Front Row is a discontinued media center software application for

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

computers and

Apple TV Apple TV is a digital media player and a microconsole developed and marketed by Apple. It is a small piece of networking hardware that sends received media data such as video and audio to a TV or external display. Its media services include ...

for navigating and viewing video, photos, podcasts and music from a computer, optical disc or the Internet through a

10-foot user interface In computing, 10-foot user interface, 10-foot UI or 3-meter user interface is a graphical user interface designed for televisions. Compared to desktop computer and smartphone user interfaces, it uses text and other interface elements that are ...

(similar to

Kodi Kodi may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * KODI, a radio station in Cody, Wyoming, USA * Kodi (film), ''Kodi'' (film), India, 2016 * Kodi, a dog in the 2004 film ''Balto III: Wings of Change'' Other uses * Kodi (software), an open sour ...

and

Windows Media Center Windows Media Center (WMC) is a discontinued digital video recorder and media player created by Microsoft. Media Center was first introduced to Windows in 2002 on Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE). It was included in Home Premium and U ...

). The software relies on iTunes and iPhoto and is controlled by an

Apple Remote The Apple Remote is a remote control introduced in October 2005 by Apple Inc. for use with a number of its products with infrared capability. It was originally designed to control the Front Row media center program on the iMac G5 and is compat ...

or the keyboard function keys. The first version was released in October 2005, with two major revisions since. ''Front Row'' was removed and discontinued in Mac OS X 10.7.

Versions

Introduction

''Front Row'' was first unveiled on October 12, 2005 with the new

iMac G5 The iMac G5 is a series of all-in-one personal computers that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from 2004 to 2006. The iMac G5 returned to a more traditional design after the "sunflower" iMac G4, with the computer compone ...

(along with the built-in iSight camera, the

, and Photo Booth). The software was billed as an alternative interface for playing and running

iPhoto iPhoto is a discontinued image editing software application developed by Apple Inc. for use on its Mac OS X operating system. It was included with every Mac computer from 2002 to 2015, when it was replaced with Apple's Photos application in ...

DVD Player A DVD player is a machine that plays DVDs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. Some DVD players will also play audio CDs. DVD players are connected to a television to ...

, and

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

(

Internet radio Internet radio, also known as online radio, web radio, net radio, streaming radio, e-radio and IP radio, is a digital audio service transmitted via the Internet. Broadcasting on the Internet is usually referred to as webcasting since it is not ...

stations could play by adding the station into a playlist in iTunes). In 2006, Front Row was added to the first Intel Mac Mini, which also gained a built-in infrared sensor and Apple Remote. The model's media center features were reviewed positively by ''PC World.'' This new version of Front Row could stream media from other computers on the

local network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, campus, or building, and has its network equipment and interconnects locally managed. LANs facilitate the distribution of d ...

Apple TV

The next incarnation, released in the original

software in March 2007, was a complete, stand alone application that played content directly from libraries. Among the features added were more prominent

podcasts A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an episodic series of digital audio files that users can download to a personal device or stream to listen to at a time of their ...

and TV show menus, trailer streaming, a settings menu, streaming content from computers on the local network, and album and video art for local media. In the summer of 2007, Apple released an update adding streaming of

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

videos.

Version two

Released in November 2007 with Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard), version two of ''Front Row'' included the new features introduced with the Apple TV (except for the ''YouTube'' viewer), a different opening transition, ending AirTunes functionality, and a launcher application in addition to the Command+Escape

keyboard shortcut In computing, a keyboard shortcut (also hotkey/hot key or key binding) is a software-based assignment of an action to one or more keys on a computer keyboard. Most Operating system, operating systems and Application software, applications come ...

. Front Row 2 has an undocumented plug-in architecture, for which various third-party plugins are now available, based on reverse-engineering the Front Row environment. Because it uses

QuickTime QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...

to render video, ''Front Row'' can utilize any codec installed in QuickTime, including

DivX DIVX (Digital Video Express) is a discontinued digital video format. Created in part by Circuit City, it was an unsuccessful attempt to create an alternative to video rental in the United States. The format's poor reception from consumers resu ...

, Xvid and WMV, and play DVD images copied to the hard disk. However, because ''Front Row'' does not use QuickTime X, it lacks support for certain codec features like Sample Aspect Ratio.

"Take 2"

In January 2008, Apple announced an update branded "Apple TV Take Two" for Apple TV Software. In addition to the prominent addition of direct downloads for movies, TV episodes, and podcasts via the iTunes Store, movie rentals, the ability to view online photos from ''

Flickr Flickr ( ) is an image hosting service, image and Online video platform, video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was previously a co ...

'' or

iCloud iCloud is the personal cloud service of Apple Inc. Launched on October 12, 2011, iCloud enables users to store and Data synchronization, sync data across devices, including Apple Mail, Calendar (Apple), Apple Calendar, Photos (Apple), Apple Ph ...

(branded .Mac at the time), and the ability to stream audio to AirTunes were added. This update did away with ''Front Row'' and introduced a new interface for the original Apple TV in which content was organized into six categories, all of which appeared in a large square box on the screen upon startup (movies, TV shows, music, ''

'', podcasts and photos) and presented in the initial menu, along with a "Settings" option for configuration, including software updates.

Discontinuation

''Front Row'' was discontinued with the July 2011 release of

Mac OS X Lion OS X Lion, also known as Mac OS X Lion, (version 10.7) is the eighth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. A preview of OS X 10.7 Lion was publicly shown at the "Back to the Mac" Apple Speci ...

(v 10.7). The software appeared in neither the early Developer Previews nor the final version. While it was initially possible to reinstall ''Front Row'' by copying the frameworks and application into OS X Lion,

v 10.4 on 22 July 2011 broke compatibility, causing those who updated iTunes to lose access to their music through ''Front Row''.

References

{{Home theater PC (application software) Apple Inc. software ITunes MacOS media players MacOS-only software made by Apple Inc.