I hope they just give it to us to use with any Mac.

It kind of begs the question what IS Frontrow? An app that you simply install like any other, or a new part of the OS itself? I'd like to know more of the technical details myself...

good question... something tells me that Leopard will change the World... you'll see.

I would guess it is a new Dock.

im pretty sure it will be running on all our Macs soon.

Hopefully as a free download via Sortware Update!

Something tells me it's not going to be quite that easy though... it will be included with new Macs only from here on in I reccon.

Adding Front romw to the Mac Mini would almost (yes, I said almost) give me the reason to purchase a Mac Mini to hook up to my home entertainment system. I have held off mainly to see what Apple may add to it for intergration with a home entertainment system. Front rom would suffice for my needs there. The other item that keeps me form buying is the lack of an optical out port. Hopefully the next revision of the Mac Mini will add front Row capability and an optical out port.

Front Row could certainly run on any Mac.

I'm wondering about the remote. Interestingly enough on the AppleStore website it says it will run with any Mac that was released in 2005 and has in IR port. Just the iMac right now, but... If you go to http://www.apple.com/imac/frontrow.html it has the iMac and the mini on the top menu. I'm wondering if pretty soon there will be a mini with IR port and Front Row bundled.

Last question: Why in God's name did Apple's engineers chose the old and ugly IR instead of the nice and already included Bluetooth?

Could be, but there is a link to the Mini on every iMac page, and vice-versa - it's just part of the website design.



Good question. The only reason i can think of it so that they could make it easily work with the new iPod dock too.

totally off the cuff (and in no way inhibited by actual fact or knowledge ) but my guess would be power/battery-life? (how long do BT keyboards last? a remote would have a magnitude fewer key presses)

Certainly would have been nice tho... couple that with a Airport Extreme Video module, and I'd be surfing my media from my Mac (upstairs) on my HT downstairs.

As it is now, you need to locate your iMac near your HT

Mike

I'd imagine IR is much cheaper than bluetooth. I'd personally like bluetooth, but that'd probably make that remote cost $80 instead of $30.

Bluetooth is costlier, uses more battery, requires setup (BT devices need to be "paired"), and does involve some security risk (admittedly low). IR is dirt cheap and reliable, and in no way a security risk to the computer.

tooki

the mini is a very logical place to have frontrow added, you'd think it would be in the mini before any other Mac. Only reason that it's not seems to be to not cut into Apple profit.

But who doesn't think that a mini with this sort of thing and more isn't long off?

Depends on how much Apple is hoping Front Row protects iMac sales from cannibalization. From where I sit, that is the the one and only reason to make it iMac only.

yeah this would be nice, but your forgetting one thing. The mac mini performance sucks, the effects of front row alone would make the mac mini choke. LOL and trying to get h.264, and all your movies going off the mini properly outputed to a HDMI hi-def tv is choppy, slow and sucks.

After x86 I'm sure we will see front row across the board. Obviously front-row can output to HDTV as it did so beautifully for the presentation (projector behind stevej was hi-def)

i think the reason why frontrow is for imac only is because i think there is a new operating system within the new imac...the new one with the x86 protection
once they make 100% sure it will only work with certain x86 boxes, then i think that apple will release the new operating system WITH the frontrow stuff for the rest of the maac users...lol

Very good point. I love my Mini, but I am beginning to feel I could use a bit more oomph (mostly because of World of Warcraft ) Now that I think about it, I don't think I'd like to see Front Row on a Mini unless they got serious about packing some GPU punch in future revisions.

I declare you the winner. Your dinner is complimentary.

Thats crap, I output to HDTV from a mini and it works fantastically.
Those 3D effects don't exactly look complicated, I'm sure a mini could handle them fine.

Uhh... the new iMac isn't x86.

You answered your own question.

Because they will put it on the Mini soon and the mini doesn't have built-in blue tooth. What's more, making it IR means its features can be integrated with programmable remotes, which is exactly what i intend to do as soon as it comes out.

My understanding is since the recent update of processor speed and a 5400rpm drive the performance issues have pretty much been solved. Sure it's no G5 but the performnce should be more than enough to use Front Row. The mini could use a little better graphics card but then that could effect the price that Apple charges for it.

h.264 really does tax a single G4. Try scaling it up to fill the screen -- it gets choppy.

But FrontRow also uses other effects, some of which clearly rely on CoreVideo/CoreImage. Until the Mac mini gets a major GPU upgrade, it won't be suitable, unless Apple tones down the effects.

tooki

I know that. what i meant was that because the current tiger os has got a bug where it can be installed in x86 and apple would fix that in another release, i think the imac got that new updated tiger already while the rest of the mac users didnt because they managed to think of new ideas, but havent secured it to prevent a "future cd release" to be installed on x86 systems, just be installed on apple systems...
just a thought..

Nah, I seriously doubt Apple would distribute an x86-compatible version with a PowerPC Mac.

tooki

What's the big deal with a Frontrow Mini? You have it sitting next to/on top of your tv and hooked via s-video, you use yor FrontRow remote with a broadband hookup, you log into the AppleStore, d/l your show/movie selected from their library, and watch it on your tv via the mini. It's a service receiver with a cpu/ computer with a content receiver. I guess the bottleneck would be the d/l of the content, it would have to be faster somehow.

well, they dont do it, but hackers find a way and i think they are trying to prevent the hacking with the rumored new versioni of tiger...which i think is already included in the new imacs...
they just havent released it to us because they havent made the anti-hackable version....
get what i am saying...if not..ill just give up..lol

You can't take the version that comes with Macs and install it on PC's. It's built for the wrong processor.

The version of OS X that comes with Macs has nothing at all to do with the x86 version.

Are you sure they are coreimage effets? it just looks like 4 objects rotaing/scaling with reflections. Coverflow does much more than that and works fantasticly on my Mini.

http://www.steelskies.com/coverflow/HomePage.html

moonmonkey, I see that you live in Shanghai. You an expat? Do you live in Pudong or Puxi?

Also, you know where's a good place in Shanghai to get Mac service? (Just in case)