, but this slide is a massive deception. If I remove all of the buttons on my MCE remote that have anything to do with TV, guess how many I'm left with? 15. The number pad buttons are for more than just TV though - when I want to find music by a certain artist, I press the button that has the letter of the artist and it jumps to that group of artists. Apple seems to assume that the buttons are gratuitous, but I seem them as a way to get richer input without having to use a keyboard. Yes, the remote is nice and little, which I like. Yes, it's cool that it attached itself to the side of the Mac via magnets. But I for one like having a button on my remote for DVD menus. I don't want to press the button, press down a few times, then press the button again to get to the DVD menu. I have this feeling that if Apple were ever to release a stand-alone DVD player, it would probably have one button for playing the DVD. After all, who wants to navigate those complex DVD menus to see the extras right? :roll:
eHomeUpgrade has some of their own thoughts on Front Row worth checking out.
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