In fall of 2005, Apple held a special event to announce a new program: Front Row. A multimedia interface for your Mac that allowed you to access pictures, movies, and video via a remote. Not a lot of people cared, myself included. Now that things have all come full circle, I can see that Front Row wasn’t as much an effort to making an entertainment center out of your Mac as it was trying to perfect the software for their set-top box, the AppleTV. Which is cool, but still something that I never think that I will ever buy until it does more stuff that I want it to do. I’ve dismissed Front Row up until recently as not being able to find any realistic use for it.
Well, I found one.
I no longer have a need to buy a stereo for my bedroom. Sometimes I’m just lying around, going to bed, etc and want to listen to some music, but even with buying a stereo my music would be limited to an iPod input (and my iPod stays in my car now 99% of the time) or CDs or even worse, radio (I’m not paying for XM, screw that). Either way, I’d have to get up to change it.
So now, I’ve discovered that I can put my Macbook on my dresser, and with the Apple remote, fire up front row and have everything in my music library in 1 place where I don’t have to get up and change the music when I want to.
The only thing that’s bugging me is I don’t know if it can repeat songs/albums or not. Which is a bit frustrating. But I’m working on it. Either way, I’m very happy with this program. Good job, Apple.
