This software is very beta feature wise. I haven't experienced any out and out crashes with it, but it has frozen up inexplicably alot, sometimes it unfreezes in a bit, sometimes not. There is alot to be desired.
It's merely a front end to iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, and DVD player. And when you exit its shiny feature-thin interface, it leaves these programs running.
If apple truly wants to enter into the media center paradigm they needs to write a media center framework and API that all software developers can access. iTunes, iPhoto and the rest should merely be interfaces to this framework, and Front Row would as well.
* The List font size is not adjustable, it gives a huge chunk of un-used space to the left of text, the result being that most of the entries in your playlist, movie list, whatever, end up getting cut off.
* The Movie Trailers feature, which is essentially a front-end to apple's quicktime movie trail website, is poorly design. The interface completely stalls while it downloads posters, giving no indication of what's going on, there is no option to set your desired trailer bandwidth ala low, media, high.. Perhaps it pulls this from your quicktime settings, perhaps not.
* The DVD feature is merely a front-end to DVD player, not a DVD recorder. What's the point in opening this to play a DVD when DVD Player does it and gives me so much more control over the experience? If it is going to just be a front end they shouldn't try to hide it, it's just ends up being DVD Player Lite.
So, on the whole, I'd say Apple jumped the gun on this one. The new iMac G5 is touted for its nifty remote and this nifty program called front row.
But in the end they just put an IR receiver in the imac, shoved some remote control bits in an ipod shuffle case, and hacked up a front end to the same old apps they ship on all other macs.
Apple hasn't cared much about the media center market, though they claimed to be the digital hub, so the real question is, why the rush now?
No revolution, no innovation, just a late-to-the-party product that was rushed out without forethought.
I really was expecting Apple quality in an Apple program. Maybe by version 3 it will be what it claims to be, that tends to be the mantra for Microsoft products anyway.